Rachio Won't Run

My Rachio has been running fine since set up in June 2016. We added two new circuits back in January and since then it has been having issues. I have re-paired it to the WiFi a couple of times, last month when for security reasons I changed the WiFi password and yesterday because my new lawn on the two new circuits is now dying due to lack of water. It was supposed to run last night but I got a notification that it didn’t run because it wasn’t connected. Rather than schedule to run as soon as re-connected, it choose to not run for another week.

I’ve tried to water manually using the android app and I just get a spinner and have to exit the app. I’ve tried to water manually using the web interface and, while it doesn’t flash a spinner at me, it still doesn’t water. Fortunately the is some rain in the forecast this week but it will probably be the last of the year. I’m also ready to plant a vegetable garden and I need it to be watered reliably.

HELP!

Hey @Sammy2!

I am sorry to hear your controller has disconnected- do you mind telling me what lights you see lit up/flashing on your controller? You can check out this support article for more information on that: http://support.rachio.com/article/484-light-diagram. Let me know what you see and we can go from there!

McKynzee :rachio:

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It took a while but it said it was on line and if I access it via the web it tells me it is on line too. I thought it got my command to water this morning but is stuck on just saying it is watering the first zone for 15 minutes and has been saying that for the last 6 hours and 45 minutes. Is it possible for Rachio Support to try to access my controller? Would I need to send you the MAC ID and / or Serial Number?

TIA

@Sammy2

I had the support team review your controller and it looks like it was accidentally factory reset and was an orphan. It is now good to go.

Let us know if you have any other issues or feedback.

:cheers:

Why would that happen? This is a new area of grass that I’m going to need to lay down mulch and seed as it got so dry it actually died in a few areas. I kept trying to water and it just wouldn’t water it until I figured I would get on here and report it. I manually watered the station that was most effected but will go back to the weather based run times but now this station is out of sync with the rest of the watering times. Do I need to run all stations to sync them back up or is there another way to do that?

Thanks!

You might have been trying to do a WiFi reset and accidentally performed a factory reset?

Little unclear on syncing up the stations, are you using a flexible daily schedule that tracks zone moisture levels?

:cheers:

I did try to reset the WiFi but it is Rachio’s responsibility to make a product that doesn’t do that. I’m pretty tech savvy and have been involved with computers before there was an Internet and wiring my house for ethernet 20 years ago. No device should do a factory reset without adequate warnings to the end user and before doing it it should offer the ability to back up its settings locally for easy recovery.

I have had all my lawn zones watering the same day. I want to keep this functionality with flexible day zones. I suppose I’ll just over-water for a while so they’re all over 100% moisture and then let it sync back to the same days unless there is a way to tell the iro to do this.

Thanks.

I agree, with limited buttons we had to choose how to allow the user to factory reset and WiFi reset. Yes, there probably is a safer way for customers to not accidentally perform one while meaning the other. Product team is reviewing these features.

We do support the ability to manually fill or empty your zones through the soil moisture graph. This should help.

http://support.rachio.com/article/395-understanding-moisture-level-for-your-zones

:cheers:

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I’m having issues again with my Rachio Gen 2.

It keeps skipping watering an putting it as “After May 14” then “After May 15”. It has been hot and my grass is getting a little wilted. I “Emptied” the soil moisture even though it already showed it to be quite low. I even set the allowed depletion to be lower. I was able to water my grass manually, or so I thought, last night it really didn’t seem very moist after doing a manual run.

Additionally, I have my Vegetable Garden circuit set to just run for an hour at 7:00am and again at 1:30pm and nothing, unless I manually run it.

@Sammy2 - is it because the Rachio device is in standby mode?

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Maybe. I didn’t put it into Standby, It just went there… or maybe I did it accidentally.

[EDIT] I just changed it and it shows it will water on May 3 for the lawns and today for the garden. [/EDIT]

I will monitor going forward. Thanks.

After fixing this issue, my Rachio decided not to water the Vegetable Garden this afternoon due to a rain delay. The weather station is correct and the temperature is pushing 90F with no rain whatsoever. I again had to force it to water. If left to it’s own forces, the Rachio would KILL my vegetable garden in short order. This is not acceptable.

Hi @Sammy2-

First of all- do you have any integrations? This could be why it unexpectedly went into standby.

With the Vegetable garden schedule, the most recent skip I am seeing is Tuesday, and it was a climate skip. Climate skip uses weather with you zone settings to determine if your schedule can make it until the next watering. It is possible that the zone settings aren’t completely tuned to the zone, and that is why it skipped incorrectly. What kind of veggies are you growing? I can work on finding some good zone settings for whatever you are specifically growing! Or you can just disable it. Up to you, just let me know!

McKynzee :rachio:

By integrations, do you mean having it connected to my Home Automation? I don’t because Rachio is unsupported on Vera.

That skip was unwarranted on Tuesday. It was 90 plus degrees with no rain in the forecast. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, my Rachio said that the skip would be ignored and watered anyhow.

As far as what I’m growing, It is all the basics… Tomatoes, Zuccinni, Pole Beans, Peppers, Chili Peppers, Corn, Carrots, Lettuce, Onions, Broccolini, Spinach, Herbs, with others planned for the near future. The soil is 3 yards or 8" of imported growing compost over natural D.G. I’m using 2gph drippers and it is quite moist in the soil right now.

The compost was pretty dry so I wanted to get it moistened throughout to start with two 1-hour runs each day but I’m ready to turn the watering down a little bit and would like to do Flexible Schedules while not killing my vegetable garden.

@sammy2, if you decide to move to flexible schedules, make sure you go to flexible daily and not flexible monthly.

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