I would like to suggest integrating with Flo by Moen. Each month when Rachio makes adjustments to my watering schedule it causes my Flo to freak out and cut water. I’ve asked them to integrate with Rachio but they just said “well the Flo is smart and will figure out the schedule over time.”
I would like for the Rachio to recognize when Flo kills the water while a station is running so Rachio could resume the watering schedule once water is restored. While your in there doing GET calls you might also grab the flow rate too.
I’ve added Flo to HomeKit via Homebridge, and configured Homekit to set Flo to SLEEP at around 4am and HOME around 6am so this disables it for the watering period.
Since Flo API offers also water consumption metering, it’d be great if Rachio could integrate native support.
I’ve had similar problems with Flo tripping when my sprinkler schedule changes. The best would be if Rachio could somehow tell Flo what to expect when watering (in case something broke while irrigation was running), but simply placing Flo into/out of sleep mode would get me 95% of the way there.
As a longtime Rachio user that just added Flo, I agree with these great suggestions.
Rachis seems to have a flow meter out now and I’m sure they’d not want to cannibalize their own potential sales, but trust me that it’s the other way around.
I have sold many more Rachios than I have purchased over years and as a trusted IoT influencer, I always suggest the Rachio first because it’s such a low-impact install with high return. But I can’t do that if Rachio is only interested in their own ecosystem flavor.
Please, don’t make this a situation folks like me have to choose. Depend on features and quality for market dominance, not ecosystem lock-in.
If you are talking about the Everydrop Wireless Meter, I wouldn’t say that Rachio has one out…In case people don’t remember the wireless flow meter that Rachio DID put out a few years ago (now discontinued), it looks very similar for a reason. While this linked devise is considered a “partner product”, I think the reason it is “designed” to work with Rachio is that while being wireless from the meter to the hub, it then connects via wires to the Rachio unit. I don’t believe the Flo has any way to hardwire to Rachio, so it would rely on an API to do so. Not saying that is impossible, but could be more tricky depending on what the API looks like.
Yes, thanks for the correction. I see now that the Flo and Rachio water meter products are very different. The former is a “whole house” product and the latter is more practically designed for irrigation only. Ironically, the Rachio is only available in a 1" line size and the Flo I bought is a smaller 3/4" line size to match my main water line – the 1" of the Rachio Everydrop wouldn’t add benefit in cases like mine where the upstream is a smaller diameter pipe.
Regarding the APIs, I believe the costs would be low for Moen to do this – and lowest for the community overall for it to do so. Rachio already has a webhook, which would notify Moen of the irrigation start. For its part, Moen would have to allow Flo users to register their relevant Rachio devices in the UI, creating a webhook for each registered device.
From that point, the Rachio cloud application would call a web endpoint that Moen defines (the “webhook”) every time various events happen. There are four that Moen would probably want to register their hook for:
SCHEDULE_STATUS:SCHEDULE_STARTED
SCHEDULE_STATUS: SCHEDULE_COMPLETED
ZONE_STATUS:ZONE_STARTED
ZONE_STATUS:ZONE_COMPLETED
The registration API allows Moen to pass their own data in a field called externalId. Since the webhook calls would come from Rachio at otherwise random times, the value of externalId would probably be an encrypted string that contains the information to securely locate the correct Flo device. Because only Moen has the decryption key and that the call was coming from Rachio, it could be sure the webhook call was valid.
After being notified about a Rachio starting behind a specific Flo device, the water alert would be skipped.
Additionally, Flo could apply its algorithms to the amount of water used during an irrigation to identify any anomalies in the schedules by learning the flow profiles of irrigation runs. If there was a water emergency elsewhere on the property during an irrigation run, Flo would easily be able to detect the problem as it normally does after subtracting the usage of the ongoing irrigation from the overall flow readings.
Flo does provide an API, its use is evidenced here. It also seems relatively easy to use, but it’s not as robust as the Rachio API. If the request relationship was reversed (ie Rachio making requests of Flo), the only thing Rachio could do with the existing Flo API is referenced above by @joylove. Putting the Flo to “sleep” is less desirable because the protection I referenced in the previous paragraph is no longer possible.
I know this is the wrong place to petition Moen to get this done, but we really shouldn’t be petitioning Rachio to do this.
@briantopping Moen have just launched a sprinkler controller, and surprise-surprise is it compatible with Moen Flo. So I’m not expecting them to give Rachio any support here, sadly.
I understand Moen has an API, whether Rachio can use that would be a different story…
My issue with the Moen (unless you installed only on the irrigation line) is that regardless of the Webhook notifying of a zone run and asking for data, if you run any other water in the house at that time, I feel that you might get false warnings due to improper flow readings. Unless all you are asking for Moen to return is “do I have water flow when I’m expecting”…
And yes, I’ve heard absolute garbage about the Moen sprinkler timer. Their selling feature is going to be the integration with the meter and soil sensor (which I’ve also seen very mixed reviews on functionality).
But that wouldn’t be Rachio’s call. If Moen wants to keep all their data within their ecosystem, it may not matter…
Either way, I think the Moen Flo is one of the best leak detection flow meter and water shut off devises on the market right now, and I will probably be installing one. After finishing up a remodel of our home due to a water heater failure while out of town, I plan to use the leak detection side of it! If Rachio can somehow integrate down the road, great…but that won’t be my main goal with it.
I suspect more might be possible here. Rachio appears to be able to call a webhook-per-zone and the flow rate of a given zone seems to be pretty stable. In learn mode, the Flo could record the flow rates of zones by name. When it gets a webhook call for that zone in the future, it should know rather precisely what the irrigation overhead is, correct?
Maybe I am missing something tho, I don’t have a lot of practical experience here…
Well, so many on the market aren’t able to be installed outdoors, which in Arizona is where ALL our water comes into homes, then under slab from there.
I don’t have any experience with Flo, or Rachio’s use of a flow meter. I have read some issues with Flo when trying to utilize flow based leak detection. I plan to use the leak sensors in my house near the common problem areas.
Ah, I thought you found some problem here. The technique I’ve outlined is least complexity for highest value given current APIs. It would not lose existing protection functionality while the irrigation is running.
These requests keep coming up, and it’s nice to hear a similar sentiment that integration should be done by the flow meter manufacturer as Rachio already provides all of the data via public api.
About to install a Flo because I think it’s the best. Has this cutout problem been solved? Will Rachio integrate? On the other hand, how does flow deal with any smart irrigation system?
