Water flow countings and ifttt

Hi,

I was wondering, if its possible to somehow see how much water I use per zone in a schedule. Of course I could just do each zone manually and write it down, but if you have to water a lot and using water over a certain threshold costs a lot, you would like to know the real details.
I have a working Toro flow meter and the integration into Rachio seems perfect. But I can only see that each watering uses for example 3000 liters, which is the sum of 12 zones. I have to do this twice a day. So by the end of the day, the watering history/reports will show me, that I used something like 6000liters. But on some days its 5800, on others it can be 6200. Now this difference of 400 liters can be all fine, but it could also mean that one zone didnt get water at all, or not enough.

So I would be super happy, if the watering history would add the used water for each zone after it stopped. That would be awesome. And then also integrate it into the downloadable csv.

The next step in awesomeness would be an integration of the readings into ifttt. So I could either just get a simple push notification after a watering, telling me the exact water usage or even create warnings with the results.

Edit:
Another small question. Why is the watering history always showing zero? In my app I see all water used this month. On the website its always zero and sometimes maybe showing something from the current day, but even that seems strange. For yesterday the website history shows me that I used a strange value of 2700 liters or so, but in my app it shows the correct 6600 liters.

Hey @breaker!
First of all, sorry for the delayed response. After seeing your post, I spent some time trying to get more familiar with some of the deeper functions of IFTTT and lost myself down that rabbit hole :cold_sweat: Thank you for your feedback, I definitely think there is room for improvement in the flow sensor reporting. Since flow sensor integration is still relatively new, we are absolutely looking for ideas on how to best build that feature out.
As for your edit- are you seeing the correct watering history on your app, and just not in the web app?
McKynzee :rachio:

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Hi Mckynzee,

thanks for looking into this. I think there is a lot of potential left for the perfectionists :wink:

As for the watering history and the countings, on my app all seems perfect, even if it always takes a while to load it every time. On the website I just dont understand what I see. Mostly its just zero, sometimes its something else, but never really the same as in the app. Right now the website shows me today I used 7715 liter, but in fact its around 1900, like shown in my app. So I dont know, seems strange :wink:

That web app issue sounds like it’s probably a defect. I’ll make sure to talk to our tech team and let them know you are running into issues.
Question for you- any particular reason you keep a close eye on your exact usage? I’m just curious if it’s related to watering restrictions or something along those lines!

Yes, its absolutely important for me, cause I have only a small amout of water that I am allowed to use at relatively fair prices. If I go above that, its like watering with champagne, and sadly the size of my garden leaves me no other choice then to use more. Thats why I want to be sure that nothing gets wasted and I have full control over all. Last year I let a local gardener do the stuff and he didnt care at all about losing water. The result was a 40k bill. Believe me, no one wants that. I would have paid so much more for your system, if it could do more. But yea, its awesome anyway :wink:

40K?!?!? :sob: That is crazy, I definitely understand why you want to keep a close eye. What other features would you like to see in regards to this?

It is crazy. On small islands sadly they can rip you off and get away with everything :frowning:
If you would ask me for more features I would say you have a very solid base. Where I would wish for a bit more is the area of getting infos out of the system, which are probably all there and the possibility to do something with them, either with the rachio app itself or with third party connections.
In the end, to keep all in your own system is always the best way, but to offer more to the outside, like to IFTTT is already a good step.
In this second I cant come up with many ideas besides having more info on the used water, but with that data you could do many things. You can set up alerts if zones dont get enough, if they get too much, if you reach a certain threshold, if the valve is open, but the flow meter doesnt register water flow and so on.
Sure you can understand that I have a big eye on flex schedules, as they promise the biggest water savings. At the same time they pose the biggest threat for someone like me, who is managing the garden from far away most of the time, because its just my holiday place. So if the flex schedule starts to run amok, I really need to know precisely whats going on and have certain alerts to sleep good.