I totally agree. Why can’t there be a button on each zone that says ‘increase’ or ‘decrease’ watering and then choose a percentage? 10% to 300% or some such. I could customize my zones so much easier than trying to use the advance settings (I have to look up the terminology there).
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I, too, live in the Silicon Valley, was in the high-tech industry for 42 years…and think Rachio is much more difficult to use than it should be. I understand there’s a lot of science and algorithms behind the scenes, and I applaud that. But, that being said, out here “in the real world” of Sunnyvale, California, we don’t get rain from April through (usually) October. None. At all.
And yet, as my grass in June started getting browner, and browner, Rachio insisted (with a flex daily schedule and Weather Intelligence) that my lawn was getting plenty of water if it only watered every 7-9 days. And as my garden plants wilted, Rachio insisted all was well if it only watered every 5 days. That just doesn’t cut it.
I would love to be able to tell it “my lawn is too dry” or “my garden is wilting” and have it make adjustments.
As of now, I’m still on Flex Daily, but I’ve severely restricted the days each zone can run, and I’ve turned off all Weather Intelligence settings. So now, it’s pretty much acting as an old fashioned dumb controller.
And guess what? My lawn and garden show no signs of stress.
So, as much as I want to believe in Rachio, I’m on the fence, and I still have a nagging suspicion that I might be using too much water…but don’t have the tools from Rachio to easily help figure that out.
The theory is great, but I’m thinking it might actually work best in climates where water falls from the sky.
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The biggest feature for me is when I see something needs more water, I can do it from my phone.
Still can get it to add enough water when dry and back off when water isn’t needed
Way too many settings and since most heads are different and each plant/tree has different needs, I can’t figure a way to set it and forget it
Good luck
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Team rachio, i think there is a common theme from your users. If I summarize the things I read in this thread is that the desire is to save water, have a healthy and happy garden/lawn and please make it effortless for a user who have limited interest in the science. This doesn’t seem that hard to do, we’re mostly talking about updating the interaction model and possibly adding a feedback loop.
Get a couple of user stories written, build a wire frame model and test it out?
You got a web interface, do it there first and experiment a bit. Sandbox.rachio.com sounds like a great idea so you get user feedback. Mobile app can come when you got it figured out on the web.
I’m 30 years in silicon valley and the winners of this last decade all made huge bets on deep science and engineering that is simple to consume. Taking something super hard and making it consumable by someone who doesnt know science is hard, yet this is the formula for those who win big in tech right now.
I’m rooting for you and it would suck if you followed the smartthings path which I think has ended in a fiasco where something good and promising was made to scale and lost all that was easy and reliable as they came out with new versions.
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Right on ParB! This is way too hard. Two suggestions for Rachio–first, get someone on the team who is NOT knowledgeable about the minutia of irrigation; someone who is focused on simply setting up the device and getting it to work in a reasonable fashion. You need a very UX/UI and consumer-focused person on the team and the team needs to LISTEN to that person. No offense, but it appears you have “over geeked” the system. Second–in the interim, publish or direct users to a MANUAL/INSTRUCTIONS that clearly defines all the terms and the impact of the settings–soil type, available water, root depth, allowed depletion, efficiency, and crop coefficient. Take us thru the Advanced Settings step-by-step. At least that way it would be much easier to understand how to impact the schedule by parameter. Right now I feel It would also help, as ParB suggested, to get users the information on available water and and nozzle inches per hour for different sprinkler heads. Some direction in these areas would go a long way to help us get to the right settings until the UX/UI is upgraded. Also, there needs to be a way to re-set soil moisture at levels in between 0 and 100. Now, there’s only the two choices. For the future, Rachio may want to give some thought to coupling machine learning to the homeowner taking actual moisture readings. Once the system was set-up, the homeowner could use a moisture meter and input that data for each zone. It shouldn’t take too long for the system to use these actual readings to learn and to make necessary adjustments. Something to think about. I have a moisture probe, it wasn’t very expensive, and works well. Rachio could even partner with a third party to have dial readings on a Rachio meter that corresponded to the Rachio app to make things even easier for the user.
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How can you provide data such as inchesper hour based on noozle selected, when that value provide by the manufacture is based on specific water pressure? Each homeowner has varying degrees of water pressure and even though they may have same sprinklerheads, you now are not providing enough water to those with well or low pressure city water becuase the system now thinks it can dump 1.5inches per hour, so it runs at shorter intervals.
Because there is a variable here and not static value, it makes sense to allow the homeowner to perform their own catch cup and provide the static value for inches per hour, so they do not waste or under water.
