Long-time RainMachine user that’s switching over to Rachio.
When I had my system put in, I had my plumber put in a DAE meter so I could measure how much water was being used. RainMachine, thankfully, has a “pulses per click” setting that is at least adjustable. My understanding is Rachio does not but you might be able to get it “close” by using the settings of various meters from reading other posts.
My DAE does 1 click per pulse and I’ve verified both the analog meter and pulse output is correct via the bucket test and also using it with zones. Is there any setting that would get close to this?
Despite what support said, I’m amazed they don’t implement this as a textbox for users to configure. They’ve got the support there and are just hardcoding in this variable.
The Rachio is set up to handle flow meters that put out a frequency proportional to flow rate. Your meter and others are putting out a pulse to indicate a volume (in your case a gallon) has ‘passed’. The Rachio takes a number of samples at the start of each zone to determine the flow rate to apply to the whole zone run time. A volumetric output like the DAE is way too slow to get a repeatable reading. If you are at 1 GPM, you would only get 1 pulse per minute and it takes 2 pulses to determine a time base to get GPM. So, it would take 2 minutes just to get the first sample. It would take 11 minutes in this case to get a 10 sample average. Some people don’t even run a zone that long.
So, even if they were to put in a calculation, it would not work in all cases (low flow rates with short zone times for instance) and it would be wildly inaccurate. Of course, if you are using a paddle meter, then accuracy is obviously not your first priority.
Ahh, gotcha. That makes complete sense and I can see why there’s a switch to using a frequency (sounds like PWM?). I guess the reed/hall-style is much cheaper then? The one restriction I had was it needed to be put in a vertical configuration, with how I have my auxiliary tank.
Know if there’s a way to make some type of conversion? I already have an Arduino (ESP8266) there that I had used when debugging the two because the RainMachine wasn’t calculating properly.
I know the other option would be to switch over to something like the EveryDrop. My meter is threaded in with 1xNPT, so it looks like the MODEL 1004-EX would work
