Rachio3 slow starting after adding to new network

Troubleshooting
1

I have a Rachio 3 – 16 zones, using 10.

This is the third year of use. It is mounted inside of the garage. We are in Minnesota. Amazingly, the winters since installing it have been quite mild.

This year we updated our home network, changing to an ASUS Ai-Mesh router system, which has been working great. There is a main router and three secondary, one located in the garage to serve the garage and an increased area of our lot.

After installing the new router with a new private network, the Rachio (and everything else on the network has been working fine; until this week.

The problem I’m having is that when I start a Quick Run of a single zone (any zone), about half of the time, it can take up to five minutes for it to start, once it simply would not start.

Also, when I go to the Rachio app on my phone (Pixel 7Pro), the page which you show on your webpage, Controller Status and Standby Mode , does not include the section you show which in your example includes the “Controller offlline” and “TROUBLESHOOT” parts. Mine just shows the back arrow, Rachio-Cxxxxx title, blue user icon, and settings icon, followed immediately by the rotating daily forecast items. So, I don’t see how to troubleshoot.

On another note, and looking forward, at least in our area, using the schedules is simply no longer functional. With the environmental shifts going on, the range of soil depths and composition, and most importantly the constantly changing weather from drought to washout and back to drought all in one season, individual/daily use of Quick Runs on selected zones is the only effective use of water. Given that climate change is not going to stop “changing”, I would think you might want to come up with alternative methods. I would consider your weather station approach, but having used a couple in the past, I know that weather stations are great for recording what has already happened, but useless in predicting. That’s why I choose to use “realtime” Quick Runs, …… Now, if I can find a solution to the problem at the beginning of this email.

Let me know,

Richard Carter
Lakeveille, MN

2

Do other garage devices exhibit slowish connections ?

Check your router’s management dashboards. Look to see that your Rachio device is actually connected to the garage node and shows a good signal
Devices on mesh networks arent concerned which node they use. It might be connected to a house node further away

1 Like
3

I think you’re headed in the right direction; just a matter of finding the steps I need to do.
You are correct. It appears on the ASUS router app on my phone that indeed, the Rachio is connecting to the ASUS Mini satellite router/repeater, which is in the room on the other side of the wall to the garage. The router in the garage is the one I was hoping it would connect to (it’s an ASUS RT-AC5300, and according to ASUS is compatible for usage in their ZenWiFi AX networks, which this application is). The 5300 also shows up in the phone app as connected and operating correctly, with an RSSI of 56 dBm, which it considers to be “Great”. And given that the Rachio does finally connect after 5 - 10 minutes, they apparently eventually complete a handshake.
My question is how to get the Rachio to prioritize the 5300 instead of what appears (as you suggested and I agree) to be an attempt to link to the ZenWifi AX Mini in the next room. I haven’t found a way to get the phone app to list that option, nor info on the Rachio site. And haven’t heard back (grrrrrr…) from Rachio support.
Any ideas???
And, thank you in advance.