As for your guide on step by step there is already a guide here in the community that does this.
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You can’t get it exact. But you can approximate and with a feedback loop as the poster suggested (aka soil meter) you can make it far more precise over time than a theoretical model. Changes over time in pressure and in soils would be part of a feedback loop.
Do you think Google maps actually does anything but approximates your travel time to a destination when it predicts the arrival time? They couple that with a feedback loop by observing the GPS clock and comparing it with their estimate AND they ask you “did we get you there?”.
Feedback loops, especially unobtrusive ones are a beautiful thing. They use approximations that converge to the right answer (eg the precise answer) over time and they learn as changes occur.
I think it would be a mistake to dismiss that idea on the principle that an approximation is never precise. Otherwise you’re basically stating that everyone are doing catch cups, and they are doing it frequently enough to catch any error, something I’m certain that 80% of the user population never do even once. Better to approximate and design for how to overcome errors IMHO…
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My response was specific to providing a user with a drop down of avaialble sprinklerheads, that would be what you’re considering appromixation becasue you don’t have the other half of the variable to make it not.
I don’t have your troubles with watering scheudles or how my grass looks, I set it and forget on Flex Monthly.
I didn’t used to have these problems, but then as i stated in my original post. The challenges with 1 or two zones and a few heads in each is nothing compared to having 30-50 zones and up to a dozen or two heads per zone. Whatever waste i had with my small setup i came from with rachio is neglible compared to what i see when trying to deploy at scale. Waste, especially water waste compounds rapidly at scale. My water bill is massively affected by watering ten minutes more than i should at this scale. In my old setup i couldn’t care less.
thats what drove me to write the post originally.
Nozzle inches per hour is NOT actual flow from any given nozzle. It is the total water applied by your nozzles to the zone in one hour. There is no way for Rachio, or even you, to know that based on only your sprinkler head manufacturer, style, etc. It depends on how they’re adjusted and used. Thank about it: spacing the same head every 10 feet or every 20 feet will give completely different values.
That is EXACTLY what Rachio would like you to do. Use catch cups and the appropriate formulas or sites to provide the answers for “Nozzle inches per hour” and Efficiency. Without doing that step (or estimating the values based on water used and area in square feet), you or they are just guessing at Nozzle Inches per Hour.
Note: I strongly suggest Rachio change that wording (Nozzle inches per hour), as it really, but incorrectly, gives the user the impression it has to do with a single nozzle. “Applied Water inches per hour” might be a better description.
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I totally agree about the misleading terminology “Nozzle inches per hour”.
Additionally, it seems to me that there could be an alternative way to enter the rate of water being applied to each zone, using a water meter and a clock. My Rachio doesn’t have a water meter, but my house does!
How about adding a dialog in which the app runs each zone in sequence for a fixed amount of time and asks the user to enter the water meter reading after each zone is finished, before going on to the next one. From that information and the estimated area of the zone, the app could calculate the applied inches per hour and enter it automatically. No need for catch cup tests!
This would take care of setting up zones that use spray irrigation over the entire zone area. I’ve never understood how the Rachio settings are meaningful for setting up drip irrigation.
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@eataft My water meter will display gpm and with that information I can easily calculate the inches per hour. The formula is (96.25 * gpm) / Area. That’s what I used to enter the inches per hour into Rachio.
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Some water meters (our old one, for example) read in cubic feet of water, rather than gallons. For them the formula would be:
inches per hour = 720 * cfm (cubic feet per minute) / Area in square feet
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What a great idea. This way I can get my drip lines correctly calculated. I’ve always found them to be difficult and more of a trial and error… Measuring square footage is straightforward for me.
As a sidebar, I’m considering buying that water meter reader from that company in San Luis Obispo, CA and checking actual consumption per zone, this way if a zone is using more water than normal I know I have a problem. The company name is flume.
Just a few observations from this ParB post:
UI being user friendly: As a Sony employee during the Beta/VHS wars, we knew the one hour tape versus two hour sealed the win for VHS. Two hours meant you could record a network movie presentation without changing tapes. Better video quality on Beta? Worthless to the consumer. Fancy tricks Sony introduced to develop further technical capabilities for Beta? VHS had four hour tapes coming out.
The point is that the consumer wants something, and they buy the product that does that.
