Several of the weather stations available as options in the Rachio app near me list rain or wind data as “Unavailable” on Weather Underground’s site. I don’t know what will happen if I use those, but it doesn’t seem like a good idea for me to choose them?
I have a weather station at my house, but it has neither a rain gauge nor an anemometer. Weather Underground correctly lists these data types as “Unavailable” — not 0, which is of course different. As soon as I selected a weather station I know reports both rain and wind as my weather station for Rachio, I received an email suggesting I switch to my own weather station because it’s closer.
Hopefully Rachio’s “weather network” knows better to not use “Unavailable” sensors at all.
While I doubt Rachio’s software would use “Unavailable” values, I would not set a PWS to any station with known problems. The PWS is ONLY used for actual rainfall received, nothing else. But that is critical to know when deciding when and how much to water. So choose the closest one that seems to be working. Sometimes my PWS goes out, so I’ve compared my rainfall with several around me, and know which to choose as an alternate if I have to.
Values other than actual rainfall received are gotten through the Weather Intelligence based on weather and weather forecasts in your area.
If the rain gauge is the only weather sensor used by Rachio, I would think that would make this request easier — the weather stations list should filter to show only stations with rain gauges. (Or, dim / grey weather stations that lack rain gauges.)
I’d like to clarify that this isn’t even a “known problem” with my weather station. It’s a known specification. It simply does not have a rain gauge, and does not advertise one.
I was using Weather Intelligence originally, but pretty regularly had waterings in a zone or two just before or after rain events, while many other zones were correctly skipped. I worked with customer support, who told me I should specify a PWS instead of using weather intelligence.
Edited to add: Presumably Rachio would use anemometer data for Wind Skip? And hygrometer data to better guess at Saturation Skip? Or is that not how that works?
Yes but you should pick one that has rain information reliably available. I know if a station goes offline, Rachio will choose a nearby station automatically after a time, but that isn’t the case here.
Only actual rainfall is used from the PWS. Everything else is from the average around the area, probably as you say from anemometer and hygrometer readings, but not just the PWS ones.
Interesting, thanks. So yes I don’t see a reason why my weather station, with no rain gauge, should be in the PWS list at all if the one bit of data Rachio needs is not provided. Hopefully Rachio doesn’t fall back to it when the one I’ve chosen is down!
Edit: And if true, this means we can delete “and wind” from my suggestion.
New to Rachio. Used to have Tap-Link which used Dark Sky Weather which I thought was VERY accurate. Is there a way to integrate Dark Sky to work with Rachio?
