Hi,
Just wondering if there’s any technological reasons not to use a Rachio 3 outside of the USA / Canada. Purchasing the device is easy and even if I have to replace the power adapter that isn’t difficult. Just wondering if all the functionality of the Rachio 3 will work worldwide like access to weather data and smart scheduling? Thanks in advance.
Where are you located Dan ? You certainly need a local PWS to give you rain data to get it to skip the raining days.
However, I still do not fully know what happens with the general weather data (when using the Flex-Daily mode). Initially, when I setup my system, it calculated times for zones. However, a month or so later, I went to start over again but it would not auto calculate things for me. I had to set up my location as a place in Texas, setup my fictional zones, and then set my location and PWS to Spain.
I had a lot of interaction with Rachio support who basically said that it wasn’t fully supported, but I am still unclear as to how it’s working with my local PWS and whether it only looks at the rain, or whether it’s also looking at the other data - or to what extent it’s using the other data.
Hi ChampionC, I’m in Australia. Thanks it’s exactly this kind of nonsense like having to set it up for USA and then later changing the weather source to your real location that I am concerned about. As I understand it, the Rachio 3 uses seasonal data and other information on top of just rainfall, expected rainfall and wind data from the weather forecast so although I may be able to convince it to use my local daily weather data after the fact I am somewhat concerned that it may still use Northern hemisphere seasons when I am located in the southern hemisphere which would have it trying to overwater in my winter and underwater in my summer.
@Dan83 - the biggest issue is with the 3 (not the 3e) as it has a 900 MHz radio to communicate with Rachio’s Wireless Flowmeter (no longer available). That frequency is used for other purposes outside the USA. Some has suggested cutting the trace to the antenna to disable that as a fix.
I do believe it will pick up weather information from a nearby location, it may not do the hyper local weather. Rachio will have to say it isn’t supported as they haven’t licensed the device with the various local government agencies (e.g. USA = FCC).
Thanks DLane, I really don’t care about using their flow sensor so that’s not an issue. It’s pathetically poor design that the 900mhz cannot simply be disabled in software.
I have some friends in Canada that are using it and have a great experience. I can’t say the same about some past colleagues of mine that moved to France. Not that easy.