Rachio Automation product additions: Where are the Rachio Wifi/Radio connected moisture meters? Where are the Rachio Personal Weather Stations for data from MY back yard? (My Acurite systems, although inexpensive, are not allowed on the PWS network, and WAY too difficult for a Luddite to fabricate interfaces. I cannot afford a Davis, Ambient Weather, etc., which is welcome on PWS)
I am very happy to hear about the Machine Learning initiative. As a senior, I don’t think I could get back up on my feet in the process of doing a catch cup test, and I’m too cheap to hire a Rachio Pro to do it all for me! Rachio is a great product, and I can see the promise of improvement and simplification. But my Gen2 really isn’t dialed in enough to keep things green in Texas summers, and seems to be unable, yet, to save water in any noticeable way.
Onward.
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Forget wifi Rachio meters. Even Rachio wifi valves. Others make them. Let Rachio USE their wifi to connect to them. Should be quite simple.
You should be able to use your Acurite system. The PWS I’m currently using is an Acurite 5-in-1, and I’m considering getting one myself (a shame, only for the rain, but I had 0.7" rain on Friday, while every station around me had 0.1"). Anyhow, I’m using KSCCHAPI36, and it is described as AcuRite 5-in-1 Weather Station with AcuRite Access.
My son and I (I’m 77) did our catch cup test today, in 97 degree temperatures. I’m still whipped at 11:30 at night. And - I think my catch cup test results were horrible! Varied all over the map, with Efficiencies as low as 21% and average catch cup calculated flow differing from gallons & area calculated flow by as much as 70%. I’m afraid to use the catch cup values: Total watering time would go from almost 6 hours to almost 10! And yes, I realize (now) that I have a very crappily (that’s a technical, industry term) installed irrigation system. And grading. And soil. But I’m not going to spend $15k+ to redo all that when my grass looks better than most in the neighborhood! Don’t even get me started about my drip irrigation zone!
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Attention Rachio: Please seriously consider a re-do of your application. By doing so you will possibly prevent a domestic homicide in my household, with me being the victim. My wife is relatively technical on most fronts, but she hates this thing because it has become so difficult to use only on occasion. I struggle with it as well.
I have been a Rachio user for a few years now. I chose the Rachio controller for my irrigation system after using a Toro controller for probably 20 years. I worked in technology and was always amazed nothing better was available on the market than the dumb, relatively manual controllers. Then along came Rachio. The ability to run/start/stop circuits from a phone or computer was hugely convenient, and adaptation to weather and season was a great bonus. The application at first was straightforward and easy enough to use.
But now… I think Rachio has lost its way. The application has become a clutter and maze of stuff. News reports and recommendations with catchy images distract from finding the control functions, and the functions have become more and more complicated-- creeping solution elegance, and difficult to locate.
Think carefully about who is using this and why. What is my job #1? Watering my yard. It is not dialing into the application many times a day to fiddle with settings, look at recommendations for how to mow my lawn better, etc. I do not need or want to use this application so frequently as to become an expert on using Rachio. I should not be required to become an expert on all of the navigation paths to use it. This should not be a major time sink to accomplish a simple task. It should not require poking through all of the various pages, searching for the one that does what is needed.
It is a great product, that is becoming less usable because of the elegance creep.
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I’ve only been using Rachio for a little while, certainly not years, and am curious what changed to make for all the clutter and maze? I assume you’re using a different type of schedule now?
Personally, I think the basic input of the schedules and zones is simple. They ask you what type of grass or crop you have, what type of soil you have, and what type of sprinkler heads you have. Under ideal conditions, you don’t need anything more. I think the problem occurs when those setting result in too much or too little water over the long run, or maybe too much water is applied at once. Then, there becomes too many interconnecting variables for the average person to understand or adjust. As an engineer, I prefer to delve into Advanced settings, but I agree that an average user should never have to do that. And the most common error in settings, IMHO, is the “Nozzle flow rate in/hr”, and that is truly unknown, oftentimes even after doing catch cup tests or gpm and area measurements.
As an alternative to using the Advanced settings, I think that adding two sliders would do the job for most people: More/Less water at one time (a multiplier directly affecting the total water applied at one time, normally calculated by soil Available Water, the lawn’s Root Depth, and the Allowed Depletion), and More/Less water week over week, if lawn stays soggy or dries out too much (a multiplier of the Crop Coefficient and related to the nozzle inches per hour). Two sliders, affecting the only two calculated values affected by the user that Rachio uses to determine when to water and how much. So people like me could go to Advanced, or people less interested could simply use the two sliders, getting exactly the same results.
That’s all we’re all after, after all: keeping our grass green without excessive water (we know over time if it’s too much or too little), and making sure we don’t water too much having runoff at any one time (or just wanting to water less water, but more often).
