I believe we need one of the following options for correct cycle/soak operation:
expose numerical setting for ‘soil intake rate’ (currently set by soil type selected)
per-zone cycle/soak settings (currently manual cycle/soak applies to all zone in a schedule)
least useful: create a maximum cycle time (per zone more preferable than per schedule)
Background: currently I have multiple zones with various sprinkler head types, some with high in/hr PR and others low, in one flex daily schedule (which rules out non-smart cycle/soak since it’s not uniform for all zones). Due to settings on one of my zones, smart cycle soak decides it needs a 20 minute watering cycle before soaking, which shows visible runoff. PR is set correctly (zone flow rates accurate given flow meter and zone sqft, and matches sprinkler head specs), however is low. Therefore IR must be lower than calc below assumes (even at lowest possible values, using ‘steep slope’ and ‘clay soil’). Intake rate looks like the most intuitive/correct way to modify this, so I’d like to be able to adjust that.
Rt (max) = 60 (ASA)/(PR – IR), minutes
ASA = Allowable Surface Accumulation
PR = Precipitation Rate. The amount of irrigation water applied per unit of time.
IR = Soil intake rate
Holy smokes, having the intake rate visible in the app would be so incredibly useful. I constantly have to google the Rachio page you linked with those values. It’s wild they don’t have those in an advanced tab or something.
And I really wish they’d show the complete time schedule (zone, zone, soak, zone, etc) when looking at a day in the calendar tab. In the web version, it shows all the timing of the zones and soak times, but in the iOS app, it just lists the zones to be watered and the estimated total soak time. It gives no clues as to what each zone’s cycle/soak time is.
But seeing as how they focus on marketing (spamming my email) their misting umbrella instead of making the app experience better, debugging their HomeKit issues, or actually calculating a proper start time based on what zones are actually running rather than basing the start time on all the zones running, I have little faith in them improving the app experience.
Do you think Rachio only has 4 employees that can only focus on one task at a time? The marketing team pushing out emails of new products would have nothing to do with the engineering team behind the scenes, IMHO.
The HK issues are a done deal. From the sound of it through all the research and troubleshooting they did the last year or so, it seems like it was actually a chipset hardware issue with newer versions of HK based on them getting their chipset supplier in on the troubleshooting.
