Gen 2 Controller Has Gone Crazy

My Gen 2 controller has been working almost flawlessly since the day I bought it shortly after its release. A few years ago, I added an Ambient Weather station to my backyard (thanks to Gene’s help), which had a major positive effect on the overall function of the Rachio, due to the weird micro climates here in Missouri.

Now, all of a sudden, the controller has gone haywire on me. Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed some bizarre watering activity, along with the known issue (for some) of the main calendar being off (only on the Win 10 desktop, but not on my Android phone). The controller is not properly keeping consistent track of saturation levels, and even if I do a manual fill, the controller still insists on watering in spite of precipitation and irrigation tracking accurately.

Last night, we had rain beginning at around 11pm, and continuing through the night with thunderstorms and driving rain at times. When I turned in for the night, Saturation levels in all zones were around 74%. Much to my surprise, I woke up this morning to driving rains and thunderstorms with my lawn being watered by the controller, which showed zones at 110% saturation. I immediately put the controller into standby.

A few hours later, when the controller was still showing 110% saturation, .35 irrigation (which I had interrupted), and 1.22 precipitation, I took the controller out of standby to see what would happen. It immediately began to water. It’s still raining, and as I write this, precip is showing as 1.40.

I’ve been running a flex monthly schedule since day one, with excellent results, and haven’t made any changes in quite some time (at least a year) since I have had no need to.

Anybody have any ideas? For now, I’m going to have to keep the controller in standby and work my 11 zones manually.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I understand it’s been working well for you, but, from all I’ve read, Flex Monthly generally does not work well.

I tried Flex Daily. Sometimes it would Do The Right Thing. Most times it did not. After spending a lot of time studying, researching, and trying several re-configurations–only to have it DTRT for a while, then badly under-water or over-water: I have up on Flex schedules.

I now use an every-other-day (fixed) schedule. Between Weather Intelligence and a Hunter Mini-Clik rain sensor, it gets it right ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Occasionally WI will get it wrong (thinking we’d get or had gotten rain we did not–problem similar to yours) and I have to over-ride it.

Thanks so much for your reply, but I’m thinking that there’s more going on here. As noted in my original post, my controller has been functioning perfectly since the day I installed it. Through the years, minor tweaks made it even better. I understand the potential trappings of a Flex Monthly schedule, but it has always worked quite well for my needs.

The issues began at around the same time that the main Calendar got messed up, which it still is (as others have reported), but that may be a coincidence. Fact is, that the system wants to water for over 9 hours even when the zones are full, and during rain. This behavior is something new for me after years of successful use.

I really don’t want to change anything in my settings, because they’ve always worked for me, but will do as suggested in order to get things going again.

Like, the second you took it out of standby? I’m not sure taking out of standby would immediately cause a schedule to run. I would think that it would pick back up the following day at the desired time. Wondering if there wasn’t a lightning strike or power surge during the storm that didn’t damage the controller.

Flex Daily continues to work perfectly fine for me, weird calendars on desktop or not…

Thanks for the reply.

To be clear, I had shut it down mid-schedule just to get it to stop watering. I cut power (waited a few minutes) and rebooted the controller. After connecting to my WiFi, it picked up where it had left off. If I had let it go, it would have continued to water in spite of the rain.

Lightening was not a factor in my immediate area, and there’s surge protection (un-tripped) in my garage where the controller is.

I’ll be honest, reading through this, I think you said you were using Flex monthly, which I was pretty sure didn’t track moisture levels, but you mention them, so…Can you post some screen shots of the moisture levels?

I’ve personally never used flex monthly schedules, so I can’t say for sure if they would immediate start up after completely powering down the unit, but my gut says no…