Lately it seems like the algorithm that decides whether to water or not has forgotten it’s only job is to actually water my lawn. It seems like it is far more concerned with saving me water than doing the job I bought it to do. I’m not sure if because the programmers are based in California and are trying to comply with some local laws, or if someone prioritized a “green initiative” to save water, but whatever it is, I have completely lost faith in my rachio device to do the job I bought it to do.
My Nest Thermostat started having the same problem as well, it’s more concerned with saving me energy, than doing it’s one job of keeping my house warm.
You may be able to fool some people by gamification of the UI and increasing the font size and using saturated colors telling me how many days were skipped and how much water I saved, but those dark pattern tricks don’t work on me.
The whole point of a smart sprinkler was to make it so I didn’t have to worry about remembering to water, now I’m right back where I started because some programmer lost the plot, and prioritized the wrong thing.
Do you know why the watering has been skipped? Is it because of wind, rain, or cold?
There was 0.15 inches of rain the day before and the threshold was 0.13 inches, it ignored or discounted the temperature being in the high 70’s most of the afternoon.
It’s very clear the programming has been changed to prioritize saving water, the home screen has a tile and the largest pieces of information are “time saved” and “weather skips” along with a graph comparing “scheduled” vs “actual”. It’s a textbook example of how dark patterns are being used to frame the events as a desired outcome, and to gamify the “not watering” so I can get a “better” tile display.
It’s irritating that the device is no longer doing the job I bought it to do, and the only thing I can do to “fix” it would be to disable weather intelligence.
If you do not want it to do rain skips, you can bump up the thresholds or turn it off.
I’m using a Gen 1 controller, and I don’t see the ability to adjust the rain thresholds.
I do not know about Gen 1, but seems like it should be the same location in the app if it is available. After selecting the controller, tap the gear (settings) in the top-right corner, tab “Controller Settings”, “Weather Thresholds”, select “Rain skip threshold”, and adjust
You should be able to run a set program, if you have trouble setting up the smart programs.
I did find the setting you mentioned, and that’s definitely the first time I’ve seen it or adjusted it.
Thank you for helping me find that, hopefully it will close the gap between when I want it to water, and when it decides it’s ok to water.
It’s not that I’m having trouble setting up a program and getting it to run, it’s that the programming that decides when to water and when to skip has significantly changed. I have a Generation 1 controller and when I got it, it prioritized keeping my lawn and garden wet. Yes it would skip days when it rained, but it had to REALLY RAIN, and now it skips days when it kinda rains. I started noticing about 2 years ago I had to start intervening and manually run a sequence. Last year sometime near the end of last summer I noticed a shift again, it felt like Ebenezer Scrooge had been put in charge of watering, and he was in a stingy mood. Summer ended and my need for watering decreased and I kinda forgot about it. When I opened the sprinklers up this year I noticed it again and remembered it from last summer. Last weekend I planted my vegetable garden and my sprinkler did two rain skips for minimal rain events and it ticked me off that I had to go in and do the job I bought a smart sprinkler to do.
You may ask how can I be so confident the underlying programming about when to water was changed. I work in Adversarial Information Retrieval and a big part of my day job is trying to look at the “front of the screen” and reverse engineer the programming “behind the screen”. Rachio does not have an adversarial relationship with their customers, so there’s no need for them to try and obfuscate the underlying programming, so spotting changes in the core programming is a lot simpler. I’ve been doing this for years so a lot of the time I do it without even thinking about it.
If this was me, I wouldn’t take for granted that the garden, newly planted, would water accordingly to your desires. I would set a fixed schedule, so that it watered as I seemed would be right for the garden. And set the rain for very high. I know it’s easy for me to say, I’ve always had issues if I try to let it take total control.
Set a fixed schedule, it will still shut off if it rains, and it predictable. You can still go in and delay it a day or two, but I know when it is going to water, vacation or not.
