What is the difference between “Premium Weather Intelligence” on the G3 controller and “Standard Weather Intelligence” on the G2 controller? What does the G3 have that the G2 is lacking to enable this?
Is it worth upgrading to the G3 for this?
Hard to believe it would require specialized hardware. This feels a lot like what apple does, adds new features that force you to upgrade, when they would work just fine on older generations of hardware.
I’m simply curious what “Premium Weather Intelligence” is and how it works. It sounds like it is weather accurate to within 36’ of me.
How do they do this? Are there some sort of sensors on the new controller?
It’s all software from what I understand.
Basically they take a host of weather data from dozens of the closest personal weather stations around your home and I assume some trusted weather forecasting services and then interpolate the data for your exact latitude and longitude. This provides a unique to your location guess as to past temp & rainfall and future weather. It still isn’t a certainty (you will still do better with a PWS on your property) but it’s better than just picking the nearest PWS and using that as various PWS may have inaccuracies and it is showing weather at THAT location, not yours, even if close by.
Maybe to make it clearer this is my guess… let’s imagine a world where there was a weather station 1 mile north of you that said it got 1 inch of rain. Then there was a weather station 1/2 mile south of you that said it got 2 inches of rain. It then would average the two and give more credence to the closest one and perhaps guess that your home got not 1.5 but maybe 1 3/4 inches of rain (because the 2 inch result was closer but north of you it was less so you likely didn’t get the full 2.) I’m sure it does this with not 2 but the dozens of PWS stations around you. It still is a guess, but its a better guess than just picking the closet. It also help balance the inaccuracies that some Personal Weather Stations may have.
Clear as mud? Also it is pretty clear that it is a business decision to limit this to Rachio 3 users, not any hardware in the unit itself but they have to have enticements to upgrade to maintain their business and if you aren’t excited about the Flow meter they had to have a few extras to drive sales. I’m ok with the choice.
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As there are likely going to be charges incurred by making multiple API calls to whatever weather service Rachio is planning on using, they literallly can’t tack that on to existing controllers without charging customers for the service, or eating that charge. I would guess that they will be rolling out the Gen 3 product and getting some data on how much they are using the weather API, the associated costs over time, and then deciding how to move forward with a decision to enable the feature on older controllers.
Seems like they could just sell that services as an upgrade. But really I don’t care, my WeatherFlow PWS will be active in full by the time I turn my controller on for the summer.
@Bill.Maupin I’m waiting on a WeatherFlow PWS. Do you know if the Weather Flow model will upload to the AerisWeather website for use with Rachio, or will it require a bridge of some kind?
@LTC, that is the PWS that @Bill.Maupin is waiting on too - I believe. FWIW, I’ve ordered one too.
I think we’ll need to use @Gene 's www.WUFYI.COM site to get the data to Aeris via WeatherUnderground to PWSweather.
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I actually have a code running that tests a direct WeatherFlow support. Wufyi users will have an option of getting their data directly from weatherflow or via Wunderground.
Support for direct access to WeatherFlow data is limited to the private beta (aka closed beta) at this time, but if you would like to participate just email your share URL that stats with “smartweather.weatherflow.com/share/” to weatherflow@wufyi.com.
Cheers,
Gene
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@LTC, Working with @Gene on this one. He’s the man! Can’t wait to let him know I’ve received my WeatherFlow sky unit. From what I understand they are shipping now. 
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@Gene Sounds great - I’ll send URL info once I receive my WeatherFlow PWS. I’m new to both WeatherFlow and Rachio (might have a little learning curve but am a quick learner) but am extremely excited to get both in place and up and running.