Missing Alerts on Solenoid Failure, Rachio Reboot

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1

We came home from a trip to find plants were dying. It turns out a couple of our solenoids were bad, but in a way that caused the Rachio to reboot rather than detect a Zone Fault. I was surprised to find that there is no way to be alerted to when the controller reboots during a run, or even any time it reboots. It would seem to be something that would be easy to add in terms of when to alert. I asked why COLD_REBOOT was not an reportable event, and I was told it would be a product enhancement, so here it is, a request to add COLD_REBOOT to the events that can be pushed as an app notification or sent via email.

I was also disappointed that the history was no longer available on the web, so I solved both problems. I wrote a monitor program that runs at midnight every day, gets all of the history since the last monitor run, and writes it to a monthly csv file. I get an email just after midnight with the monitor summary. The program also examines the new records it finds for any COLD_REBOOT events and calls them out in the email, so I would know a day later that the controller rebooted. I can then load the history into Excel and see what is going on. Looking at the history, I found the COLD_REBOOT events at the same times every day, which means it was when those zones were run on a daily schedule.

2

The fact that multiple solenoids died and your Rachio rebooted leads me to believe that either your power supply is going bad or there was a momentary voltage dip/spike, either way I would recommend a UPS for your Rachio.

3

Do you have any suggestions as to a suitable small UPS as this is the only device in the garage that might need it.

4

I have mine on a basic UPS, like a 600VA APC. They’re like $70 new. The battery lasts around 8 years and costs $20 to replace with generic. My modem and router and dog fence controller are all there, so they are all on it.

5

When Rachio says “product enhancement,” does that mean a regular update to the app or another $29.99 feature?

And in the meantime, would you consider making your monitor program available?

6

I still need to iron out a few things, and make sure it transitions properly into April. Once I know it is reliable over time, I will figure out how to share it.

7

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