Rachio definitely has a bug with the new dynamic crop coefficient. I have been seeing different durations among my 7 zones even though all settings are the exact same.
Today I deleted the flex daily schedule and did fixed schedule. I turned off dynamic crop coefficient, and set the crop coefficient on one zone to some other value. So all zones are on let’s say 70 (or whatever it is when you turn dynamic off) set one zone to 92 and save. You will see all zones have the same duration except for the one zone with a 92 crop coefficient.
Now turn dynamic back on and all zones have all different times, even though dynamic crop value is the same among all zones.
@drew_thayer I think I figured out what I’ve been talking about where the zone durations are varying among zones despite all settings being the same.
See screenshots in order:
Dynamic crop off, set to static.
While information on exactly how Dynamic Crop Coefficient works is sparse, with Flex Daily it should not change the watering time for any zone, just as changing the crop coefficient manually does not change the watering time. It will instead change when the system waters, sooner or later, to keep proper moisture in the zone.
@Gerardv514 thanks for sharing these specific screenshots; these will be helpful as I dig into what’s causing these runtime discrepancies. @rraisley is correct: changing the Kc value should only affect frequency in a Flex Daily schedule, not runtime.
Something to check – are you using, or have you made adjustments, to the Adaptive Watering beta feature? (Only a small group of customers in a beta testing group has it – it has options on the zone page to “water a little more” or “water a little less”). We’re finding some interactions between that feature and DCC that can cause variance in schedules that otherwise should be identical. If you are using this feature, select “reset zone adjustments” at the bottom of advanced settings and see if that changes the runtimes.
I’ll have more next week, thanks for your patience. -Drew
@drew_thayer I’ve ruled this out since initially when I brought my issue up to you in the DM, I went ahead and did a reset on those to rule it out. I was still seeing this odd behavior so I then reset everything in settings and advanced settings. Still saw the behavior so did a factory reset on the Rachio 3. On a brand new fresh setup with very minimal changes (if any) I saw the behavior I described above. In fact everything was default when I created the screenshots above and I only touched the aforementioned values. That was how I was able to look specifically at what could be causing the issue. In other words I ruled out other setting changes that may have gotten stuck on the backend.
@drew_thayer any update on any findings? I’ve gone back and turned dynamic crop back on, applied to all zones and I am not seeing the behavior I did when I first brought this up.
@Gerardv514 I have struggled to replicate what you were seeing on other devices, so I’m still a bit stumped. However, we released several small patch fixes in the past weeks since the main feature release, including another release this morning. It could be that your issue was solved by one of these minor logic bug fixes. Monitor for the next week or so and let me know if anything isn’t acting as expected.
I’m using dynamic coefficient for my northern California lawn and it’s getting absolutely destroyed by the 100’+ temperatures here. Browning grass everywhere!
I’d very much like to toss in a +1 for needing an offset to the dynamic coefficient, if I haven’t already.
