@franz Ping! Any updates on this?
Agree. Surprised by the limitations of this “app”. It’s basically a timer that I can control from my phone. This can be better. It should be pretty easy to create start and end times and set intervals between…and then schedule it. Start with that pretty minor improvement and move forward.
I do my overseeding by setting up 3 fixed schedules, each with just one or two minutes per zone (depending on the kind of heads). I do one in the morning, one around noon, and one in the late afternoon. I put in start and end dates, having all three run for one week, just two the next week, and then just one the last week. A little more work to set up the first time, but I liked this method because I could set it and forget it.
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The only way I could figure out how to water every 2 hours from 8 AM to 4 PM for 4 minutes for the next 13 days was to create 5 separate schedules. I’m surprised and disappointed the app can’t handle this.
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PING!
I too have just run into this. Only had my R3 for a couple days, but am a bit frustrated having had to setup 4 schedules for each day for my yearly fescue overseeding. The first is set to finish before sunrise, then 3 more programs each for 4 hours after the previous.
IMO, I think the best solution (but do appreciate the programming that would be involved here) is to have an option to water x number of times between specified start and end times, with the R3 calculating the specific times for each watering within that range. Ideally it would be something like:
Start: end before sunrise
End: end at sunset
Or even specifying specific start and end times, although the sunrise/sunset options would be really sweet!!!
Improving the use of sunset and sunrise on schedules (not just one for the controller) would be a big win for many applications of the controller, similar to my smart lights and switches where I can set an offset (+ / - 120 min from each, which changes every day of the year by a few minutes).
The write up on my post here might help on seeding.
I don’t see a solution in this thread to having an interval schedule with a specific start and end time.
Quite simply, I want to water my lawn every hour for a few minutes during daylight.
Then water my lawn every 4 hours during the evening.
Creating two schedules would be the intuitive way to do this, but in your “New Seeing Instructions” you have a Step 5 which says “Decide what time and day your schedule will being (and end, if you like)…” HOW DO YOU SET BOTH A START TIME AND END TIME? If I say “End before sunrise” --> Then when does it start??? If I say “Start after Sunset” --> Then when does it end??? I have radio buttons for these and “End before a specific time” and “Start at a specific time”, but I want to choose a start time and an end time. Bonus if the start and end times can be based on Sunrise/Sunset, but I care less about that than just having a fixed window of time. I really can’t believe that this isn’t possible, so please advise…
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Hoping someday comes this year! Still waiting to see this implemented. Either a daylight hours or an end time would greatly improve the ability to water newly seeded areas.
Same problem here. Would love to see start time and stop time on daily or hourly intervals. You can do one or the other but not both. I’m not sure what it even does because it still runs all day and night unless you only run once or twice a day. It is just simple programming Rachio.
Is there any update on adding daylight hours or an end time to the controller?
Yeah, we know it’s not supported. It’s only been 2 years since your customers have been asking for it. God forbid you do something this simple that many are clamoring for
I just purchased and installed this product. I am very disappointed with your lack of urgency in resolving the matters in the thread. Several people on this thread of brought up valid points about adjusting their schedules and you have responded with the same “This is still not supported. This would be great to have implemented 
” response. UNACCEPTABLE. Why have you not made this modification to your programming? We demand answers.
Wow I wish I knew this before purchase. I may have to go back to building my own dang sprinkler controller. The custom functionality is soooo limited! Kudos to Rachio for focusing on “smart” watering, but as soon as you want to go off the path on you’re own, you’re SCREWED.
Yep, here I am keeping my seed alive with HOURLY short waterings. But I sure as heck don’t need that same amount of water at night. Can I put in a start/stop window of time? Nope! Can I set a different interval for day vs night watering? Nope! So, soooo dumb! And yet so simple to enable in the software. So what do I have to do here? Put it on standby every night, and hope to remember to resume in the morning??? LAME.
