Previewing whether Rachio will water

[sharding]

What’s the best way to see whether Rachio plans to water at the next scheduled time, and how much rain it thinks it has observed? Over this wet winter, I’ve already had a couple of cases where I got substantial rainfall at my house, but Rachio watered anyway (apparently because the weather station, which is far from my house but the closest available, reported little or no precipitation). This last week, I manually added a rain delay just to be sure. But I’d rather not HAVE to do that every time. It would be nice if I could look at it the day before, and check whether it plans to water in the morning.

However, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t actually log anything about the precipitation status until it makes the decision on whether to water or not, which happens early in the morning right before it starts watering. Is that correct? Is there somewhere I can look the day before to see how much precipitation it thinks I’ve had, and whether it plans to water the next day or not?

[franz]

@sharding

However, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t actually log anything about the precipitation status until it makes the decision on whether to water or not, which happens early in the morning right before it starts watering. Is that correct?

This is correct, one hour before schedule run. We are rebuilding our scheduling platform to allow for much more advanced notice

@sharding

Is there somewhere I can look the day before to see how much precipitation it thinks I’ve had, and whether it plans to water the next day or not?

What weather station are you using and what schedule type(s)?

[sharding]

My weather station is KSNA, which is about 20 miles northwest of my location (and 600 feet lower in altitude). I’m using a fixed days schedule, because we have watering restrictions that require us to water only on certain specific days.

Another thing that would be helpful (and simpler than an earlier preview of the watering decision) is if it would just allow viewing the weather feed data it will be using. E.g. see day by day how much precipitation it believes has fallen based on its data source. I can look up precipitation data at KSNA on the National Weather Service site, but it would be a lot nicer to see it within the Rachio UI (and that would give more confidence that I’m seeing the same data that Rachio is getting).

[franz]

@sharding

@sharding

My weather station is KSNA, which is about 20 miles northwest of my location (and 600 feet lower in altitude). I’m using a fixed days schedule, because we have watering restrictions that require us to water only on certain specific days.

This will show you the last three days of weather for that station.

http://w1.weather.gov/obhistory/KSNA.html

@sharding

Another thing that would be helpful (and simpler than an earlier preview of the watering decision) is if it would just allow viewing the weather feed data it will be using. E.g. see day by day how much precipitation it believes has fallen based on its data source. I can look up precipitation data at KSNA on the National Weather Service site, but it would be a lot nicer to see it within the Rachio UI (and that would give more confidence that I’m seeing the same data that Rachio is getting).

Ok, apparently you already know about that site

For our next major release of our app, we will have the ability to show you weather related events (i.e. significant precipitation to skip your next schedule) much further in advance. I agree on the ability to see these captured events (precipitation) in our app, which is another thing we are exploring. You can currently see those events on our zone moisture graphs, which are unfortunately only available if the zone is running in a flexible daily schedule.