Can anyone tell me if the Rachio 3 can work on 220Volts?
i’m completely new to this forum. I’m looking for an irrigation solution for my wife’s pride and joy: our balcony ‘garden’ , a big concrete planter of 1yard wide by 12 yards long, with a variety of pots on and around it as well.
We live in spain but travel for months on end for work.The Rachio 3 looks like wat I need to remotely adjust irrigation to the local weather.
Looking forward to hear it from the experts on this forum. The Q&A on the internet gives conflicting answers.
The problem is not the voltage but the frequency. It’s easy to convert voltage.
The system works on 24v AC 60hz, which is the North American electrical standard unfortunately.
I haven’t seen the inside of the panel, but I doubt that the 24v AC 60hz coming out of the wall transformer is rectified to DC just for the electronics since the zone solenoids work on 24v AC 60hz (50 should be ok for them). If Rachio techs could elaborate on that maybe…?
Here’s my experience: I bought a cordless drill with 2 batteries for a friend in France a while back and naturally the charger was made to work with US voltage. I bought him a 220-120v transformer on ebay and to this date, years later it still works. That charger has electronics built-in that clearly haven’t been affected by using 50hz vs 60hz. I don’t know if that would apply here, but again, Rachio should step in and clarify this question as some electronics won’t work well with the wrong frequency.
Also, is the weather part of the app capable of working outside the US ? That might not be a problem for you though.
I hope we’ll get a clear answer from Rachio.
@Rtjs Do not use the plug converter, simply plugging your original Rachio power adapter will fry your new controller. The type of transformer used within the AC converters, such as the one used by Rachio, is really a step down converter, with a fixed ratio of 4.4 to 1 (in order to convert 110VAC to ~25VAC), plugging it into the 220V source would step it down by the same factor of 4.4, thus outputting 220 / 4.4 = 50 Volts AC. Such overvoltage would likely fry the surge protector.
It is possible to find a 2 to 1 step down transformer to convert 220V to 110V in order to use the original Rachio transformer, but few of those devices are designed to be used 24/7, for best results you would want to seek a 220V to 24VAC adapter, such as the one found by @FosseVet:
During your search, be careful to avoid adapters that output a DC (direct current) voltage. Be sure that you see 24VAC as output rating, with power rating going not much higher than 1000mA, 1Amp or 24VA.
TLDR: Frequency is not an issue, proper output voltage is. Orignal plug cannot be used with 220V, you need to avoid a DC supplies when searching for a replacement.
More than likely, a recent thread is dealing with issues arising from a high Surge / wrong input issues:
Note that the first reply in above thread has a link to another, related issue.
You will need to source a right power supply (rated for 220V), and possibly replace several components on the board. It really helps if you are comfortable with soldering at the very least you should be comfortable with taking apart the unit and providing photos & performing basic analysis using a multi meter.
Thanks Gene. Unfortunately the new board doesn’t have the same descriptors on it (some of the links on the previous post no longer work as well). The component that appears to have burnt out seems to be a ferrite bead you refer to, right where the power connects to the board. See photos:
Yep. Similar components that you see next to the terminal should be rated / essentially the same. The firth from the left on your photo, MOV should be associated with zone 16. Zone 16 will not stop working after you remove it, but it will lack protection until you order the replacement part (if you ever need one) elsewhere.
Before you try powering the controller back up, please make sure to aquire an appropriate 220V to 24VAC transformer. A 24VDC supplies are more common, but will not work with Rachio.
Thanks Gene. I managed to swap the mov out and have now powered up the device with a 220V 24VAC power supply. It now just blinks with a red light on the 1st quadrant. I don’t find a matching diagnostic in the light code section. Do you perhaps know what it means as the I cannot get the app to link the controller to Wi-Fi to finalize the setup?
Here is the page with status descriptions, seems you need to restart the controller, Make sure to keep it off for sufficient time to completely power it off
Thanks Gene. Unfortunately there was no troubleshooting description for a red blinking light (one of the descriptors also has 2 different troubleshootings for the same colour code- not sure if that is an error?). Anyway, I got in touch with support and they advised to reboot, which didn’t work or do a factory reset, which didn’t either work. I then held in the WiFi button and while doing so it would stop the flashing red light. If I let it go the blinking would continue. I then held both WiFi and pressed the forwards, backwards, stop button randomly at the same time and that seemed to reset the device as all sorts of colour lights came on. It then looked like it was rebooting and I then tried the app again and got it to connect to the WiFi and continue the setup. Thanks for your help and suggestions.
