What is up with Rachios Soil Moisture?

I think you nailed it. The moisture graphs populate at the time that you press the button. I don’t know that the “home” screen always populates until the moisture graph and tables are repopulated or the app is shut down and restarted.

That is zone 1.

Zone 2. According to the app history, I never watered and it never rained.

Well, first off, the app pulls rainfall totals from whatever weather station you have Rachio pointed to, so whatever you have it set to isn’t reporting rainfall. You need to go in and set a new weather station, and you can go in and see what the station reports, and see if that coincides with what you experienced.

I need some time looking on at the graphs for the irrigation watering. Can you look at the history (press “more” at the bottom, and select history) to confirm that Rachio did in fact water?

Nothing is wrong at the weather station. See the email I just got from Rachio:
"Celso here with Rachio team.
Do you want to have the older version of the Rachio app? Unfortunately, that’s is not possible because of the updates and support from our team.

Regarding your Flex Daily Schedule, have you had issues with that before?
I checked your Weather Stations and they look the be reporting as normal, however, you can try to change to the MID_MIDN4 which is 1.84m away from you."




![Screenshot_20210507-184014_Rachio|243x500(upload://u3AIf3IvSuYjRMeyMAckLoVB3WE.jpeg)

Just because it’s working, doesn’t mean it properly reporting rainfall. One station near me is always operating, but NEVER reports any rainfall.

On 5/5 you stated you had some rain the day before and all day rain that day. But none of the charts you posted show any rainfall reported those days. So either the station isn’t reporting correctly, or that location didn’t have the rainfall you did.

The other details in the charts you posted seem reasonable, projecting rainfall for tomorrow and Sunday, one zone 2 projected to run on 5/9. Graph of Zone 2 matches some charts.

This chart for Zone 8 I mentioned previous makes no sense to me,

[quote=“garyjnj1, post:5, topic:30231”]


[/quote], as it never approaches the top of the graph. I’d really like to see the week’s chart for that zone.

Unless this chart is for an area with deep rooted plants, it may a problem too, as it indicates you’ll water about 2.5" of water each time, which sounds waaay too high:

Many of the other charts seem reasonable, and the graph for zone 2 looks great. But none of the show any rainfall, which is why Rachio wants to keep watering your already soggy yard.

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Hi, did you notice that the history not only showing no rain, but also that it does not show irrigation runs which occurred on Sun(5/2) and Monday (5/3)? This, despite the main page showing irrigation occurring on 5/2 & 5/3? The weather station reported the expected rain accurately. This station also reports the precipitation.
Ive used this station for the last 3 years. So it is not the weather station not reporting that is the issue. Both the rain and my irrigation are missing from the soil moisture tables.

Likewise, my rainbird rain sensor detected the rainfall and shut off the system from the evening of Monday 5/3(11:28pm) thru yesterday 5/6. (8pm). Obviously, this was due to rainfall. Rainfall that the main page clearly shows was going to happen. The fact that the rain sensor was triggered and stayed active for 3 days should have triggered something in the logic that the precipitation values were amiss, rather than scheduling to water for 7 hours, 28 minutes. But that is a different story and feature they need to think about.


Zone 8 has grass, shrubs and trees hence, the more frequent watering needed to sustain the grass and other item.

I would add, my rain sensor allows me to input number of inches of rainfall that can occur before the sensor activates. Rachio can allow users to input that value. Then, they can use evaporation rates to determine when said inches of water should evaporate and predict when the sensor is expected to deactivate. If the sensor does not deactivate, it should then wait for when it does. They can then take the difference to build a predictive model and extrapolate the amount of rainfall or saturation occurred. This would be used in line with the main pages predicted rainfall. So in a sense, they know it happened and can adjust the watering amount accordingly. That is better than zero.

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I’m almost confident that they are only checking that the third party company that they use to collect the data is reasoning correctly. Your moisture graphs are showing that whatever they are pointing to isn’t showing precipitation, clear as day.

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I can’t see how the company that created this would fail to look at whether the station is reporting properly or not and email that. So, for a test I have selected another nearby station. Nevertheless, it does not remedy the app issue of not recording the history of its own irrigation cycles. That history is also a major part in the watering calculation.

