I’m excited to announce our latest software update. This update enhances our scheduling software with improvements that you have been asking for! You can now adjust your watering schedules directly from the schedule tab, and adjust the duration by percentage or time. Additionally, we’ve added the ability to copy an existing schedule. I’ll use the space below to demonstrate how to use these features. These features are only available in app version 4.18.0 or later on iOS and Android (released today).
I’ll start by listing all of the improvements found in this update, and then demonstrate each one:
Easily change your watering durations with an adjust watering button
Adjust your watering duration by a percentage of the total duration
Duplicate a schedule in seconds by tapping the more button on a schedule
Adjust watering time in seconds
Adjust Watering Button
Go to the Schedule Tab
Tap “Adjust Watering” on the schedule you wish to edit
Pick your time
Percentage Adjustments
Access the duration edit screen through “Adjust Watering” or the schedule editor
Adjust by percentage is selected as default
Use the positive button to increase or use negative button to decrease
Tap on the field between the buttons to access a picker
To adjust by time, tap on the dropdown field at the top
Tap on “SAVE” in the lower right corner to save your settings
Duplicate Fixed and Flex Monthly Schedules
Tap the “more” menu on the Fixed schedule that you want to duplicate
Select “Duplicate”
Name the new schedule
The schedule duplication will be confirmed at the bottom of the screen
Tap edit here if you wish to make changes immediately
Duplicate Fixed and Flex Monthly Schedules
This is the same process as Fixed and Flex Daily, but you will be prompted to choose the zones to include in this new Flex Daily schedule NOTE: A zone that is already in a Flex Daily schedule cannot be included in a different Flex Daily schedule
Will the app automatically update? I just checked the Apple App Store and it isn’t there. Still has older version.
Duplicate Fixed and Flex Monthly Schedules This is the same process as Fixed and Flex Daily, but you will be prompted to choose the zones to include in this new Flex Daily schedule"
And would you explain why one would want to duplicate a Flex Daily schedule?
Thank you! Is the “before sunrise” start time bug fixed, please? If only a few zones are to be watered, the watering should start at such a time that they all end just in time for sunrise. They would currently start at the time it would take if all zones watered, regardless of how many of them actually water While these features are cool and much needed, users seldomly get to use them (during setup). The end before bug affects some users daily.
just open AppStore, click on your user top right, pull down to refresh and hit Update All, or find Rachio and update it. The phone updates them itself if so configured, but it seems to do it once every few days.
Yes, that should work but it isn’t in the update available list. Looking further down into recently updated, it was updated on May 30th, 2024 to version 4.17.1. I had to go into the App Store and find the app, select it and then there was an option to update that wasn’t there earlier either. Got it now.
My two cents on the matter, based solely on intuition (I have no facts):
The Rachio hardware is not powerful enough to run the weather intelligence (WI) logic onboard, and therefore relies on the cloud for decisions of what and when to water. According to things I read, it does call home about one hour before a scheduled watering, to see if anything should change. Let’s assume we have 6 zones set to run 30 min each, ending at sunrise, for simplicity, 6:30am. The 6 zones would take 3h to complete, prompting for a 3:30am start and a 2:30am E.T. call home (the alien, not the timezone). Let’s assume now that the previous evening, WI decided only 2 out of the 6 zones should water. If watering were to start at 5:30am (6:30am - 2 x 30 min), then a 4:30am call home is expected. If that does happen, and WI decides that oh, all zones should be running, sorry, then the best Rachio could do is start watering immediately, at 4:30am, running all the way to 7:30am, one hour past sunrise. To avoid that, I assume Rachio is setting up the start for 3:30am just to allow WI to reconsider. Now, if this were the real reason, and again, I have no clue, just wild guessing here, I’d make the call at 2:30am AND 4:30am, thus giving 2:30am a chance to reconsider. But each call home costs $ and we’re not paying for this, we only paid for the hardware upfront. I don’t know, I may be way off, I know, and while not trying to defend Rachio, I am pretty sure they have a SOLID reason not to fix it. Is it the best way? Hell no, but it’s what we have.
LE: PS: sorry for hijacking the topic, end of off-topic
I agree, putting this 6+ year bug with “before sunrise” would have been a great QOL improvement for me. Just running into this now as I have found I need to be watering longer and it’s amazing seeing posts from 2018 and a response as recent as a year or two ago saying this cannot be solved in any way.
@dane I have a question. I have a flex daily schedule and I increased my watering times by 8 minutes to put exactly the amount of extra water I want to put down in a session, and it seems like the future watering sessions in the water journal doesn’t show any additioanl water, yet the actual run times are 8 minutes more!
I appreciate every one’s feedback. I understand that the current start time logic that Flex Daily uses to compute the “End before” time frustrates you and other customers. This is a project that is in our backlog. We keep a running list of customer feedback that we get from this forum, Customer Support interactions, product reviews and customer interviews. I know that there are many feature request/improvement posts on this forum that we have yet to implement, but we do have them documented, keep a running count, and we review them regularly for resourcing and prioritization. We are currently working to prioritize these and we will be specifically talking about how we could improve the Flex Daily’s end by logic.
@dane this was also adjusted with the new adjust watering button. Wondering why the future water log entries don’t show more irrigation put out when the duration is longer.
@dane another wrinkle is my zones ran the extra adjusted time that I added with your new button this morn but the water journal still showed the old amount of water was put down. However if I change my schedules down to the original time, the water journal updates to the amount the longer time put down.
I must admin I’m not a big fan of the new schedule items.
Was so easy before to up/down the minutes per controller. I rarely need to up/down all controllers by some percentage. And “seconds”? Really? Do folks really have a need for 10 minutes and 23 seconds vs 28seconds? I think minutes are fine; sorry but this wastes time now.
How about fixing some existing bugs before adding new features? Ie, where are you with fixing the weather info in the web app? That’s been broken since I bought the controller in 2018. And what about the sunrise bugs (multiple)?
While these features are cool and much needed, users seldomly get to use them (during setup). The end before bug affects some users daily.