Don't Kill the Rachio Web App

Does this mean the users here are in the minority when it comes to preferring the web app? Those in this community I would assume are among the most passionate supporters of Rachio products, but that does not mean we are in the majority…

PS: no plans to enhance the webapp = winding it down

Large programming of Rachio controllers (especially multiple) just got a whole lot harder… IMO

You keep getting my curiosity up @franz!!! Looking forward to the goodness and announcements.

We are not winding it down. The webapp will continue to run. There are no plans to enhance it, or wind it down.

We are announcing tomorrow at CES, stay tuned!

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If you have no plans to enhance it, and no time-table for fixes, you are winding it down by default. If not, I have some brand-new Windows95 install CDs I’d like to sell you…

Not being disrespectful. I truly love your product and recommend it to friends all the time. But losing the web interface- albeit slowly over time- takes away from a big reason I recommend it.

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Completely agree with everyone here. We need a functional web app in addition to the mobile app. It is so much easier to make changes to settings on a larger screen. I have a hard time recommending Rachio after running into quite a lot of issues after just a few weeks of testing. In addition, make the iPad OS app available to run on M1/M2 Mac Silicon. This should not be too difficult to accomplish.

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I don’t know, whether I am old-school, only, but the screen on my MacBook Pro is about 7× the size of my iPhone’s. My only iPad is an absolute mini. Therefore making edits to zone boundaries on my iPhone is very tedious. Being able to do it with greater precision on a browser screen would be a great improvement.

There is good reason for this being important, too. The Rachio system calculates watering parameters based on the square footage of individual zones. Positional errors from inaccurate zone boundary definitions can enter into the watering schedule with a square law.

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Not true at all. The area settings have nothing to do with watering adjustments calculated by Rachio. That information only goes to calculate an estimated water usage/savings. It takes the precipitation rate of the zone (inches per hour) and calculates it by the area, spitting out an arbitrary number that really doesn’t mean much, or do anything. Putting the area value at 0 will be no different than 1,000,000sq ft.

Thank you @tmcgahey for the clarification!

I just want to add my voice and support to keeping and improving the web app.

Although I’m a year late to this thread, I just wanted to express my concern as an almost 7+ year Rach.io user. Please keep the web app.

At an absolute minimum, do not deprecate the ability to download history. It is critical to my monthly water savings workflow and I can’t get that data anywhere else.

Hugely disappointing. Web app and (local) API were differentiators of Rachio products (had 3 homes with the irrigation controllers, and got caught with a bad assumption when I ordered 4 of the hose timers, expecting feature parity within the Web app and API access).

I hadn’t been active on here because things were just working; now I’m passionately advocating for a course correction from Rachio’s team – please heartily reconsider support the Web app and (local) API for multiple homes, and all your devices (including hose timers).

I am an active community member with a variety of smart home device manufacturers, and listening to customer feedback + bringing requested features to both consumers and professionals, is the number one driver of repeat business, and has a track record of even opening up new device categories that companies weren’t even considering, with higher margins… Food for thought, @franz / @dane / @chris .

@residualimages API access coming soon for the hose timer: API support for Smart Hose timer? - #53 by chris

No planned support for it through the web app yet.

Hence my call to reconsider. :slightly_smiling_face:

I am following that other thread as well, and it was good to see the recent post mentioning API access was suddenly on the roadmap (even though initial responses from Rachio were more likely to be taken as a “not planned but we’ll keep tabs on the requests” approach).

Still advocating for a local API, vs the cloud based approach (even the webhooks are cloud based).

I second that. Lately a lot of manufacturers of networking equipment have resorted to only providing access to configuration of their hardware through a dedicated smart-phone or tablet app. A lot of IoT home automation never ran an http server. To me it is an unwelcome trend. The number of apps required to handle all the different brands is getting out of hand.

I troubleshoot networking issues with my MacBook Pro. It has a 16-in screen, which allows me to see so much more information at once than I can on my iPhone. App-count: 1 (Safari). Most of the Linksys Velop, Netgear Orbi, TP-Link deco, etc., or IoT apps don’t run on Macs. What would I have to do, if my laptop were a Linux machine.

So, I second the appeal to Rachio to continue making http(s) interfaces for their devices.

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Please also heart/comment/bump the product suggestion. I’d love to have the iPad app available on Mac even if there are a few limitations.

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Unfortunately is doesn’t appear that the founder / CEO weighs this group very heavily when considering the product’s future.

Not sure that @franz and @chris would agree with you on this one. I’m sure they have reasoning behind not maintaining the web interface at this point…

Yep, we’re here and listening. The web app is an expensive company property to enhance and we’re looking for opportunities to do what’s best for both our web app users and our company. We’ll know more soon about its future, and will share our reasoning behind it. Current state of it: nothing has been taken away to date and we also haven’t added new functionality in the last 4+ years.