Weather skip changed from the 12 hour notification

Schedules & Zones
1

The system constantly waters when the app has told me a schedule will be skipped.

Usually it sends another notification in the middle of the night that says, “the weather has changed whole yard will not be skipped”, then it starts watering. 98% of the time it should not be changing its mind. I’ve gotten to the point on predicted rain skips just manually skipping to make sure it doesn’t water. But why do I need to do that? (Tempest also present on Rachio Account.)

Yesterday it told me in the afternoon that the cycle would be skipped due to soil saturation, then it watered anyway.

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I walked the yard with an ice pick and checked soil moisture yesterday afternoon. I agreed there was still plenty of moisture.

So why did Rachio change its mind and waste 2242 gallons (Flume measured) of water?

2

Can you please expand on bit more on your conclusion of why Rachio should not be changing its mind?

Physically checking the soil moisture is a great way to confirm that your settings are correct in Rachio. I do the same thing. Just keep in mind that the software does not have any way to physically check the water like you did, so it can’t agree or disagree with you. If your physical confirmation is out of alignment with Rachio’s predictions, that’s usually an indicator that you need to adjust your settings.

3

Sure, the time before this where it told me there would be a weather skip because of predicted rain, then I got the “weather changed” notification just before start time, then it was literally raining hard before sunrise, and the physical rain sensor stopped the cycle. The original “cycle will be skipped” was the correct answer, but then just before start at 2am it decided it needed to water. But before it could finish it was shut down by heavy rain.

Last nights issue is clearly documented in my original post, see the image. Yesterday it told me it was going to skip because of its calculation of soil moisture, but then it watered anyway. I apparently needed to babysit and manually skip.

I’m not new to Rachio, my original controller was a series 1, I’ve upgraded to series 3 and bought a Tempest. Prior to the Tempest I had a different weather station connected to the account via a 3rd party that Rachio had to stop supporting because 3rd changed their API… that solution actually worked much better.

So the original question stands? Why must a babysit this supposedly intelligent machine?

4

Just to make sure I understand the series of events:

  • Rachio went into skip mode based on the amount of rain in the forecast
  • Rachio went into run mode based on a change in the amount of rain in the forecast (this is what you’re refering to as the controller “changing its mind”)
  • Rachio stopped watering early due to an input from the physical rain sensor on your property

Is that correct?

5

For the event prior to last night yes. I have no idea why Rachio would think the forecast changed tho. It clearly rained more than 1/2” between 5am and 10am.

Last nights event was based on soil moisture according to the notification yesterday afternoon, again I have no idea why it thinks that was significantly different 12 hours later.

6

I’ll have the engineering team review and determine if there is a defect in the skip logic. Thank you for documenting this.

:cheers:

7

@bill12 I had the team review and it does look like the system decided at the one hour mark to water based on new weather information. We decided that the soil moisture would not be enough to make it to the next watering cycle.

I am going to meet with our product team and recommend that if the system does indeed decide to change the skip decision that there is an event in the history feed with the appropriate information.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

:cheers:

12 hour data

{"timestamp":1720208322,"scheduleId":"e3140e69-xxxxx","weatherStationId":"XXXXX","scheduleCriteria":{"scheduleType":"FIXED","startDate":"2015-08-30","endSunTime":"SUNRISE","rainDelayEnabled":true,"freezeDelayEnabled":true,"windDelayEnabled":false,"climateSkip":true,"seasonalShift":false,"smartCycle":true,"cycleSoak":false,"thriveModeEnabled":false,"soakTime":0,"cycleTime":0,"zoneDelayTime":0},"climateSkipApplied":true,"precipSkipApplied":false,"precipThreshold":3.2,"forecastedPrecip":0.0,"observedPrecip":0.0,"totalPrecip":0.0,"moistureLevelPredictedAtNextRunIfSkipped":1.0908820689732828,"runStartTime":"2024-07-06T02:21:00-05:00","runEndTime":"2024-07-06T05:59:00-05:00","runIntendedTime":"2024-07-06T05:59:00-05:00","sourceWeatherStations":"79121","weatherServiceFailure":false,"skipValidation":false}

1 hour data

{"timestamp":1720247858,"scheduleId":"e3140e69-xxxxx","weatherStationId":"XXXXX","scheduleCriteria":{"scheduleType":"FIXED","startDate":"2015-08-30","endSunTime":"SUNRISE","rainDelayEnabled":true,"freezeDelayEnabled":true,"windDelayEnabled":false,"climateSkip":true,"seasonalShift":false,"smartCycle":true,"cycleSoak":false,"thriveModeEnabled":false,"soakTime":0,"cycleTime":0,"zoneDelayTime":0},"freezeSkipApplied":false,"climateSkipApplied":false,"precipSkipApplied":false,"noSkipApplied":true,"freezeThreshold":0.0,"precipThreshold":3.2,"temperature":17.0,"forecastedPrecip":0.0,"observedPrecip":0.0,"totalPrecip":0.0,"moistureLevelPredictedAtNextRunIfSkipped":-3.8950928496636714,"runStartTime":"2024-07-06T02:21:00-05:00","runEndTime":"2024-07-06T05:59:00-05:00","runIntendedTime":"2024-07-06T05:59:00-05:00","sourceWeatherStations":"79121","weatherServiceFailure":false,"skipValidation":false}

8

Hi franz,

Is that data coming from tempest? Or where? I see the value that you speak of at it appears that the data changed by almost 5 units (is that evapotranspiration?) what is the unit of measurement? Do I need to open a ticket with Tempest to ask how/why the would grossly miscalculate? Or does Rachio have a team that works with Tempest on such difficulties? The moisture content of the yard did not significantly change in that time period.

I like the idea of the data points being added to the log. Might I also suggest that you add a setting switch, I’m not quite sure what to call it, but its function is ‘if enabled then don’t override skip decisions at the last minute.” The problem is we have expensive water, I pay close attention and was in complete agreement with the skip decision, but then it was over ridden at the last minute. Doesn’t seem very smart if I need to also hit manual skip if I really want it to skip after it has notified me that it will skip.

Thanks for watching for messages like these. I’ll be sure to continue to post when I realize Rachio logic didn’t do what I expected. My actual main reason for upgrading to gen3 was hoping the system would be smarter, but I’m not sure the logic changed.

1 Like
9

We derive evapotranspiration from a lot of different variables, in this case more than likely if you have Tempest, we get the data from there. ET is used to track moisture levels.

That unit of measurement is hard to explain in a post, but we use this to determine our estimated moisture level using a lot of zone characteristics and weather data. https://extension.colostate.edu/docs/pubs/crops/04707.pdf

I don’t believe this is a gross miscalculation, it was borderline to begin with (1.09mm), assuming one or two of the variables we use for ET (temp, wind, humidity) changed in the forecast which tipped it to below 0.

Yeah I tend to agree. Ill take this idea up with the product team.

Yes, getting real world data is very valuable and helps us fine tune the system :wink:

:cheers: