Baskets under eaves, Rachio help wrong, Vote here

[bobctwin]

First of all, I use a rain sensor since “Weather Intelligence” (WI) is often wrong in my micro climate resulting in a running zone after/during a downpour or a WI skip when no rain fell on my property. The closest PWS is 1/2 mile away.
@franz I need to use a simple rain sensor to effectively save water.
For example, see:

Rain and saturation skip too random to be of any use

Its mind boggling how random the so-called Rachio weather intelligence is. Last month is rained for 10 days. No skip. I manually disabled the schedules. I forgot to re-enable the schedules when I was traveling. Came back to dry yards and enabled the schedules. Rachio then proceeded to apply “saturation skips” to dry yards that had not been watered for a week. I turned off saturation skips. It has been raining now for 2 days. No rain skips from Rachio. Please stop calling this behavior “in…

and

Fickle forecast

Several of us in my community have installed rachio controllers. I really like the product. I’m having an issue with the smart rain skips. Three times in the last couple of weeks I was thrilled to get a notification that a skip would be applied. It was pouring outside and I thought, “Wow, this is awesome.” So when I woke up in the morning I was so disappointed to see that my lawn/garden were watered. I checked notifications and saw that the controller reneged and said the weather changed. I t…

and

Weather Intelligence Errors

We got tons of rain on April 12th and 13th, 2020. My next door neighbor’s weather station (KSCAIKEN87) shows he got 0.34" on the 12th and 1.28" on the 13th, for a total of 1.62" over the 2 day period. My manual rain gauge in the middle of the field (no obstructions) behind my house showed a total of about 1.5" over the same 2 day period. My Rachios using hyper local weather said I got 0.30" on the 12th and 0.20" on the 13th. It’s possible that the 12th is correct but the 13th seems way off. …

However
I have hanging baskets on my porch under the eaves. These need to be watered every day regardless of the rain sensor’s state (and WI’s state but WI is disabled for this schedule).
Rachio’s automated help returned the following answer to this question.

I learned from Daniel, on the Rachio support chat, that this information is incorrect.

That is unfortunate as this solution is exactly the reason I bought Rachio.
The automated chat also offers this apparently invalid but compelling alternative solution:

Please carefully read the last paragraph.
“This will ensure your water basket zone is watered daily without being affected by the rain sensor or weather conditions.”

Here is Daniel’s response:

Note that his thinking here is “The rain sensor is an external device that overrides the whole controller when it is raining.”
This misunderstanding of the Rachio controller is repeated in this Rachio support doc:

Rain Sensors FAQ

This was indeed the case when rain sensors simply opened the common for all valves.
However, this is not the case in the Rachio unit since the controller, via the app, can complete a Quick Run (open any valve) when the rain sensor is active. This clearly shows that the Rachio hardware,firmware and app software can ignore the active rain sensor.

So…
Do you have a cover over some of your plants? If so, do you need to water them regardless of WI and/or a rain sensor?
How many of you would like to see the software implement either of the above solutions offered by Rachio automated help?

1. Ignore Rain Sensor by zone.
   or
2. Ignore Rain Sensor by schedule using a “Rain Sensor” check box in the Weather Intelligence menu.

Either solution, incorrectly offered by Rachio help, works for me.
I think #1 is the cleanest as covered vegetation clearly needs its own zone while schedules need to be adjusted over the growing season.
Please respond with your vote

This feature request was started back in 2015 but is still being ignored.
For example, see:

Bypass rain sensor per zone

I’m looking to switch from a Toro controller to the Rachio. One feature I’m looking for (not in the Toro or any other controller I’ve look at) is the ability to bypass the rain sensor for a single zone. I have one zone that waters hanging baskets on a covered porch. I would like the amount of watering to adjust based on weather conditions, but to not actually disable watering when it rains. I would like the rain sensor for the rest of my zones though. Is that possible with the Rachio? A po…

and

Can you set one zone to override a rain sensor?

One of my zone fills my pond, to compensate for daily water loss/evaporation. I want to schedule 5 minutes of water per day, and have it ignore the status of my physical rain sensor. (This is because there is never enough rainfall to refill my pond, and if my pond doesn’t get its 5 minutes of water, it will start to run low.) Can ignoring the rain sensor for a single zone or a single water schedule be done in the current software?

and

Disable RainSensor

How do I disable the rain sensor for some programs? I’ve got some cloches on some garden beds/zones that I want to water, even if it is raining. I have other other zones that are not covered that I would like to not water when the rain sensor is triggered. In the program configuration, I see how to set “rain skip” for a program, but this does not work. I presume this is skipping watering based on weather reports and not the actual rain sensor. I think what is missing is a toggle for rain se…

Your input is needed, Please vote

Thanks to all.

[RPostWVU]

So much here, I didn’t read it all.

To make a rain sensor function for only some zones, you simply wire it up old school. This however, will not tell Rachio that the zone is disabled, nor will it let you manually run the zones from the app when sensor is wet.

Unhook rain sensor from the S ports. Connect 1 side of the sensor to Com. Connect all the zones’ Com wire to the other wire from the sensor, that you want disabled when the sensor is wet.