Welcome to the club. I have been waiting for so many years.
I think it’s coming, along with MV delay capability. These are two of the more frequently asked for enhancements, and, can be done in s/w without requiring a h/w change (Rachio says it’s a s/w company).
I think 16 to 32 zone is hard. I think its order of complexity is similar to moving from a 32 to a 64 bit OS. Version 3 has to keep track of a whole bunch of details, optimize them, and then schedule them.
I think Rachio is late on putting forth an update. I think it’s an intentional decision. I think it’s a gamble of ‘we won’t lose market share, even with such incredible delay, because what’s coming is incredible enhancement.’
I also think there’s no way anyone ‘in the know’ is permitted to comment here. I think at this point it’s ‘no comment’ (mckynzee uses many more words to say as such, above).
All IMO. We’re all just going to have to wait. My bet is that you’ll be better off waiting than moving on. (But, I too am about to become a victim in the contest.)
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I’m researching my first upcoming job and I’ll also have two controllers located which are located at the North and South sides of the house. I’d like to see these operate as one system to the home owner. I agree that this should have been addressed long ago, hopefully you make some progress soon.
FWIW, I installed (6) 16-zone Rachio v2 controllers on our property. It seems to me that if all Rachio controllers in use can have shared “Community” attributes (such as how many gallons the community used), and all of my Rachio controllers can have shared “Rachio Account” attributes, then why can’t the 6 Rachio controllers on my property have shared “Location” attributes? That’s all I need. In this fashion I wouldn’t have to log into all 6 controllers to change, say, a weather station, or a smart climate or rain threshold. It’s a real pain.
I wouldn’t purchase a >16 zone controller if it was available. More but smaller controllers mean shorter wire runs, easier swap-outs in event of a controller failure, the ability to run multiple valves at the same time, and the like.
I don’t need ethernet - simply install a long-range WiFi access point. It’s more secure that way, and you don’t have to run outdoor waterproof ethernet cable to your controllers (the cable plus installation would cost more than your AP.)
What I also need is native support for Weather Underground. I had to shut off the “smart climate” features and bump up the rain thresholds until I can kludge together a bridge to my own PWS. Don’t understand Rachio’s reticence around doing this.
Definitely need better fault reporting. For instance, this morning one of my Rachios got hung up at zone 5, keeping a valve powered on for 7 hours (was supposed to shut off after 6 minutes) and dumped about 7 thousand gallons of water on the zone. Kudos to customer support for swapping me out with a new unit; however something should alert me if the run time did not complete and ideally should shut off a master valve if installed.
Rachio reports on current overload. That’s good. It needs to also report on undercurrents - for instance, from open wires to a problem with the valve solenoid. Otherwise it will report that zones were watered when they weren’t.
I like the Rachio, especially the small footprint for outside, and the UI, once one figures it out. If you could add the above features you could make a nice dent in the commercial market.
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I think the above is well written. Puts forth good points on a model of multiple Iro units distributed out around a large property that thus is irrigation system installation cost saving, Emphasizes need for Iro units to be able to communicate to Internet and/or each other wirelessly. Also puts forth good emphasis and need for real time monitoring and fault detection capabilities.
Best regards,
Bill
@chrisgayler - @Gene has created WUFYI to bridge data from Weather Underground to PWSWeather where Aeris can pick it up and serve it to Rachio. Here is the link to one of the posts about it -> Using WUnderground.com to integrate Personal Weather Stations
Hey, it works! Elegant. Thanks, to you and Gene !!
The commercial market already has this solution: 2-wire systems.
I do see what you are trying to accomplish. It makes perfect sense provided you already have the infrastructure in place to support it. However, it’s not typical to have power and a charged water main throughout a residential property. It’s also not typical to have a water supply that can run more than a zone of two concurrently in a residential setting.
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Count me in as one of those requesting the ability for multiple controllers to be combined into a single larger “virtual controller”.
I have a Rachio installed at one of our vacation homes that we’re perfectly happy with. But a single controller won’t cut it for our primary residence, and I’m left to manually determine the schedules on each to avoid running multiple zones at the same time. As long as I have to do that, I’ll might as well stay with my Rainbird controllers and just add a LNK WiFi module to each one. I’d replace them in a heartbeat with Rachios if I could program them as though they were a single controller.
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Hi Franz,
Disappointed but, I understand where Rachio is coming from. For the record, I’m another customer that would benefit from that. I currently have at my primary residence gen 2 - 16 zone and a 8 zone dumb controller (Just died). My 16 zone gen 3 is on the way. I’ll replace my gen 2 with the gen 3 and replace the dumb controller with my old gen 2. Schedule the gen 2 to run at an odd time like early morning. My one question, when the gen 2 is running, will the water usage for that report into the gen 3 from the wireless flow controller? Or will it just ignore that data since its no gen 3 zone is active??