As a software and hardware developer, I can tell you this feature request is EASY. No excuse for Rachio to sit on this for 3+ years!!! No excuse also not to open this thing up for users to really get done what they want here with all sorts of custom config! Seriously, I think I’ll resume development on my controller project and just start competing here. Rachio, feel free to make your app awesome and dominate the market instead.
Maybe not intuitive, but you could set up a manual cycle and soak.
You could set up another different manual cycle and soak schedule to water at night.
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I do appreciate a good work-around. However, this is super confusing as to what it is doing, and compounded complexity with multiple zones. I shouldn’t have to bust out excel and a calculator to do this! I tried fiddling with this use of cycle/soak, and failed miserably. Likely due to a lack of understanding of what the expected behavior of the device is with regards to cycle and soak, and “hacking” the timing, etc. And it would still run for 24 hours, and watered for 100 minutes rather than 10, despite cycle and soak being set. I don’t get how you run for 10 hours as mentioned, etc. But ultimately this just isn’t intuitive and the need for real features in this area are paramount.
You just have to set the TOTAL watering time to 100 minutes, and set up a Manual Cycle and Soak to Cycle for 10 minutes, Soak for 50 minutes, as mentioned above. You still need the Total time, as that determines how many hours it runs.
yep, got it. Unfortunately, this whole approach wont work for me.
Why? Because there are more than one schedule at play in other areas, and this hangs the entire 10 hours (or 100 minutes, or whatever) until the entire schedule runs with all its cycle/soak iterations, before allowing the next schedule (which might be hourly, but sitting and waiting for this multi-cycle/soak strategy). Lame. This is what hackery gets you 
Also I learned I can’t have 2 zones with 2 different short schedules. I.e. “cycle” for 10 minutes in one zone every 1 hour, then do 10 minutes in other zone every 3 hours). In particular, one area of my newly seeded lawn is in shade, another in sun. They need DIFFERENT durations between watering, else one area will dry out, or be flooded, accordingly. I cannot put both of these zones in a single cycle/soak schedule because that means a single iteration time, and… I can’t run 2 of such hackery schedules simultaneously, because the first one that kicks off will tie up and dominate the system for 10 hours! Ugh!
Oh, did I mention a 3 hour iteration a bit ago? Yeah, no! I also learned I can’t even do a 3 hour interval! Nope, 1, 2, 4, 6. So lame. So, so lame! Any reason why we can’t just specify what we want, rather than bow to what these developers assumed we want? Nope. No real technical reason at all - I must be nanny’d and only be given limited options. It just so happens that with my current weather (100F, dry desert), the sun will dry out this zone in about 3 hours, not 2, not 4. So I guess I get to over water, or dry out and burn my seed. Nice.
While I’m at it, I also learned that I can’t enforce a “rest” period between zones. Why does that matter? Well, it doesn’t matter much for grass, but for SEED… think about it. Zones overlap - by design, this is a good thing. But when you have only DIRT, the potential for run-off is high. If zones 1 and 2 overlap, and I need them both to run every X hours, I don’t want them to run one right after another! I want zone 1 to soak in a bit before firing up zone 2. Is that so hard? Yes, yes it is, Rachio.
Most of this would be solvable by simply allowing both start/stop time (or a “do not run time” window) for a schedule. This way, I could actually set up different schedules for zone 1 and 2 (sun and shade, seeding scenario), and just have them run as the system fits them in, meshing together throughout the day. Done. So easy! And then we can address that “rest” feature to put icing on the cake.
Yes I played with this all day. And I kept my seed alive manually babysitting the entire thing, defeating the entire purpose of having a “smart” watering system, or any automated system at all for that matter.
How many other zones do you have?
Are they shrubs and/or trees?
11 zones. several for back yard (mature grass) 2 flower beds with sprayers, 2 drip zones for trees, shrubs. And 2 temporarily seed starting, will be mature grass eventually - and these are the ones with scheduling needs that are drastically different than mature plants.