Still on track for releasing 2.5 with water as needed schedules and a few other refinements. 
Testing should be finished by the end of this week.
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@stonecliff, sorry for the delayed reply…ate too many chocolate bunnies on Sunday. 
Your understanding of Flex versus Water as Needed schedules is correct. Flex schedules are delayed based, whereas Water as Needed schedules are skipped based.
Yes, potentially. We were hoping to explore this for the 2.5 release, but had to put it on hold. As Franz mentioned, we want to continually to improve our system’s efficiency and app simplification. User feedback is needed do this. As such, we’d love to get feedback from Flex Schedule users on the new schedules…just make sure you only disable your Flex schedule and don’t delete it if you choose to test out the new schedules.
@bzimmer, Water as Needed schedules use the same equations to calculate your watering duration by zone. We’ll re-crunch this number on a monthly basis, but the duration won’t change much much month to month (a few minutes +/-).
Water as Needed schedules will do their best to take advantage of what Mother Nature throws your lawn. We’ll skip using a number of triggers (rain, ET & temperature), but you’ll never go empty – MAD (management allowed depletion) is running in the background to ensure you have the reserves to skip. We’ll never allow the zone’s moisture balance to fall below the permanent wilting point. It’s really no different than waiting to fill up your half empty (or half full ;)) gas tank until the next exit in hopes of a lower price, or the following day when the weather is nicer. By default, MAD will always default to 50% and the related schedule interval is aligned to water accordingly. If MAD is changed on any zone, the interval will also change as the water requirement will be different.
In the comparisons ran during testing, the schedules balanced out pretty well. i.e. # of actual watering events over a given month on Flex schedules versus the number of watering events on Water as Needed schedules with skips removed.
Since Water as Needed schedules will not delay the schedule, but actually skip, the schedule is applying a managed stress principle to the zones, which will help encourage deeper root zone growth as anytime the moisture balance falls below MAD (i.e. 50%), the roots will search for water. Plants are very smart. If there’s water, they will find it.
@cwagz, quite the opposite – the magic will only get better! 2.5 schedules will be easier & smarter. I hope everyone will give them a test drive for a month or two and let us know what they think.
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I look forward to the next generation of the software! Progress is a good thing! Since you’re working on scheduling software, it seems like the place to put my quarter on the table. I may bug support too.
Our lot is somewhat sloped and has dense clay soil. It doesn’t readily absorb water. With our old Rainbird sprinkler, we’d water each zone for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the zone’s size. After all 6 zones had watered, we’d wait about 30 minutes and water them again. In very hot months (this is Texas, so it gets hot), we’d add a third cycle half an hour after the second one stopped.
It seems that your delay between cycles is more like, sprinkle zone 1 for 9 minutes, wait 9 minutes, sprinkle again.
Whatever the situation, we have water pouring off our yard and into the street. Luckily that’s not a ticketable offense, but it does get the local water militia after you.
A longer delay between cycles for dense soil would probably be a good thing™.
Thanks!
Thanks for the feedback, our smart cycles will cumulatively let the schedule soak for 30 minutes between zones.
Are you seeing different?
This article helps explain how they are implemented, and a cheat sheet to determine what you maximum recommended runtime is and more of an explanation of how the cycle/soak works with our schedules.
Have a great day!
I went out today and measured our zones to get watering times closer to something reasonable. That said, it seemed that the delay between cycles was much shorter than the amount of time mentioned in the article you pointed me to.
Is there a way to download the watering history into a spreadsheet? Honestly, the low contrast on your website in the watering history area makes it hard to read for older eyes. (The Color Contrast Analyzer add-in/extension for Chrome makes it very easy to see what people with mild, or severe, visual impairment - or who are just getting on in years - will see at your site.)
Thanks!
Continuing the discussion from Simpler Scheduling for Spring:
The time honored method of highlight, copy and paste worked. Looking at the history, it looks as though the delays are shorter than you think. I can send you a spreadsheet if you cannot see my history.
However, it seems that it will cycle through other zones only if they are scheduled for that day. So, if only one zone is scheduled, there will some very short delays.
With reports from neighbors of heavy water flow, my wife has been aborting sprinkler runs, so our history may not be the best to look at.
Thanks!
