Can someone please provide an update as to what is going on with the weather data? I know it was stated that other data sources are being looked into but when can we expect to see some progress in this area? I’ve tried to let the controller run as is since the reason I bought it was not to have to manually take the time to deal with watering and my lawn has paid the price since it’s completely drying up, turning brown. Thanks.
@jeremyshultz , I’ve been testing out the weather service change this week, and it’s looking good so far. If we don’t run across any problems, we expect to flip the switch early next week.
@coslor thanks! I saw in a different post that it supports thousands of individual weather stations. Can you provide the name either of the service or type of weather station and if we are able to purchase one on our own?
I’m doing a bunch of data tests this weekend, to make sure the service will live up to its promises. Unless I find something really scary, expect to see a notification in a couple of days.Thanks for your patience!
Great @coslor thanks!
@coslor would you be able to provide an update on this topic/issue? I’d greatly appreciate it!
Also, can you please provide any other updates you may have in regards to the IFTTT integration topic and any new things other than what has previously been written about the 1.6 release … And and expected release date of that release?
@jeremyshultz New weather data is rolling out early next week. We will be able to provide more data around integration, etc. next week as well once we have confirmed a few things.
I have submitted our device integration specs to IFTTT and we are ready to build out that functionality. I am waiting for a response from IFTTT around integration. Unfortunately we don’t have any control over their development iterations. When I find out more will relay as soon as possible.
We are testing 1.6 and should submit to Apple store next Monday or Tuesday for approval.
Thanks!
Definitely need to option to integrate weather data. There is too much variation and could kill my lawn if I can’t have it adjust based on current weather pattern
Thanks for the update! @franz
I wonder why they are so tight lipped on the weather sourcing? Keeping the logic a secret isn’t going to stop successful competitors from entering this market.
I nearly went with (and may still switch to) the RainMachine due to its ability to download data from NOAA for use in its calculations. Also RainMachine publishes a fairly simple algorithm so advanced end users can see how the machine is thinking.
I have a Vantage Pro 2 weather station in my back yard and it would sure be nice to have my Iro integrate with this as it is pretty darn accurate and local to my yard.
@mlegrand Not trying to keep our weather sourcing a secret. We are finishing up integration with http://www.hamweather.com/products/aeris-api. There are a few details we are having clarified in regards to personal weather stations. Once we have all of this information we can formally post more details on this service. Our 1.7 release of the mobile app will allow you to enter information in regards to nozzle flow that will allow advanced users to fine tune our algorithms. We are also moving to a more holistic approach in factoring real time weather data, ET, etc. to better adjust schedules and skip schedules. Please let us know if you have any more feedback or questions.
@mlegrand , we’re working with the Aeris folks to make sure that we get weather station information in our observations and forecasts, too. Right now they include CWOP stations in their data, and integration with PWSWeather - compatible stations should be ready by the end of the month.
@franz @coslor Thanks both of you for the feedback. I will ensure my station is reporting to CWOP to help with this. I really do enjoy the product and I hope you keep improving it as much as possible.
Thanks @mlegrand ! We’re not going anywhere, so keep watching for all of the cool new stuff.
Im confused by this discussion, are you saying that it currently dosent factor in weather data right now? So on a rainy day it will water anyway?
@gmehal , sorry for the confusion. Yes, Weather Intelligence has always used real-time weather forecasting to determine when to skip a watering time. The weather provider for that was Forecast.io, and we’re switching to Aeris Weather, which we think will give better predictions.
One thing that Forecast.io didn’t do well at was historical weather information, so we have been using NOAA localized 30-year average weather data for Auto Scheduling - the initial zone times recommendation - and for the every-2-weeks Water Budgeting, since both of those processes look into the past. Aeris’s past observation data is much better, so we’ll switch over to using real local weather observations for Auto Scheduling and Water Budget.
And as an added bonus, we’ll gain the ability to include local weather station data for our predictions and observations.
Make sense?
@coslor , regarding the local weather station data, will we have the ability to chose one or more to “subscribe to”? I have a PWS that I currently upload to Weather Underground and HamWeather’s PWS network. Ideally I would be able to specify my own station for observed weather data and factor that into watering decisions.
Updated timeline? Or are we going to have to wait until after v1.6 is released and then finally see the improvement in v1.7? Which I’m assuming that will not be immediately after we get v1.6 and by that time, at least for myself and probably others, we won’t be able to experience the difference as the grass will most likely not have to be watered that much anyway since it’s almost September already.
@franz @chris @coslor Guys - a timeline and roadmap for the next couple of releases would be great. While I understand the IRO product has intentions of helping us be water efficient, I’m not realizing that from the product. Up to midnight Thursday, I measured .17" of rain which fell between 9-12p EST. When I awoke Friday morning, it rained an additional .32" overnight. I had 2 hours of watering scheduled for my turf zones every 3 days, falling on today. I expected to find that IRO skipped this watering as I had my threshold set at .25".
As with previous use cases I’ve provided, I’ve had under watering occur because of the prediction of rain that never happened. This raises a risk to the plant material and turf that I take care of and have looking good during the summer months here in the northeast.
When will we see the improvements to IRO that will offer better quality data used to predict if an irrigation schedule should run, control the duration of the run based on the amount of precipitation versus what I’ve planned for? Could you address which of the scenarios will be addressed in the release (1.6,1.7, 2.0, etc.), which won’t and if these scenarios will be addressed progressively through a number of releases.
Thank you!
@SteinyD Thanks for the questions. Last night we deployed the changes for the Aeris weather service. I looked into your system and it looks like we did skip yesterday, but not this morning. I am having the team look at the logs from this morning and see if there is any calibration that needs to be done or a simple scheduling skip defect in your particular case. We will get back to you first thing in regards to that. Our mission is help conserve.
With this new weather rollout we now have observed data versus just using predictions. This should help us look back in the past better.
@coslor will be putting documentation up on our FAQ site today to better explain our new weather service and PWS integrations. I will provide a link in these forums once it has been published.
@SteinyD @jeremyshultz We want to be as transparent as possible.
As far as a short term roadmap, the good thing about most of these weather intelligence changes is that they are not dependent on releasing the mobile apps. Hopefully by the end of next week we will be releasing enhanced weather intelligence functionality (rain delay) that will be much more advanced than looking one day in the past and one day in the future. It will take into account previous and future watering schedules as well as total evapotranspiration and precipitation.
After that our focus will be adjusting water budgeting to be a little more proactive then adjusting every two weeks. This is still being finalized.
While the cloud services are being development we will be enhancing the mobile apps to allow for even more configuration in regards to nozzle types and flow. You will essentially be able to create a custom nozzle type and put in the exact flow rates. This will better help with water budgeting, weather intelligence, and estimated water usage and savings.
The ‘silver’ lining is that with our new weather service integration our sole focus will be improving weather intelligence/water budgeting. This work will be released as soon as it is finished with no direct ties to mobile app releases. I will publish release notes as these cloud features are released. The great thing about a cloud platform for connected irrigation devices is that we can push new features out early and often that the whole community benefits from.
Please keep the feedback coming, we listen to every comment and are striving to build the most water efficient platform we can. You can always PM me at franz@rach.io if you have direct questions.