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When start the rachio app on my tablet, approx 20% of the screen real estate is a visual timeline with drops that indictate that rachio will water 1 or more zones. About 60% of the screen real estate is a picture of a dry lawn with the text “it is looking dry in your area”, about 10% is a cut off picture (when i scroll down it says “weeds in your garden”). The last 10% is up on top of the screen where i can see which of my two rachios i am connected to.
The key observation is that over 50% of my screen real estate is dedicated to things that are informative yet static. Once i read them its still there. I personally find that annoying since it becomes unproductive once i read the “its starting to look dry” article. Does this really belong on the first page? Shouldn’t this be on a “tips” or “best practices” screen? I think the speed by which static content becomes stale, and the prominence by which it is displayed is the point being made. Is there really no way to personalize this and make it more directly actionable to this user?
I for one would not mind if you state “you have summer grass would you like be reminded about best time to aerate and fertilize” and then build that into the schedule? Same thing for pruning. Combine that with forecast and that would be pretty useful addition to the schedule. Are you reseeding? let me water the lawn for 5 minutes every 8 hours to faciliate that the seeds in your lawn take hold. That would be cool, and much more useful than a static picture.
I think that is a waste of screen real estate (and i think this is what the previous poster made a point about). First time i saw that card i thought it was interesting, the 20th time i saw the same content i find it annoying.
I for one would like to see the schedule strip up top becoming a little bit more sophisticated. i have 16 zones and it is very hard at a glance to see which zones are being watered when. i find that i have to go into the schedule and look day by day to find when a specific zone would be scheduled to be watered. i would like if the calendar had text (maybe just numbers corresponding to the zone number) that let me at a glance see which zones would be watered. i would give bonus points if i could color code each zone and the zone number would come up in that color (i would color code my lawns green, my bushes blue and my veggie garden green).
Anyway, i digress. perhaps the poster meant something else -but this is what i interpretated his opinion on the splash screen.
Your point about the overall value is making gardens and lawns better while saving water is a really solid point though -and that must not be lost.
btw. this reminds me of smartthings. They lost their way (in their case samsung made them loose it). I just (as in yesterday) ditched my many year investment into smartthings and moved over to an alternate supplier of home automation (hubitat) because smartthings forgot their true mission “effortless automation for the masses without having a programming degree”. I think smartthings stopped listening to their users and was overly focused on integration with their other samsung businesses -something which created limited value for me -i just wanted home automation for lights and doors, i couldn’t care less about automating samsung fridge, landry machine or TV (despite having them all). Lights, movements and doors that interacted effortlessly with the human.
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I use a 16 zone Gen 2 (with 13 zones being used) and have for a few years.
I live in Palm Beach County, Florida. We water here year round. I get reclaimed water, so never any water use restrictions, and the water is very cheap.
I tried Flex Daily and Flex Monthly. I really tried to make the scheduling systems work, and spent a lot of time to try and understand how they work, asked a lot of questions on this Community, but in the end found it too complicated, and I finally reached the limit of the amount of time I was willing to dedicate to this.
It has been over a year since I gave up, but I remember playing with the settings and watching the zones percentages of saturation, hoping it would water my grass while I watched it turn brown.
I have a Davis Vantage Due weather station, connected to PWS Weather (PWS_BOCA33432) with a Meteobridge, which is a considerable investment. So my Rachio has the advantage of knowing exactly the amount of rain I am getting, the temperature, wind speed, the humidity, etc., but I still could not figure out how to configure it to keep my grass green.
Unless you live somewhere where there is no rain, I think having your own weather station where you get the exact weather information probably goes at least half way to the goal of saving water and getting your yard the correct amount of water, even if you are on Fixed schedules.
So for now, my Rachio knows if it rained, the wind speed, and somehow it figures out if it is going to rain in the next 24 hours, usually correctly, all from my Davis weather station, and it usually does not run when not needed.
The other thing I have done is to install drip irrigation on everything that can be watered by a drip line, and kept my spray heads in good shape.
I notice that a lot of people that have replied to this post say they are engineers or worked in tech jobs for Sony or Silicon Valley, and even these engineers and technical folks think the system is too complicated. I agree if Rachio wants to be a successful mass market device, it needs to be able to attract people that are not technical and right now is way too complicated for the average consumer. Most people do not want to have to spend the time it would take to understand how to make this work. In my case, I gave it a lot of time, but in the end just reverted to an irrigation timer, but with the benefit of it knowing how much water I get at my exact location.
And I too offer this in the spirit of friendly advice. I want Rachio to be successful.
Thanks for considering my comments.
Eric
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