"Smart" Scheduling?

Schedules & Zones
1

Hi all, so I finally jumped on board and got a 16-circuit controller.

And I hope I’m missing something here because I went from really excited and gleeful to get the app, set up zones, etc…and then straight to thoroughly underwhelmed and disappointed in seeing the resulting schedule.

I was expecting Nest-like simplicity and capability with a pleasant interface and some smarts in the background working to make things better (yet stepping aside gracefully if I want to override it).

What I’ve found instead is a cute-ish, but rather cumbersome app and an almost laughable lack of intelligence with scheduling. One small case in point, I have several zones that are nothing but trees (as I reported in the setup) and it wants to water them EVERY DAY…that’s absurd for trees!..it’s even absurd for a lawn.

So unless I get in there and manually set things up (which harkens back to the days of a regular, dumb controller) it seems intent on running EVERY circuit, in sequence, EVERY day.
(note: I selected No Watering Restrictions at this initial phase just to give it free rein and the best chance to optimize the schedule)

So is there a way to have the app/website produce a decently smart schedule like one would expect given all the input data (e.g., deep water trees every 10 days unless it rains, ditto for lawn every 2-5 days considering temps, and water garden daily)?

On this same theme, it turns out my plants don’t know what day of the week it is and they don’t care. A lot of the scheduling options and talk seems to be based around a weekly, human calendar - which, again, seems like old-school controller mentality. I get that as an option, but it certainly shouldn’t be the only option or the default.

Please help and show me to the light and/or steer me to some good threads here - I haven’t found them via my searches and I’m almost tempted to return this for something less “smart” and just more sensible…thanks!

2

The system absolutely can create smart schedules, but you have left out any details that would help us give you insight to your issues.

Are you trying to set up a Flex Daily schedule (the “smartest” schedule)? If so, are you sure that each and every zone is in fact going to run each day, or are you just seeing a water drop on the calendar every day? The system may in fact run every day, but might only run a single zone, not necessarily run all the zones every day, unless the parameters dictate that it needs to (weather, soil moisture, etc.).

Maybe start by throwing up some screen shots of your zone settings (basic and advanced), schedule, etc.

3

The key to Rachio is getting your settings dialed in. My trees never water every day, so I’m going to guess perhaps one or more of your zone parameters needs adjustment.

I think once you get you settings dialed in, you will appreciate Rachio.

Please post screen shots of your settings so the community can help you get it figured out.

4

Yeah what exactly did you do for setting up zones? There’s a lot of advanced settings that really need to be checked and dialed in for the best performance. And you have to use flex daily as well for the best results.