Rachio does monitor the PWS and does email you if the station drops off and is no longer reporting and will select a nearby PWS. But Rachio does not monitor the quality of the data that the PWS reports. When you elect to use a 3rd party weather station instead of Weather Intelligence Plus, it is your responsibility to check to see if the data the station is reporting is accurate - it isn’t Rachio’s responsibility. I’ve stopped using a PWS across the street from me because it starting reporting cumulative precipitation instead of daily amounts. I noticed that my schedule was not going to run for some time and in looking at the soil moisture discovered that the PWS reported 38" of precipitation on one day. On other occasions a PWS I was using just stopped reporting precipitation but was still connected to Weather Underground. I discovered that because my schedule ran when we had had a lot of rain. PWS consist of stations from many different manufacturers that are installed and maintained by amateurs.There is no way that Rachio can validate the thousands of PWS that participate in the Weather Underground.I now use Weather Intelligence Plus because I decided I don’t want to keep checking on the PWS.

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Sorry, but that too doesn’t explain why rachio is not reporting the irrigation history or using it properly to direct the irrigation. That is supposed to be used in addition to the weather. When I bought this system and downloaded the app it had two options under weather intelligence PWS or non pws. The closest non-pws was like 20 miles away and always got the weather near me wrong. If that has changed since last season, where is the written manual to tell me that Again?
When I downloaded the the updated app all it said in the store was bug fixes. Again, Rachio themselves has reported that the weather site is reporting correctly. Based on their recommendation, I’m trying one closer.

Now, if you don’t have a solution to the issue I am reporting please don’t respond. It is not helpful.

What people are trying to tell you is that Rachio has said that the PWS is reporting but not that it is reporting accurately. And you have posted information that indicates that no precipitation is being reported. I did suggestion a solution - namely switching to Weather Intelligence Plus and not relying on a PWS.

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@garyjnj1, is it possible for you to screenshot all the moisture graphs in landscape mode on your phone, or better yet from a PC? The 12 out of order screenshots showing a single day is really hard to follow.
Like this:

I promise you there are a number of people in this thread that are truely trying to help you figure out what is going on, but you are fighting every suggestion we make. Updating the App from the app store of your choice didn’t break anything, and going back won’t change anything if it were possible. It doesn’t physically control Rachio, it is just a Graphical User Interface for the Rachio backend.

Yes, Rachio told you their PWS system was reporting correctly, and that is true. The SYSTEM is reporting correctly, and the particular PWS you had selected very well may be reporting temp, wind, and humidity correctly, but there may be something malfunctioning with the rain gauge on the unit. The PWS system is just that, Perisomal Weather Stations maintained by individuals like you and me that are fed into a larger database, which Rachio pays to access. If that person isn’t maintaining their personal system, it could be sending bad information to the database, and thus your Rachio.

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Sorry, its not that I’m fighting it. I am concerned that all of the advice is pointing to the weather station while not a single post addresses the fact that the history is not showing the irrigation events on Rachio’s side. That is, while this, as well as the soil moisture showing 15% then 64%, then 15% screams of a problem on Rachio’s side.

I posted in this forum because it said tech support. I’ve posted here in the past and Franz would chime in and help. Not sure if he is still with the company or not.

The app at least on my android does not flip horizontally like other apps when I rotate my phone. I’ll see if I can get to the PC as well as find the option for strictly weather intelligence. I realize that I may be coming off a bit pieved, but I am. It’s just very annoying that I have to go through all these hoops for something that worked up to November of last year. I feel like I’m a beta tester when I just need the product to work. I’ve invested a lot to get a green and full lawn. I don’t need to be going backwards.

It’s all good, but lets try to work on one problem at a time, and we’ve identified one, so lets work on fixing it, and work on the next!

The difference in what you are seeing I believe is what @NeVs mentioned. Rachio “home” page for the zone needs to refresh from time to time, either by closing the app, or just waiting, while the moisture graphs populate when you hit the button.

I understand your frustration with watering times not being shown. Let’s check a couple things:

I use the Android app, and the PC. If using the Android app, you click on MORE at the bottom right, then ACCOUNT, you will see the software version at the bottom. Mine says Version 4.4.4 (14826). Is yours the same? My Play Store says that Rachio was updated 2 days ago. When I first started looking at this thread, it was 20+ days as I recall, so a new version has been issued. And mine shows things fine, so you might update if you show one is available.