Looking at the calendar the cumulative soak time is 30 minutes. Even though the cycle is 11 minutes you need to take the other zone watering times into account which will always equal 30 minutes delay from when the zone runs again.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for the clarification. Still, judging by the water flowing into the street, the soak period wasn’t long enough.
In the old regime we had two 10 minute cycles and three 15 minute cycles followed by about a 30 minute pause. So, when we ran two cycles there was an 85 minute delay between the two runs in the front yard. (10+15+15+15+30). Runoff was minimal.
I should probably move this over to support with a headline of, “why are we getting so much runoff?”
Thanks!
@mavery76266, it might help to edit your soil type to change the cycle/soak times. Do you know what type of soil you currently have selected? The support team (support@rachio.com) can help you review if you’re unsure (please refer to this post for reference).
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I like the sound of bringing in history. My preference would be to apply it in terms of flex schedule prediction/estimation, but not to actual execution.
I agree forecasts are 50% a week out and less than useful so history helps.
But I’m getting more comfortable with flex the longer I use it. If I could get a report that shows historical use based on actual, next weeks estimates based on forecast, and the rest of the year based on historical, I’d be a happy camper. Esp if it was presented as a drill down on the water usage graphs, with one more depth added to the drill down - by zone.
By the way, did rain here this week on a day it was scheduled to water. Now I understand how it works 
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All our zones are set to “clay” since we have a dense clay soil. Someone mentioned having to knock the clay off a shovel when digging. That’s us too!
Thanks!
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@brkaus, this how Water As Needed will run…historic weather data used to predict, real time weather data used to skip.
Historical to actual use reports will take some work, but we have some cool ideas in the works.
Estimates for the next week based on forecasts are not currently possible due to the weather check being performed roughly an hour before the scheduled watering event to determine if the watering can be skipped, however maybe the likelihood of skipping could be calculated in the future.
Schedules for the rest of the year based on historical weather data are already built. Sneak peek below 
…notice how the interval updates by month.
@mavery76266, sounds like a joy to dig in 
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@emil @franz -> Thanks again to both of you for the conversation on the new scheduling. I really appreciate that your willing to engage the community the way you do!
I understand the value to some for the predictable schedule–however, I’d really prefer a system that performs a full watering on the specific day the lawn requires it as opposed to the system adjusting the run-time on a pre-scheduled day (or skipping until the next pre-scheduled watering) based on the calculated need on that particular pre-scheduled day.
From everything I’ve read, full waterings are the best for the health of a lawn (and also leads to the maximum water savings). It’s what drew me to my ESP-SMTe (and generated my initial interest in the Rachio). I would believe that your new method likely comes close in actual effect during use (assuming that the year is similar to historical data)–I just wish you’d leave in the existing method for power users who prefer using the full method. I know you’re grandfathering in existing users–but it doesn’t help a potential new customer like me.
To be candid, I’ll likely hold off on a purchase and continue to follow the customer comments and see what people think of it this year. But likely, the company that will ultimately win my business will be the one that follows the watering method that you had previously implemented.
Thanks again for your time–I do sincerely appreciate the conversation.
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Thanks for the feedback, very helpful. I do have some ideas next year how we provide this feature without using flex as it is built today
Hope to have you as a customer someday.
As a current, happy, flex time user, I have a LOT of trepidation about the the new schedule. I really agree with @bzimmer. I feel like I’m really being stupid and I know you have smart people working on this, but I’m just not getting it. I’ve just recommended this system to my daughter in Texas. She won’t be grandfathered in to the flex system. I’m sure hoping it goes ok. Sorry, but I was just a happy user with flex.
Thanks for the feedback, appreciated. I would have her start with a water as needed schedule and I bet the performance is going to be right on par. If not, PM me and I can try to work some magic.
For next watering season when flex is officially retired, I do have some ideas with the water as needed schedules to make them work very close to flex, if not the same, we just need to wait until we rebuild the calendar on the actual device firmware
Hope this helps.
Franz your Denver, CO example is off. We don’t start watering till April which I would think the frequency would be low and in July and Aug it would have this highest frequency and turning off in Nov.
Oh nooooo! I thought existing flex users could keep this feature indefinitely.
For next watering season we will make a few more changes to water as needed which I think will make the transition natural.