I have a Flex Daily schedule for all 7 of my zones. It says Duration is 7.5hrs. If I set the time for End before Sunrise, then it seems to always start at [Sunrise-7.5hrs] which is like 10pm, regardless if only 1 zone is going to run that night for 40min.
To get around this, I’ve changed to start at 4am and is fine when a couple zones schedule, but not when 6hrs of watering gets called.
I tried 2 schedules, with half zones in a End before Sunrise, and half starting at 3am, and that just pushed the End before event earlier.
That is the way end by sunrise “works” right now. If you search, there are PLENTY of posts about it. The start time (in your case) will always be 7.5 hours before sunrise, regardless if there is 1 zone running, or 7.
Are all 7 zones grass? Are any drip? If some are drip, put those in their own schedule, and leave only the grass to end by sunrise, and have the drip start mid morning. This will help cut down the 7 hour run time.
I saw posts from 2018, was hoping it had been fixed by now. So many disappointing features.
It’s a 3/4acre yard all rotors.
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Sorry you feel that way. I’ve been on Rachio over 5 years and a few little quirks like this haven’t affected me or my yard in any way. I know some of the Core Rachio team has been lurking the community a lot more in the last few months and acknowledging some of the “issues” people have had and have put plans in motion. I would assume this particular “feature” is something they are looking at.
I haven’t used any other controllers, so I dont know how it compares.
I’ve seen issues with the forecasting being ignored (high chance of rain tomorrow…but still waters heavily today).
The flow meter doesn’t do half the stuff I expect it to.
No generic parameters for flow meters so any can be used.
This timing of when to run.
Poor integration with HA (or MQTT) to get current soil moisture, or to trigger an event that ZoneX will run today/tomorrow.
A lot of knowledge required to figure out how to setup your yard so you aren’t overwatering.
I can’t queue up individual zone quick runs from my phone.
Can’t manually set moisture level to anything except 0 or 100%, but oddly you can do it with API.
But, I will say, I’m happier with my Rachio than I am with my Sense.
I have degrees in EE,CS and CpE, so I probably expect a bit more than most.
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My thoughts…
I’ve seen issues with the forecasting being ignored (high chance of rain tomorrow…but still waters heavily today). - High chance of rain, but how MUCH was forecasted? If it doesn’t meet the skip threshold, it will still plan to water. Also, if skipping today puts the moisture level below AD for before tomorrow, it will water to keep AD up.
The flow meter doesn’t do half the stuff I expect it to. I can’t really argue that point. There is probably a reason the wireless flow meter was discontinued. When set up properly it can work well to alert you of breaks in your irrigation system!
No generic parameters for flow meters so any can be used. Can’t help you there. The way my yard is set up, a flow meter wouldn’t work.
This timing of when to run.
Poor integration with HA (or MQTT) to get current soil moisture, or to trigger an event that ZoneX will run today/tomorrow. - Not sure what HA system you are referring to, or what you are trying to accomplish, but I was able to set up events and triggers in ST, although to me it was a novelty and saw no long term use for it…
A lot of knowledge required to figure out how to setup your yard so you aren’t overwatering. - I know they are working on that now, but this is a tricky one. You either make something stupid simple and it is going to over/under water, or you dial in the parameters to fine tune to your yard so that you get the right amount of water to make plants happy while creating water savings. Really hard to do both IMHO, but Rachio currently does the best with this, and they are working to “simplify” the process. I just hope they don’t dumb it down too much and take away the nitty gritty stuff.
I can’t queue up individual zone quick runs from my phone. This is something to explore. I have no issues doing a single zone quick run from my Android.
Can’t manually set moisture level to anything except 0 or 100%, but oddly you can do it with API. I don’t know enough about the API’s and haven’t messed with them, but as far as the empty or fill, I think the only purpose of that is to force a watering or to delay a watering. These moisture levels don’t coincide with ACTUAL soil moisture that you might find with a soil probe, so to me, that would cause MORE confusion.
It was something like 60-80% chance of 0.5" or something. Significant rain. System watered to 95% or something. Yes moisture estimation was dry. I’ve been manually watering on those events since then. Which is where the queueing zones comes in. I was queuing zones for short runs to get my moisture up to something to buy time until the rain came the next day. Which also had problems because 20min in 1 zone was WAY more water than other, as my precip rates are very different zone to zone.
My flow meter is wired. But won’t detect a leak when system isn’t running. The suggested EveryFlow loses its total consumption number on any power loss.
HA=HomeAssistant. I wanted to get it to announce on my google devices there would be a watering tonight in ZoneX. So I know to check there’s in that part of the yard (kids toys, tools, etc). Or so I can remember to override it knowing its going to rain, or I plan to mow in the morning.
The moisture content thing is mostly helpful initially when you have your settings all jacked up. I was playing with CropCoeff because it seemed like the estimation was drying out far faster than actual. I’ve ended up happy with a crop coeff around 70%, which for Indiana seems too low. I do keep my grass cut very high though. Again, back to the everything is very confusing to setup, lots of variables cause overlapping effects.
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