The other thing that has been confusing to me is what zone or zones you’re referring to (maybe it’s all). Your first post mentions Zone 8 being saturated, yet Rachio thinks it’s only 15% moisture. Your next post questions the run time of 2 hours, but Zone 8 is not mentioned. The next Graph shows Zone 8’s moisture, and it’s the one I questioned most, because it looks VERY screwy. It shows about 15%, but we have to figure out WHY. The next post mentions Zone 8’s moisture jumped from 15% to 64%, but only one value of the moisture table is shown, and it shows 0%. You then posted a Total watering time screenshot that showed 3 hours for zone 8. 3 HOURS??? And I /think/ that was a SCHEDULED time, not an actual watering time from the History. So I’m not sure it was watered from that, but still question the 3 hours. The next chart shows 17% again, not mentioning the zone, and again I mentioned that a moisture level of .44" at only 17% sounded seriously messed up. The next post showed 3 charts for zone 1, but as I’m still trying to figure out Zone 8, that didn’t help me. The following 4 charts were from Zone 1, mentiong it never watered or rained, and it appears that’s true. It showed it was /going/ to water on 5/9.

Then there were a bunch of History screen captures. One shows Zone 8 being watered for 3 minutes on SUNDAY. Well, that had to have been Sunday 5/2, and none of the charts shown included that date. Zone 1 was also mentioned as completing on the same date. So none of those waterings would be shown on the charts you posted. A later post shows that a zone was run on 5/3, but we don’t know what zone that was.

PLEASE - do not take my listing of every task and post above as a negative, nor as not posting enough information, or against you in any way. I feel your pain, and appreciate the time you’ve spent working with us. In part, I made it to follow the flow of the thread myself, to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I’m sure from your standpoint, it seems like you’ve gone above and beyond and posted everything you possibly could. But from our standpoint, it’s tough to diagnose a specific zone with so much additional information, as well as concerns about the weather station.

For my information at least, I’d like to see:

For Zone 8, the originally questioned zone and the one that looks really screwy to me, I’d like to see the Advanced Settings values, and a week or two’s moisture chart before today’s date. We should see when it did water (5/2?), what the values are, check for any rain and see if the values sound correct.

Doing the above should (hopefully) display both rain and irrigation amounts. We’ll see if it does. If irrigation occurs, and the Rachio app does not show it, then yes, that’s a real problem. If Rain doesn’t show up, that’s a problem too, but possibly a different one. But we need those several weeks, or at least what’s available, to track it back and check it.

Sorry for my extremely wordy response. I’m trying to be as thorough and exacting as I can, so we can all determine what the problem is for you.

Hi Richard, my app version is as follows:

I have not updated. Hopefully, that update has more detail then just “bug fixes.”

My original post was because I noticed zone 8 when walking my property was very saturated. I then checked the app to see what the moisture level was and it showed 15%. That was alarming. When I delved deeper and looked at the soil moisture table of historical data, I noticed that the irrigation line in the table showed zero % irrigation. Likewise, it showed zero % precipitation. This was upsetting because I irrigated over the weekend and we had rainfall(enough to trigger the rain sensor and visibly saturate the ground) neither of which were recorded in that table. Upon investigating this, I noticed that the when backing out of soil moisture page, it showed 64% moisture then when backing out to the irrigation page, it showed 15%. Likewise, I looked into Zone one, in front and saw the same zero% in the moisture table for both the irrigation and precipitation lines. The next scheduled watering indicated Rachio would water for 7 hours and 28 minutes. 3 of those hours as you saw, was for zone 8 alone. The rest of the time was allotted to the other zones. This was upsetting, not only was it going to waste water, it would wash nutrients out unnecessarily. I checked all my other zones and none had correct moisture history tables. None matched the irrigation pages(of which zone by zone were all over the place).

Because of the rain we had in the area, my system was paused until Thursday. Friday morning at about 3:50am, I put the system on standby to prevent irrigation until we get to the bottom of this.

In the remaining screen shots I was attempting to respond to those trying to help and get the shots up before they fall off the 7day Rachio history. I just checked, now, history from 5/2 and 5/3 (the two days I irrigated) are gone from the history. Only 5/4 and up to 7 days forward show.

I can take screen shots of what is there now, but even with those you will see another that problem with app. I changed PWS stations yesterday. This resulted in the app replacing the station field for all the previous days and future days with that station(even though 5/2 - 5/6 used a different weather station).
Former station (5/2 - 5/6):


New Statio:

The good news is that we had a very brief shower today and at least the app is picking that up. Not sure if I irrigate if that will be picked up though. But again, Rachio said they fixed something and to fill the zones that were problematic.