I would like to +1 adding Weather Intelligence + (WI+) to Gen 2 controllers if possible. I know the business requires you to sell more devices but I’ve made a significant investment (2 16-zone controllers for a 24 zone system) and can’t afford an upgrade at this time. I’ve also served as a beta tester on the new version of the app (which is great!)
The closest weather source is an airport that’s roughly 10 miles away, but at 600ft lower altitude than us so very different precipitation and temperature results. Any more local data would make a very big difference for us! We have considered a PWS but that would also require a lot of expense, and seems unnecessary if there is a better data source available.
I have other smart products in my house and Homekit allows me to control all of them via 1 app. The best part is rather than installing 10 apps on my wife’s or daughter’s phones with all of them logged in all I have to do is share my home with my wife and she can open the garage door and turn on and off the lights. I have actually not been home before and my wife didn’t know how to turn the sprinklers off for a contractor. Homekit would solve this. You can also set automations that have conditions. In theory I would be able to turn off my sprinklers if I sense motion at the front door for example.
Huh? Really. Pipes don’t stretch. You’ll most likely have to dig up your main to to irrigation manifold and use a slip fix that you’ll glue to on side of the sensor. The you cut out a small section of the main to fit the FULLY collapsed/retracted slip fix & sensor. Glue one side and let cement activate then apply glue/cement to other side and extend flip fix to main completing the connection.
No way your hous has a 2” line unless it’s freaking huge. 10000sq’ or bigger with 20 bathrooms. Most likely it was teed off with a two inch from the four inch and the stepped down again to maybe a 1” pipe to your 1” meter. Your water bill will tell you meter size. As for false readings… only if the sensor is installed before the auto fill. Installing it after it just before the valve manifold will be best.
The flow meter is not designed for portable water use, thus the requirement for installation after the backflow device. This would prevent any water that had passed through your flow meter from backing up into your homes water system in a backflow situation.
I have an irrigation water line and a culinary water line. The culinary water line isn’t 2" but the irrigation one is. Also, the irrigation line doesn’t have a meter.
@marksd100 – not out of the box (we’ll support 1 wireless flow sensor to 1 Rachio 3), but this is a good use case our team consider in the future.
@nneelix – Apologies for any confusion, the Rachio Wireless Flow Meter was designed to add metering and alerts to your sprinkler system. Just curious, are you hoping to identify leaks for whole home usage monitoring?
@apexsprinkler – Not out of the box, but we know this has been requested in the past and is still on our backlog for our team to consider in the future.
@Quincy – We’re laser focused on getting Rachio 3 and the Wireless Flow Meter out at this time. Sounds like you’re interested in soil moisture sensors over the flow meter? Would you want to install one soil moisture sensor for your entire system? Or one soil moisture sensor per zone?
@briansusername – we’ll update the content and details of WI+ to better explain this feature. Expect more details in the next week or so.
@scorp508 – I think you’re asking will Rachio 3 support well pump delay? If so, this would be a software feature; not a hardware feature. Just curious, how long of a delay do you need between zones for your pump?
@Latz – that’s a good question. Let me double check with the hardware team.
@Latz – nope, this doesn’t matter. We’ll be adding step by step instructions for the Wireless Flow Meter to this support article over the next week.
@cencio1976 – the Wireless Flow Meter was designed to be outdoors; durable to extreme elements. Please see these tech specs for more detail.
@g-man – The Wireless Flow Meter can monitor flow down to 0.5 GPM. Does that answer your question?
@emil, ideally soil moisture should work across all zones and per zone. I can easily imagine a location with 5 zones where a single probe works accurately for 4 zones but then there’s one zone that, due to runoff from a neighbor for example, is very different and sometimes wetter than expected and so needs its own soil moisture probe.
From a UI standpoint allow the user to name each probe and then have a dropdown in each zone to select which probe is used for that zone. Then allow the user to define actions based on moisture %.
For example. With a soil moisture of 20+% at 4am and a 60% chance of rain I may want it to skip watering for that day but if moisture is below 20% then it’s too much of a risk (given odd/even watering and need to wait another 48 hrs) so best to water since 60% chance of rain may well leave me with zero precipitation.
@cencio1976 To follow on to what @emil said, the sensor itself has been cycle tested from -30 to 130F with no problems and stress tested up to 140F. The circuit board is rated to operate up to 158F, so that is very resilient. You are correct that the battery is the lowest rated component in the system. We chose AA batteries in order to make them easy for customers to replace and to make a product that’s affordable enough for residential use. The alkaline batteries we plan to ship with are rated to operate to 130F. With the gray body and white face of the meter, we don’t expect more than a 10-15F rise worst case in direct sunlight which means alkaline batteries should accommodate the vast majority of customers. For customers like yourself in very hot climates and direct sun, I might recommend special high temperature rated batteries like these:
Those are rated up to 140F if that would give you piece of mind. Ideally you would face the battery compartment opposite the sun so the white face takes the brunt of the sunlight. Remember too that water in the pipe will act as a heat sink to absorb some of the temperature rise.
@brad I tend to not like devices using alkaline batteries when they expect very long lifespans. It gets yucky if (often feels like when) the internal hydrogen gas buildup gets by the end seals leaving you with some lovely corrosion. I reminded myself how much I dislike this after spending time cleaning a seldom used flashlight of corrosion a month ago due to a AA battery letting loose inside.
I’d prefer a lithium ion option, but there are some options such as the Energizer MAX line that come with a no-leak guarantee.
Agree about the batteries. Fortunately there are some good AA options. David @ Horizon is quite knowledgable and can recommend good options. We use their batteries for all of our shows and more related to this, I have them in our Toro soil moisture probes where they’re lasting for years and so far leak free.
