This should be simple. I had an old RainBird controller that showed day of the week on/off for the 3 zones I have. I had to go to the basement to turn it off and on, not convenient or helpful when out of town. So…
I have the “New” 6 zone Rachio controller & want to do a similar thing. I wanted a wireless way to manually turn on the zones early in the AM on the days of the week I want to water. Water here is very expensive, so I want to monitor usage and not necessarily run the sprinklers every day or other day even with a “Rain” sensor installed.
I want to simply turn on & off the watering days usually the day or two before I want the controller to run. Hope this makes sense
There is likely a better way than this, but if I understand what you’re trying to do, you could unplug your Rachio unit, add a smart plug that works with your home network and can be controlled remotely, and plug the Rachio unit into the smart plug. I did this when I grew tired of the twice-a-year time changes for the mechanical timer in my landscape lighting. Through the Home app on my iPhone, changes are automatically made for time changes as well as incrementally for sunset and sunrise. Again, other options were/are available but this was a simple solution using equipment I already have.
Im a bit confused so please excuse my questions for ya- I may have misunderstood your posting
Is your Rachio controller online via an Internet connection ? If so theres your remote control functions I operate mine from home and when out of town
I have a schedule set to water all the zones once a day. It has a rain skip set . That works soso. It misses minor showers sometimes
When I want to not water i use the app on my phone telling it to skip that schedule for the day or day ahead
I also will tell it to skip before I mow then use the quick run feature to perform a full watering later
Sorry, just seeing this.
I have my three zones set to run individually with a one minute spacing between each zone. The times are saved on each zone, & I only need to access the weekly schedule to select the day or un-select the day wanted under “watering interval”.
Just was expecting the interface to be a bit more user friendly, I’m not that app savvy I suppose.
So basically, you want to do a manual “skip” for the day. The product is so “FLEX” focused, it’s often hard to do simple mods on the fly. What you can do put all three of your zones in one program to run one right after the other. When you want to skip a day, log in disable the schedule. You have to remember to go back and enable it the next day though.
Yup, basically that’s what I did. Originally I was confused that the rachio would run the three zones one after the other, not the case. I have about 18 heads, 6 rotor heads on each zone, I want each zone to run one after the other. Yes, totally agree, this controller has a bunch of features I really don’t need.
But I do want to remotely turn off and on the sprinklers when I’m home & away. Our water is very expensive so I’d prefer to be more hands on & have the ability to simply turn off & on remotely. I’m being redundant but you get the idea that I run my sprinklers based on the next day or two’s weather report.
Thanks…
IMHO, Hunter does a better job at the first part. With their controllers, I can suspend a schedule and enter a restart date. They also offer finer control over rain skip parameters.
My experience has been that the Rachio does a pretty good job at skipping based on rainfall. The key is to choose a close and nearby weather station and to adjust the parameters. Remember you have two choices – aggregation or specific weather station. I used to have a weather station in my neighborhood but it went off line so I ended up going with the closest airport. You can also set the rainfall threshold lower to force rain skips if you find the predictions tend to be too optimistic.
idea