I was using Flex schedules before and since they are going away I removed my Flex schedule and add a new “As needed” schedule.
The feedback I have is that with Flex Schedules the calendar clearly showed that nothing was scheduled for many days due to rain in the forecast. The new schedule checks 60 minutes before it runs before it updates the schedule. This is poor UX as now I don’t know that it’s taking rain into account. The FAQ says it will, but the Calendar doesn’t show it. Flex schedules was way better in this regard.
I have been bragging to friends for weeks about the Rachio and after a few minutes with 2.5, I’ve run into two issues. One is a serious bug, but this one is more of an annoyance. I’m less inclined to brag.
Thanks for the feedback, I’d give it a shot for awhile and see how it performs. I agree we are going to add more information regarding the calendar, still trying to find the right balance between complexity and predictability/understanding.
Thanks again for the feedback, will relay all of this to the product team.
I just updated to 2.5 so I turned on my old fixed schedule (even days) and it showed every even day for each zone for the whole month. Appears to be a dumb fixed schedule. I turned it off and turned back on my flex schedule.
I then made a new “as needed” schedule and that was similar to my flex schedule, but I have a odd/even day restriction in my city and I can’t specify to only water on even days, so I can’t use the “as needed” schedule.
Going to have to stay with the flex schedule for now.
@Mitch, you’ll need to create a new As Needed schedule; old Fixed schedules will not automatically update.
For more details on As Needed schedules, please refer to this support article. The calendar view of As Needed schedules shows the days the system is scheduled to run, however Climate Skip will skip scheduled waterings whenever possible.
Thanks, I realized that quickly after my post. That schedule looks a lot better and is similar to my flex schedule. The problem I have now is I don’t see an option for restrictions using the “as needed” schedule. I can only water on even days.
Flex schedule user, here. Loved 'em. Now they’re deprecated with no migration option. So disable it, thinking I can change my old pre-flex schedule to an as-needed schedule. Nope. I have to create yet another new schedule? Even that might be OK if the app didn’t hang while creating it. This whole update seems like a half-baked product released as a beta, while simultaneously deprecating previously-beta functionality that has been in beta so long that we’ve come to depend on it. I love the hardware; I hate the app.
@particleman, are you on iOS or Android? I’ve been running iOS 2.5 without a problem. I’d be happy to try to reproduce what you’re experiencing on your account if you’d like.
I’m sorry you feel that way. I can reassure you 2.5 schedules are rock solid and are worth giving a try. Flex schedules will be available until November 2016 if you’d prefer to wait until a later date.
Thanks @emil. Yes, everyone, please remember that you can continue to use your flex schedules if you’d prefer not to use the new schedules. But, please feel free to experiment with the new ones. We make schedules easy to add and delete, so hopefully trying them out won’t cause a lot of pain. Our team works hard to make sure we don’t release products that are half-baked, but if a bug happens, we’ll make sure to get it fixed asap. We’ll continue to iterate on the software, that’s the beauty of having such an engaged IoT company, and appreciate all of the feedback.
Big-time newbie here but really enjoying your product! I jumped right into flex scheduling and have been watching as your product does its thing.
I set up an as needed schedule tonight to see what it would do. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate or not but I have landscapers come in on Thursdays to mow the lawn. There didn’t appear to be any way for me to eliminate Thursday as a watering day.
Thanks for a great product.
By the way, I have four clocks on the property and am interested in your discussion for a possible solution to managing all four on your system. As you know it’s quite a juggling act to make sure zones don’t overlap.
In later versions we will be looking to add in restrictions. We are reworking how all of our calendaring works so shifting days like that will be easier for us…for now if the watering did land on a restricted day setting a rain delay for a day and then just kicking off the schedule (one tap through the app) could be a way to workaround that limitation.
With new infrastructure we are building we will have the possibility to control multiple controllers as one logical device.
No time frame for this, but something that is on our radar.
Half-baked is releasing an app that deprecates previously-touted functionality without a migration path. (Update this flex schedule to a new ‘As-needed’ schedule!) or not having all of the same data available as in the deprecated feature. (hydration graphs). You can’t expect us to be excited about new features if you make us reinvent the wheel to adopt them. Don’t force me to adopt something, but make it simple (shouldn’t I be able to one-touch create a new as-needed schedule based on all the flex data you have supposedly collected?) At the very least, I should be able to modify previous schedules to adopt the new features.
I appreciate the thoughts @particleman. As you clearly have an opinion, and I respect that, I hope you’ll return me the same and accept my argument that this is still far from half-baked. Please keep in mind that Flex has always been in beta, and is still available to you.
The new ‘As needed’ schedule improves on our existing Fixed schedules, using some of the best parts of Flex. So, you’re actually getting more features since you can keep your beta Flex schedules. And because you can keep your Flex schedules, we have not worked on any kind of migration path yet.
We aren’t making you adopt the new schedules. We’ve simply released a new kind of schedule that improves upon the functionality for the schedule type that the vast majority of our customers use - Fixed. Flex is flex, and you still have it. Now you also have an improved Fixed schedule and a new ‘As needed’ schedule.
Just to recap, we’ve released a new and improved schedule type that is different from Flex. You can continue to use your Flex schedules. We don’t have a migration for Flex because it’s not yet gone and the new schedule type is different than Flex. This is a great compromise for all of our customers.
Thanks for the feedback. We always appreciate hearing from our customers. If you’ve been with us for a while, you know we listen and continue to innovate on the product.
For what it’s worth, I found a temporary solution to the same problem. I created a gmail account just for a Rachio calendar, then put in a ‘skip watering’ event every other Saturday, which is when my landscaper comes. Set up an IFTTT rule that looks at your Google calendar and then issues a ‘Skip watering time’ to the Rachio. I called my calendar ‘Rachio’ in the screenshot below, and it’s tied to my everyday Google account.
Here are some screenshots:
GOOGLE CALENDAR:
IFTTT RECIPE:
Since I’m on a fixed schedule I imagine that I’m missing out on that watering rather than Rachio adding a later watering, but at least the landscaper isn’t getting soaked. It sounds like the Rachio guys will be putting in something smarter in the future, but in the meantime maybe this helps ?
I’m sorry, I misspoke. I was thinking in the context of the flex schedules. A flex would pick that up, however, fixed schedules do not currently make up missed waterings. It’s something we’ve been thinking about how to incorporate.