Thanks in advance,
Loren Okuly
It will not. The flow meter is built for one controller.
Hope you enjoy the new controller. Please let us know if you have additional questions.
Have a great week.
I just received my 3 16 zone gen3. I am hoping over time that I will be able to have my 3 units acting as 1 and tied to 1 flow meter. I am surprised there is not a demand for this. Looking forward to testing the units before I go live.
Help !
I’m a newbie deciding between purchasing 2 rachio gen3 16 zones, versus 1 Hunter HC with 2 expansion modules (for a total of 36 zones). I currently have 30 zones on 3 acres, using 4 independent dumb controllers. Trying to avoid conflicts between zones feel like a full time job.
I’m not concerned with the purchase price between these two options, since I figure it will cost me one way or another. I’m also not concerned with the Hunter limits on weather accuracy, since I live within 1/2 mile of an airport, and regardless I assume I can manage weather changes manually if needed.
I would love to jump onto the rachio bandwagon, since it appears that it is the type of company I would like to support, and customers appear happy.
But, my biggest concern is being able to “really” handle all zones in one system, which Hunter HC does, and rachio does not. I see in this thread that this is something rachio is working on for some future date, but I don’t understand if this will require hardware change, or just software.
Do I invest in current rachio hardware, knowing that at some point there will be the software solution many are looking for? Or when the improvements are finally rolled out, will I need to dump my investment for new rachio hardware? Are the bells and whistles of the rachio software so good as to warrant me not simply going with HC?
Any suggestions are welcomed !
@trustedlawyer - I have no experience with Hunter, but Rachio has worked well for me and the company has been very responsive to feature requests and the icing on the cake is this community where there is a wealth of information from folks that aren’t employed by Rachio. I don’t know what the water cost is for your installation (i.e. city water at $/gallon or well water paying for pump and maintenance, etc.), but I think the two Rachio units would pay for themselves over four independent dumb controllers.
Without more information about the setup (e.g. watering restrictions, water supply capacity (i.e. can two zones be run at one time), water pressure, head type (rotor vs spray vs drip), etc.) it would be hard to make any recommendations. One option would be to set controller one to a Flex schedule with Monday, Wednesday and Friday allowed for watering and the set controller two to a Flex schedule with Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday allowed for watering. That way there shouldn’t ever be two zones running at the same time.
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Thanks @DLane. It is what appears to be the company culture, and the community input, that makes we want to join in.
My usage - I’m on a multi-family well system, so cost of water is negligible. I have no watering restrictions. I would not be able to run more than 1 zone at a time due to pressure. My head types are a wide mix… from long distance impulse for pastures, to rotors for large lawns, down to drips and small spray heads for herbs and vegetables.
If/when the fix of having multiple Rachio units work as one true systems comes to fruition - is that going to be a hardware change, or software only?
@trustedlawyer - I have no insight into Rachio’s plans on this request. I could see it being either. In the mean time, the best option with no watering restrictions is to have each controller allowed to water on days that don’t overlap.
Boy…depending on what your zones are, and what type of emitters you have, your system would struggle to find time to run all zones of they all 36 worked as one…I promise you, your Rachio run times will probably be longer than you are used to, but rest assured, it’s the correct way to water…
Even with my 16 zone, my zones fight over time when both grass and drip needs to run in a day. I have a second 8 zone that runs independently, but I can run multiple zones on my supply line without issues…
This thread is sad. Literal years have gone by and support for multiple controllers (programmatic merge of schedules) continues to go undeveloped. I can’t upgrade to the gen3 controllers because the wireless flow meter won’t function with more than one controller.
- Does Rachio have an update on this?
- Have any of you found a better product that will allow multiple controllers to merge?
With increasing heat in the S.W. this season, managing my Rachio system becomes more and more annoying as each new feature is either incompatible (new flow meter) or unreliable without consideration of the other controllers (“intelligent” features don’t know whether the other controllers are running and so can’t be used as they cause overlap). Desert irrigation requites precise pressure tuning and that is why we typically don’t want to see multiple zones running at once.
Thanks @DLane, I missed that one.
I am a programmer, work with programmers. The significant and primary reason that this would be complex is due to the stated, “more sophisticated weather intelligence features across schedules”.
What about allowing multiple controller merge only with Fixed Schedules? That is what most of us with multiple controllers are using anyway. Grey-out the “intelligent” features with a caveat that explains the feature is not available for multiple controllers once merged. Schedule data is stored on the controller itself. The iOS/Android/Web interfaces are talking to the controllers and affecting changes to databases anyway. I don’t need a dB in the cloud (would be nice of course as then you could implement intelligent features), just simple coordination of timing across controllers with Fixed Schedules. Let the app check for busy true/false for the desired start/stop time and if the app sees a conflict, warn the user. if the user persists and is okay with two zones overlapping, notate it in the app and display the warning.
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