@jgehlsen - two words - power budget. Let me channel John Aaron from the scene in Apollo 13 with Ken Mattingly (played by Gary Sinise).
An Orbit sprinkler valve has a holding current draw of .23 amps and an inrush draw of .35 amps. If the system is starting two valves - e.g. a master valve and a zone valve - there is a .70 amp pull on the system. Plus the demand for the control board. When reduce water hammer is on and a third valve (i.e. the second zone) starts up the power demand on the system is .81 amps (.23 * 2 + .35). Again plus the power demand the board has. With a 1 amp power supply, that doesnāt leave enough amps to drive another normal solenoid. And donāt forget about some buffer/contingency power budget that needs to be added too.
So to power more solenoids, one would have to have a larger power supply. A larger power supply costs more money. And routing more amps on the board may require larger traces (redesign, $$$) and larger components that can handle more power through them - as Rachio uses electronic power switching instead of mechanical power switching. So the costs go up for 100% of the users, where this feature would only be used by x% of the users, is probably the reason for the business decision to go with one zone running at a time. Similarly, if one created a separate or additional hardened device - additional SKU - to handle more power and solenoids it probably doesnāt justify/recover costs itself as a stand alone device.
Well, I donāt have a master valve and I would only be turning on 2 valves so this example really doesnāt apply to me.
If it requires a larger power supply to power two solenoids (assuming that the board can handle the additional amperage), then they should just say so.
If they canāt or wonāt do it, they should just say so instead of leaving this thread open to interpretation.
Butā¦ this is a simple software update. If the user opts in and understands the limitations, it is on them. Several users have asked for this feature, their competitors have this feature and all it is is a simple software update to allow two schedules to run at the same time. Why wouldnāt they do it? Support? It is a cloud based service. If they turn the feature on and try to turn on more than the number of valves the device will support and something breaks, it is on them.
Hey friends! Here with an update. Unfortunately, this is not on the roadmap for this year. This feature would take a ton of time to vet, would likely include a lot of software changes, potentially hardware changes, and at the end of the day, might not even be possible. Sorry to deliver bad news!
Hi Laura,
Thatās not the response people wanted to hear. Anything is possible these days. You havenāt even tried to see if this is possible and you just replied by saying itās impossible. Given that so many people are interested in this feature, Why not hire professionals who can do this. This isnāt rocket since its just programming. Itās been done before by other companies. You should still consider this.
Did you ultimately decide to go with a different brand of controller? Iām also frustrated with the inability to run two zones at once, and I need to purchase a second controller for my back yard. Iād love to know what controllers people have switched to since Rachio wonāt meet our needs.
The controller is used to energize the relay coils only.
The power coming from the relay to the sprinkler valves is provided by a second larger power supply (2.1 amps)
For some reason I tried to redo my schedules and now I have two zones running at the same time Zone 1 and Zone 2), they used to run separately, but now when I do a quick run of the only schedule I have (Iāve disabled all my other ones so I could troubleshoot the issue), zone 1 and 2 kick off at the same time. Zone 1 is suppose to run for 18 minutes and zone 2 for 10 minutes, but after 18 minutes zone 2 stays on for another 10 minutes. Then after that the rest of the zones run as they should. I suppose I could reset the controller but after reading that you canāt run two zones at a time, I thought maybe Iād wait to see if I could look at something and share how you can. Just donāt know what to look at because everything looks like it did before this started happening to me. Anyone have any thoughts?
Sameā¦ I would switch to a controller that supports it, if all other things being equal. The amount of functionality gained by so little change to raw material cost, is the more efficient use of resources and what i would opt for in the future. It should be sought.
My previous controller allowed a drip zone to run at the same time as another zone. It was very nice to be able to water my vegetable garden and not have it affect the scheduling of other zones. Iād love to see that as a feature.
