I am with @tmcgahey on this one. I have helped 2 neighbors setup their Rachio in the last month and zero issues.
Do you have another receptacle near the Rachio that you can try? Preferably on another circuit breaker. Run an extension cord from it to power your Rachio and see if it exhibits the same behavior. You could even disconnect the Rachio from irrigation wires and wall and power it inside your home to see if it power cycles there an an experiment too. If it doesn’t then something is up with the receptacle/circuit that you are currently plugging your Rachio into.
@Myosin - have you thought about putting a surge protector or even better a very small UPS for the Rachio transformer - just to see if it is a power issue? This could help take power issues out of the error domain.
Agree with the things said, trying to narrow down what is causing this issue starting with Wi-Fi and power. @DLane beat me to posting the thought on trying a small UPS (best) or surge protector (less than best).
Went out of town. I have the third Rachio unit to install. However, the second unit that was RMAed has been working perfectly for the past 2 weeks? No power cycles. Tempted to leave it alone and return the unopened Rachio unit.
Rachio has been online and stable. I unplugged it from the extension cord (support wanted me to try a different outlet from the one next to the controller) and plugged it into the outlet by the Rachio. It powered on and grabbed the wifi with no problem. This unit was RMAed by Rachio but it has been working perfectly, so I am going to send the 3rd Rachio unit that has not been unboxed back.
I forgot to mention. I think the “trick” that made the Rachio stay online was that when the unit powered cycled and was stuck offline, I reentered my wifi information, then reset my router mesh system.
My Rachio 3, which has been running fine for more than a year, recently started going offline often, and history shows the repeated Power Cycles every a few minutes.
This coincides with me installing a wifi extender (TP-Link AC1200, to be specific) nearby. The Rachio connects to wifi just fine but a Samsung smart fridge can’t. To solve the Samsung fridge connection problem I installed the wifi extender. The timing of that coincides with the Rachio Power Cycle problem.
Since the wifi extender is configured to broadcast the same SSID and password as the original wifi access point it is extending, I guess the Rachio can connect to either the original wifi access point, or the TP-Link extender. And that’s an fine setup for other devices I have (e.g. my iPhone).
To confirm the theory that the wifi extender caused Rachio to go into this power cycle loop, I unplugged the wifi extender. Immediately after that, the Rachio’s power cycle stopped. It has been a few days and Rachio has not power cycled again.
So it is conclusive, that Rachio’s firmware has wifi bugs (causing it to crash and reboot). Rachio’s engineers – if you are reading this, please investigate it and fix the annoying bug.
And for other folks who have similar wifi setups as I do, maybe a different wifi configuration can work around the problem.
Support has been great, but their only solution has been to send me a new device and power adapter.
I replaced my original unit with a new one. Same issue.
Contacted support, they sent me another new unit. Same issue.
Contacted support again and they’ve now sent me a THIRD unit.
After I contacted support on the second unit, suddenly the power cycling stopped for 4-5 days. (Not sure what happened.
I now replaced just the power adapter and now I’m getting power cycles again. Between 4-5 per day to as many as 20 a day. Many just minutes apart.
Seeing the comments above, I’m thinking it’s probably not the power adapter. (I’ve also tried plugging the Rachio in to a completely different circuit with a 50 foot extension cord. Same issue.) Sounds like there may be an issue with the firmware related to how it’s connecting to wifi.
I read another thread that said there could be a firmware update that could solve it. But the thread was from 2021, and I just bought my unit earlier this year (2024), so I would think this would have the most up to date firmware.
I have an Eero mesh router system with 3 Eero Plus units. There are two that the Rachio could be picking up. One upstairs about 30 feet away and the other on the lower level probably 20 feet away.
Has anyone seen issues like this and been able to solve it either with firmware upgrade or changes to my router configuration?
