Not expecting any sort of resolution here, but just wanted to document my issue for others in the future and to let Google index as a search result.
I just took my Rachio Gen 3 out of hibernation mode this week to start it’s third season I believe. No changes in any of our networking configuration since then.
It seems to be showing “Offline” in the app every 24 hours or so if not more. It is still connected to my LAN and forcing the client to reconnect to the Access Point resolves the issue for about another 24 hours. There are no signal issues, and as stated above nothing has changed with my network that would warrant this behavior.
This is problematic as Rachio 3 does not have the ability to operate offline as far as I know. I will be looking into alternative products as a replacement as this does not look like it will be resolving itself and we are about to enter a drought period. A $100+ product should last more than three seasons.
Edit: It has been about three days and the Rachio has not dropped it’s WAN connection after hard power cycling the device. I will update if necessary.
@supa - Rachio can indeed operate offline, the functionality is dependent on the schedule created. Fixed schedules keep running. Flex Daily schedules will run with the downloaded forecast data for two weeks and then revert to watering every three days.
Is it possible that there was a networking firmware update or something else that might have changed in the networking stack that could cause this behavior? I’d readd the Wifi network credentials to the Rachio.
No firmware or networking changes over the winter. I changed it to a different wifi network the other day, but the WAN connection keeps dropping despite LAN connection being stable.
That’s good to hear it will operate offline, but unfortunately our weather here is so sporadic I rely heavily on the updated forecast data (2” of rain forecast for this week only received .19”). I will keep an eye on it. I just did a hard power cycle on the device left it unplugged for a few minutes.
I had a similar experience last summer, and it corresponded to changing to a different router. I have a WiFi 7 capable router, which has 2.5GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz networks. Initially, I’d set the same SSID and password as I’d used previously, and the Rachio would connect, but periodically it’d drop and not be reachable thru the app, and the controller would be searching for connection. I’d power cycle it and it’d work fine for a day or two and go back to the disconnected behavior. My router also has the capability to run both Guest and IoT networks. I enabled the 2.5GHz IoT network, gave it a different SSID and password, and then attached the Rachio to that 2.5GHz network. It’s been completely solid ever since. The only thing I can come up with is that it didn’t cope well with the old network being on different frequencies, and it’d lose connection. Not sure if this will help in your situation, but if you can enable a discrete 2.5GHz network separate from any others and try to attach to that, it could benefit.
I had a Ubitiquity AP that interfered with mine last fall. Had to update its firmware to fix mine. As already suggested, it also worked on my guest Wifi. You should isolate your IOT devices on another network for security.
