Rachio 3 & Orbi Mesh Router System

Troubleshooting Tech Support
1

I read this review about Rachio 3:

Currently, I have the Rainmachine and after it disconnected from my Mesh Orbi router, I have been unable to re-connect it to Orbi. Orbi support is aware of this issue and indicates they don’t have issues with other mesh router systems. Netgear (Orbi) indicates that it’s because Rainmachine’s drivers are not updated.

I was going to change to Google Nest Wifi but stumbled on the review above on Rachio 3. In it, it indicates that it works with 5 ghz bands. I have a few questions that are important before purchasing Rachio 3:

  1. Does Rachio 3 system have any connection issues with Orbi’s Mesh routers?
  2. Does your Roachio 3 allow for you to create programs where you assign the watering times to each zone and you can run them through wifi and have all the zones water for the assigned time periods? (not using the weather automatic mode).
  3. The review above mentioned you can run stations manually. I purchased my Rainmachine a couple years ago for this reason that I wanted something that could run both wifi and manually (in case the wifi was down). Does the Rachio 3 allow for manual operation and if so, does it run only 1 station at a time or can you manually run the programs mentioned in #2 above that are created?

Thank you for your help!

2

@acecert -

  1. @tmcgahey reports he hasn’t had an issue with his Gen 3 on his Orbi system in this post →

  1. I believe what you’re asking for here is known as a Fixed schedule in Rachio. One has the option of using climate skips (e.g. wind, rain or saturation) and monthly adjustments based on historical weather averages. Again user selectable.

  2. From the app one can quick run selected zones or a specific schedule (there can be several schedules designed) →

From the face of the unit one can run a zone for three minutes at a time →

FYI, if the internet connect for the Rachio is down the schedules are downloaded locally to the machine and will continue to run - albeit with no climate skips as Rachio won’t get updated weather or seasonal adjustments. If one is running Flex schedules then after two weeks of no internet connection (there is a rolling two weeks of weather forecast downloaded to the machine) Rachio falls back to watering every 3 days.

Hope this helps.