I suggested this to support while resolving a different issue and wanted to post to see if there is anyone else with a similar interest, you never know the number of people that a suggestion could help until you post…
I’m in Colorado right up against the foothills; we have many micro-climates here and as the folks at Rachio know the weather can be significantly different in very short distances geographically. I’m currently using a reliable, accurate weather station 1.2 mi away from my house, it seemed to work well for fixed schedules but for flex not so much.
On more than one occasion it’s rained pretty significantly at my house but not at my weather station and as a result flex is overwatering. I’d like to have a way to log on and manually input the observed precipitation at my property after a storm. A simple, cheap rain gauge is accurate enough and much more cost effective than setting up and maintaining weather station…
If it rains at my house I could log on and tell the program how much I got, flex could then re-calculate moisture levels based on my input. If I don’t input anything it could default to the weather station and the way it’s working currently.
Another related thing that I’d like to see is a notification that flex is going to water. Typically I just wake up to the notification that watering of A,B,C, zones has been completed. I’d like to get a notification 'flex is going to water zones A,B,C on ‘date’ at ‘time’ (maybe 12 hours before the watering) and have the option to cancel or postpone to a different date - no response and flex just waters as planned. Maybe I’m having a party or am going to mow early, just applied chemical, etc… Or, maybe it just rained at my house (not at the weather station) and my yard doesn’t need water. You could select ‘cancel watering’ and the reason ‘recent rain’, get a response ‘your weather station did not report rain, how much rain did you get’, enter the appropriate value and flex recalculates moisture levels…
Of course integrated moisture sensors would eliminate this request. However, based on other posts related to that it’s clear the technology (at a reasonable price) is a ways out.
As @franz has said “flex schedules are only as good as the data we collect”, I think being able to manually enter observed precipitation would greatly increase the efficiency of flex scheduling for those who are so inclined.
Thanks for reading!