Hi all,
New user, considering the Rachio 2 or 3. I’m in the UK though. Does anyone have experience of the hyperlocal weather feature that’s included in the 3, outside of the US? I’m just worried that the service might be provided by a US-only company, and won’t work here in the UK.
Thanks for any help!
-tom
Netatmo - a French company make a smart weather system. This has been possible to link to Weather Underground although I have seen a post suggesting Netatmo may not support this integration any more.
UPDATE: Found a software workaround to restore the ability to use Netatmo with Weather Underground - phew! See - http://plus.meteoware.com/
It would if possible allow you to have your own weather monitor including a rain sensor which via Weather Underground could be used by Rachio.
@Tomorgan
Do you realise that technically you are breaking the law by using an uncertified wireless device?
@franz
A hint you need to hurry up and do a legal certified product for Europe and thereby prevent turning us all in to criminals. 
@franz - Yes there are some, and I plan to set my own up soon as well. Is WU the source for the local weather info then?Thats good to know, thanks for being so open, it helps with planning
@jelockwood - Yes, although the way things are going with Brexit we could well loose access to the CE scheme, which I bet noone has thought about. I’m not an expert on this, but I actually thought that prevented companies from selling non-certified items, rather than users using them? But maybe there are other acts in place toprevent use of non-certified wireless devices? Anyway, +1 for a European channel (and before next March please!!)
@Tomorgan
Yes I had thought about CE approval. However US manufacturers already are used to getting CE approval and I personally expect the UK to trust CE approved products even after Brexit.
For what it’s worth there is a similar UK standard run by the British Standards Institute (BSI). See - https://www.bsigroup.com/en-GB/kitemark/product-testing/
Regarding Wireless standards, in the UK this is enforced by OFCOM. The intent is to ensure banned frequencies are not used, this is either to prevent conflicts with other registered uses or keep frequencies clear for the military etc. apart from choice of frequencies there are also rules over signal strength, in some cases the US allows stronger signals than Europe.
Due to these issues Eero mesh WiFi products are illegal to use in Europe and sadly they - another US manufacturer have continuously failed to produce legal products even though they are now on generation 2.5 of their products. 
In the case of Eero I am starting to feel they have left it so long (and still not done it) that they are now in danger of withering away and going bust because other companies like Google, NetGear, Ubiquiti, and so on have all since produced legal mesh WiFi products for use in Europe. A lesson other US manufacturers in other segments should learn from - hint, hint.
What makes this so frustrating is that for wireless standards the chips used are the same ones used by other legal products or at least versions of those chips from the same suppliers. So it is not a matter of inventing something new it is merely a matter of ordering a likely different model of the same chip from the same supplier. It may even in some cases be exactly the same chip but simply configured via software to use different modes/frequencies.
@sbarnhard I don’t know if it would be possible for Rachio to reconfigure their existing products to use different frequencies for a different region. I do know that Apple did provide this feature for their AirPort Extreme base-station, you could specify the country you were using it in and it would change the list of WiFi frequencies you could set it to accordingly.
It would depend on mainly the capability of the chips being used.
