IFTTT Google calendar and rachio?

Can you use IFTTT to link rachio and Google calendar? I would like rachio to water on even days, but before it starts, I want it to check the calendar to see if I have a go/no-go event for it.

I need to do this because my town just implemented drought restrictions and I can only water on even days IF they’re not a Tuesday or Wednesday. I can’t just say water every Monday because one week Monday is an even day, but the next week it’s an odd day.

It seems like simple logic, but I’m not seeing anything that would allow a free IFTTT account to do this and without knowing for sure that I could get something like this to work, I don’t want to buy a pro IFTTT account.

Thoughts? Can it be done with a pro IFTTT account? Has anyone done such a thing already?

Thanks!

I maybe got something going with a Google calendar event with a “search for” string that’s my no-go string, and that triggering a rachio “skip watering” event. I then put in a repeating calendar event for Tuesday and Wednesdays and I’m leaving my rachio schedule at “even” days. Hopefully that will work next Tuesday (the 10th). If not, I’ll need a better plan.

Hi @mpcookson

I recently made this IFTTT recipe and I have been planning on making a video with the steps on how to do this.

The recipe that I made did not integrate with Google Calendar. It integrated with IFTTT date/time trigger.

The recipe looks something like this:

The date and time trigger is setup like this

Please let me know if this helps.

That looks good. I didn’t see the IFTTT date trigger option and had seen something that had a time but didn’t have the days of the week so I thought that wasn’t an option.

This probably solves my issue, but someone else replied to my drought restrictions thread saying that they have the 31st problem as well, which is water on odd days, but not if they’re Tuesday or Wednesday, AND not if they’re the 31st (since I’m an even day it doesn’t matter to me).

I think the Google calendar option is what they’re going to need to use, so I’ll keep my IFTTT setup and see how it does on the 10th, and if that works, suggest that to them so that they can put in a repeating event for Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then a second repeating event that repeats on the 31st of each month (assuming Google calendar is smart enough for that).

Thanks!

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My IFTTT rule worked today! My rule is a Google Calendar “Event from search starts” and I create an event in my calendar (which could be a rachio specific calendar, but at this point it’s just my default calendar) with the title “dnr_restriction” (but it could be anything that’s unique) and then that does a rachio “skip watering time”. I then put in a short calendar event for 1am on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Today was the first day that it should fire and it fired successfully (I got the notice from IFTTT and checked rachio’s calendar history).

This solution should also help the people that need to skip on the 31st as well since they would just create a calendar entry for the 31st.

For some reason the Wednesday rule appears to have canceled my Thursday watering. If I make a “If every day of the week at 12:00AM on Thursday” to call rachio’s “Start watering time”, will that start watering right that second? Or will it just start at its normally scheduled “before sunrise” time?

Thanks!

@mpcookson Just to confirm did the schedule skip on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday?

I have my skip set at 12:00 am which is working on my test schedule. Can you post a screenshot of your IFTTT recipe? I would like to try and replicate.

Thanks,

The rule is simple, if Google Calendar has a “dnr_restriction” on that day, skip “morning”. The problem is that it doesn’t apply to just that day, it skips the next “morning”, which might be on a Thursday or Friday.

Otherwise, this is working great. For now I just have to remember to un-skip my Thursday/Friday waterings on Wednesday morning. Ideally I wouldn’t have to do that… I would really like to have the ability to skip based on calendar events because I don’t see any other way to do the Tuesday/Wednesday/31st skip without specific calendar events.

Thanks!

Oh, and my calendar event is from 1am to 2am (so it’s tall enough that I can see its title) on Tuesday and Wednesday (and it would be on the 31st if I was an odd numbered house).