2 Scheduling Use Cases: Give Rachio control or take control myself?

Background Information
I’m considering two ways of using the Rachio. I’m not sure if Rachio supports both use cases. A good chunk of my confusion centers around the fact that I’m not sure how the “Repeat” parameter of a Watering Time is used.

I get the sense that the “Repeat” parameter is a directive to Rachio, essentially demanding the system be run on certain days regardless of whether or not the grass needs it. Or perhaps the parameter is interpreted as the days/times Rachio is allowed (but not required) to water…and the sprinklers are only turned on those days/times if the algorithm determines the grass requires it.

Use Case 1 (Rachio takes control)
Configure Rachio with all of the relevant data:

  1. Nozzle/Precipitation Rate
  2. Grass Type
  3. Slope
  4. Sun Conditions
  5. Geographic Location (to find weather stations)
  6. Instruction that it can water any day at 5 AM.

Rachio uses all of that data (and history of previous runs) to determine when the grass needs water and only runs at 5 AM of that day.

Use Case 2: (I take control)
If, for whatever reason, I don’t like the algorithm Rachio uses to schedule runs then I’d like to take control.

I’d still give Rachio the information necessary to properly cycle/soak (slope/precipitation rate).

Maybe I’d still give Rachio the information necessary to calculate a good run time (grass type/precipitation rate) or I could manually tell Rachio how long to run each zone.

But the main point is that I wouldn’t want Rachio to perform any schedule calculations/determinations. Essentially, I’d come home one day to find the blades of grass folding in and I’d tell Rachio to schedule a one time run for 5 AM the next morning.

It looks like I could use IFTTT/Google Calendar to schedule a one time run but it sure would be nice to have a more simplistic, all in the app solution. https://www.rachio.com/blog/Cooking-with-Rachio-and-IFTTT?p=2689682971632801036

Questions
Does Rachio support these use-cases right now? Are there any details I should know about either?

1 Like

@EdLaFave Awesome questions.

Use case 1 will be supported early May with our 2.0 software release. This will do EXACTLY what you have described and they are called flex schedules.

You will be able to also give set days that you only want to water on (versus any). Here is more detail on this functionality:

Use Case 2 is sort of supported now with creating a normal (fixed) watering time. This watering time will include cycle/soak, weather intelligence (rain delay), and water budgeting (adjusts watering by a percentage week/week) if you opt it in.

Other options:

  • Using the main screen tap the Play button and you can manually run multiple zones for duration of your choice.
  • Create a watering time, disable it, and then you can trigger that watering time manually from the Play button on the main screen. This is probably your simplest option which gets what you are asking for.

Every schedule (disabled/enabled) can be triggered manually on the main screen by tapping the Play button.

Thanks for the great questions and let us know if you have any other questions or feedback. Have a great day!

:beers:

1 Like

@franz and @emil, thanks for answering my questions today. I love how responsive/active Rachio is with customers. Can’t wait for the 2.0 release!