So in our very dry climate (California Central Valley) we finally had our first rain of the year this week. Depending on the exact location, there’s been measurable rainfall since Tuesday (maybe also very late Monday evening). But according to my controller, there has been no rain at all, but some forecast for tomorrow. I have IFTTT setup to ensure that a rain delay is activated on my controller, so while I don’t have any worries about watering while it’s raining, the Soil Moisture values are going to be wrong, and force me to fill zones manually.
I can’t speak to the interpolation issue but you’ve got three days to switch to a nearby station that recorded precipitation. Definitely consider changing to a nearby reliable station if you’re seeing these interpolation issues with WI+.
Mixed report here…
In southern CA we also started the heavy rains. Local stations report accumulated precipitation in ranges from 0.12 to 0.25. I have my gen3 set to not water at 0.125. Forecast for the next week is rain, every day, and it rains hard. But one of the zones watered today, showing 0.09in of anticipated precipitation, and accumulated precipitation of 0. It’s just plumb wrong. I just updated firmware from v615 to v630 and we’ll watch it.
We have three active zones and I verified that two of them did properly skip. Those are on weekly and 4day schedules with deep watering. This one that didn’t skip is daily, and I see it did skip for the last two days. I’ve forgotten if there is a setting that says “water now even if a skip is determined when we have already skipped for x days”. But if there is a setting like that I’d like to turn it off.
I’m guessing one of the local weather stations glitched, or there was other bad data that didn’t get re-evaluated. On one hand, ok, forgive it. On the other hand, this is seasonal weather, and that 0 accumulated seems obviously wrong, and the 0.9 anticipated seems obviously suspicious. This harmless glitch could have been accommodated/overridden.
This is great technology and it’s getting better. As a developer I’d like to pull more data about exactly what data it’s using so that I can compare to local reports. IFTTT export to Google sheets only includes watering time. I’d also like to be able to get a last minute notification before scheduled watering so that I can run my own logic and change what’s happening. I haven’t looked recently, is an API for that available yet? I don’t need a full binding library, just basic messaging in/out.
Thanks!
Also here in SoCal and was surprised that when we had 4 days of 100% predicted rainfall starting Tuesday PM we still watered that morning. I could see the anticipated rainfall when I was disabling that day’s irrigation. This is pretty much the opposite of how I saw the system work with a wind skip event. In October a watering was cancelled late one night in anticipation of heavy winds the next morning. When the winds were not as significant as expected the irrigation proceeded as had been originally planned.
I have a WU site about .2 miles away that so far has been providing excellent data that matches what we see here.
I have not needed IFTTT or anything third party to have our system running basically as expected. I am obviously using WU and WI+
Yes. Here in Los Angeles we had good rain and it still ran a cycle that morning. Now all landscape is fully wet. Next cycle is tomorrow. Should not Water the next cycle??
Dave
I upgraded from a Gen 2 to a Gen 3 unit specifically so I wouldn’t have to actually use a local station. The official Fresno station is miles away from me at the airport, and is significantly different from my home on a regular basis (temperature and precipitation). The PWS’s closest to my home are a mixed bag. They regularly stop recording precipitation for no discernible reason, which is why I thought the WI+ would be a marked improvement, as it is supposed to aggregate a large number of sources to provide a personalized forecast. But when the Rachio app shows rain in the daily forecast for every day visible, but the weather tab on my zones shows zero forecasted rain, plus zero recorded precipitation, even though it had been raining for three straight days by then.
This is a significant issue going into the Winter here in Fresno, as we only are allowed one day to water per week, plus we are cited for watering within 24 hours of measurable rainfall.
Here in Southern California as well and it failed miserably as well. We had about 2 inches of rain and it water the morning after…
Use a nearby reliable weather station instead of WI+ for the time being.
I’ve switched to a nearby PWS, but unfortunately, the 3-4 stations closest to me are a mixed bag of accuracy. They all have intermittent issues with accurately reporting precipitation. But so far, I linked to one that seems to be reporting rainfall daily, which is (somewhat) correcting my soil moisture values.
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I actually did that right after I posted.
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Ground is totaly saturated and it still ran a cycle this morning!!! not Good!!!
Switch to a PWS near you.
Hey there Rachio fam!
So sorry for getting to this so late! Would those of you seeing issues with rain skips and WIP shoot a note to support@rachio.com so we can dig a little deeper and track any issues?
Lo
Lots of rain here in LA!!! I still am not using flex yet. So far so good controller has been not irrigating.
Has reliability with WI+ improved in 2020? Stopped using it last year as it was not accurate at all (Indiana).