Flex Schedule/Moisture Balance Screen point of Confusion

With regards to the moisture balance screen, is the current day predicted info necessary? You have already told us the next predicted watering event day on the main screen and it is updated at data upload just before the scheduled watering event. Should moisture balance screen only show what has actually occurred?

Example being. When moisture balance predicts watering to occur on the current day and the start time is 1am, watering does not occur because there was not enough ETo by 1am. At 10:30am we still see that watering was suppose to occur, this becomes a point of Great confusion for some. If the start time of this same schedule was at 11pm chances are it could have run as predicted. (Graph below 10:30am the 18th Predicted watering, scheduled start time for zone was 1am, Water history shows zone Did Not Run. Why? End of day on the 17th were still at only 60% MAD, not enough ETo in 1 hr to cause watering).

Start times of schedules greatly impact the outcome of predicted watering events with regards to current day forecasts on the moisture balance screen. Result being, I could be looking at old data relative a scheduled water event, can be very confusing.

@ETIrrigation, good point. We’ve been reviewing ways to make moisture graphs easier to read. Sounds like you’re recommending we push all forecasted schedules/data to their own screen and keep observed schedules/data on another?

I believe Forecasted schedules are already on a screen.

What about moving Empty/Fill to My Yard as well (I could complete the empt/fill action on multiple zone all from one screen instead of jumping through pages to get the job done.)

I think the moisture graph is cool, but what is it’s purpose? The most important part of the moisture graph to me is that I can see the weather data that is being used and populated from the weather station I have selected. I can then use that information to determine if the weather data is accurate. So I see the moisture balance graph and chart as more of a analytic report of sorts that helps me better tune parameters of particular stations.

@ETIrrigation, yes they are via the MY YARD card, but I was referring to the moisture graph. At the top, the date range of the graph is displayed:

You can navigate dates via the arrows on the side of the date range. In my recommendation, I was asking if moving the current day view to the future view so that all forecasted graphing was kept together to avoid in confusion in observed/actual data.

If I’m understanding correctly, you’d like a global “empty/fill” option that would reset ALL zones from one click?

We built it as a way for users to see the data that Flex schedules were using for scheduling.

Yep, us too – I think we’re on the same page :smile: …however, I’m curious if there’s any confusion due to your question. What did you think moisture graphs were intended for when you first saw them? Maybe we need to rethink how we message and explain them to users.

This might be part of the solution.

My issue comes when recent events have not been updated to the charts, Other systems have a update now ability that brings everything current to the time i make it do so. This also comes in handy when i make changes and want to see how the changes effect my parameter changes.

Yes. Absolutely! with the addition to me being able to select multiple single stations as well. You need to find ways for the same action to be repeated on individual zones without having to jump through multiple screens to complete the action. Then you need to show how those changes effected the schedule. (Auto update when save button is selected)

Just the way it has been represented, Shows me where the system is so I related it to what is see in the landscape. I then can use the attached tool to make quick Changes. It’s the customer interface not the concept that needs adjusted.

@ETIrrigation, interesting idea. We’ll have to brainstorm this internally. We do understand the pain point and appreciate the ideas to make the app & graphs easier to use.

I’ve seen this request for seasonal adjustments edits as well. We’ll brainstorm this feature request in more detail as well. Assuming you have 16 zones, editing each zone becomes quite time consuming.

Do you feel the data is too hard to access? Or needs to be organized differently? Perhaps we’re providing too much data on one screen?

Again, thanks for the feedback and for being a member of the Rachio community :smile:

Best, Emil

I believe the below screen is a good example of the graph info being confusing.

At first glance I would assume that this zone ran it’s cycle on both the 23rd and 24th. It is not till we open more detail do we find out that the 23rd was a 1 min test and the 24th was an actual scheduled event. Maybe instead of the raindrop signaling any type of zone run, it should only represent a true scheduled event. Any time I have to tab down to see what something is referring too, it becomes complicated. In this scenario, I start questioning why one symbol represents multiple event types. If you want to show that a manual event occurred on a given date within the graph, you should use a different graphic. Graphs are great, question becomes how easy is it to describe what they represent. (Blue drop = Scheduled event, Green drop = Manual event).

I think this also brings up a bigger issue and that is, do I want manual run events even affecting my ETc. For me that answer is no.

@ETIrrigation, ah I see what you’re referring to and how this could be confusing without more detail.

Good idea. I’ll add this to our product backlog.

We discussed this in another community post and have decided to record all irrigation events in the moisture graph. Perhaps someday we could offer this as a preference at the user level. Perhaps you could provide us with you use case for not wanting to record this data? I assume due to servicing/testing systems after repairs?