After a failure of Rachio 3 with a history of 2 years of its Life-Span ( controller Will NOT Re-boot to Manufacturer’s Setting …a symptom of 9 white lights on 1st Quarter following a red ) had to replace with a New Rachio 3 …! Now I’ve experienced a 3rd time with Loss of WiFi in a patten with just 3 weeks passed with New one’s installation ! I thought this drop shouldn’t be happening with 1 Gig WiFi …,upgrade recently to my home ! Has anyone had similar Experience?
1 Like
If you have access to your wifi router, designate a premanent IP address to your Rachio 3 MAC address. Also, check your phones to see if any of them are connecting with wifi metering enabled.
The dedicated IP seemed to fix my problem, but i think the metering, to my access point, was the reason the problem was intermittent.
@thampyshany - please describe your WiFi setup - mesh or not, multiple access points, make/model, etc. I have had other IoT devices that were sensitive to minimum speed setting on my WiFi gear. Also, check any minimum signal strength settings on the WiFi gear.
I’ve tried dedicated 2.4 GHz network with the rachio as the only device, static IP, and mine still disconnected. Doesn’t seem to make a difference if its on that or my mesh network. I’ve been having wifi connection issues the past 4 years May-June, until this year. This year it seemed like the usual trend until the last 3 days, its disconnected each day. Usually after May-June, it stays connected the rest of the year.
Only way to reconnect to wifi is to pull power and reconnect wifi once it reboots.
Mine also doesn’t run a schedule from memory when it goes offline. Not sure how common that is.
Support has not been helpful for this. Seems like bad quality wifi modules since a lot of people comment about issues. And possibly poor memory handling in these units.
@questioneverything - I’ve been running Rachios (V2 and V3) for about 9 years in three different WiFi environments and I haven’t noticed any dropouts. I’m not sure if this is what you tried with a dedicated 2.4 GHz network or not, but I would buy an WiFi extender and have it broadcast a different SSID so that we know the Rachio connect to it. I would be trying to figure out if there is a setting on the other WiFi equipment that is impacting the Rachio.
Not knowing the RF environment, Rachio siting, wall power status (brownout, surges, etc.), WiFi settings, etc. - this is where I’d start. Seeing as how the outages are seasonal (May-June) I’d be looking for something environmental that would be causing it. What changed? Neighbors present or gone, etc.
1 Like
I’ve tried an extender too. And different channels with all setups I mentioned.
Rachio is the only device that has this issue on my network out of almost 80 devices. Since it usually only has this connection problem a couple months of the year it wouldn’t make sense for it to be another device, or network configuration since I’ve tried everything possible. I probably just have a faulty controller and its slowly getting worse. This year, for the first time, the logic for my Flex Daily program wasn’t working the first couple weeks of May. It set every zone to water 10 minutes instead of 1 hr+ each. After a couple weeks it started working again on its own. And as I mentioned when the Rachio goes offline it doesn’t water. There’s supposed to be a memory stored program to water just in case it goes offline but mine has never done that. Nothing has changed, aside from trying different network configurations over the years, specifically for the Rachio. My Rachio gets good wifi signal too, usually -39 to -47ish. It’s not the furthest device away either. My old rainmachine controller never had this issue with wifi. Same neighbors and same internet provider for the area (we’re stuck with one option here). Rare power outages, overvoltages, etc. I have battery backups for a lot of devices to keep an eye on stuff like that for other devices. It doesn’t seem to be power related. Weather in May and June is more mild than other summer months like July and August, and definitely more mild than winter. Another thing, when it goes offline, even though it drops from my network and doesn’t run watering cycles, the app still shows it connected to the network with strong signal. Its like it disconnects itself into a frozen state. I can’t ping it. Maybe the app just shows the data of its status before it goes offline? Rachio keeps things locked down pretty tight so I don’t think there’s a way to ssh and diagnose further.
After all this time and troubleshooting, I’m at the point its just a bad apple (or a quality control issue with faulty wifi modules, soldering, or something else since there’s a ton of reports about this). Was considering getting a smart plug to power cycle it daily, but if it goes offline between cycles I’d still have to do what I currently do to get it back online. Aside from the wifi issue that usually only occurs for a couple months of the year for me, and the issue with flex daily this year, I really like the controller. I’m planning to stick with it until it fails or they come out with a new model. Its becoming frustrating af though. I usually like having problems like this with some devices because I usually learn something new, but this isn’t getting anywhere.
I’ve tried possibly everything;,Yet , WiFi doesn’t seems to stay on Continuously, just watching closely ( is it worth spending ( your wallets over 
300 ) for this product every 2~21/2 years! For now I’m continuing to use it …! For my last Manual Device ( Lawn Genie ) Programmed one ( even for watering w/auto set-up stayed over 35 years)
Also,… ( Just a STRONG WORD/Suggestion ) For those whom buy New Rachio 3 … Purchase additional warranty ( paying 40 for additional 3 years) a piece of mind)…, which I usually won’t do in today’s market ( call it a waste)
I mean ( for other Products)( calls a Waste of Your )… However, Rachio is Phased Out ( that I read ) Take a look…,
Definitely something janky going on with my controller. Last night it went offline right when the watering program was supposed to start. This is probably what has been occurring the entire time with my controller, just never actually saw it happen. Something in memory must be messed up. And of course, didn’t water once being offline. I may try a factory reset to see if that clears the issue, haven’t tried that before because I didn’t want to reconfigure everything. I think this season I’m at that point and if that doesn’t work then next season it may be time to move on.
Well sorta, but not – back in 2022 Rachio was going to change and call things the “Pro Series” , but it doesn’t look like they followed on with that as they are still selling the Rachio 3 on their website. I can see where AI picked up this announcement, but AI stopped there and didn’t look around any more. Yet one more reason I never trust AI!
Here’s the link this came from: Rachio Pro Bulletin - Latest updates for Rachio professionals
Thanks for those updates… here in the forum …, would welcome Newer versions of the Rachio…! Let’s wait & watch …
@questioneverything - Now we may be making progress. The Rachio power supply is limited to 1 amp (1,000 milliamps). If a solenoid (or solenoids when a master valve is involved), pull more power than that then there is a brownout or blackout on the board. Normally, Rachio will report that.
Do you have a master valve in the system? If so, I might disconnect the master valve wire from the Rachio and run the same schedule that failed and see if it runs (no water will be used, but Rachio will think it will have watered if a Flex schedule is being used - in that case I might manually open the master valve so that Rachio’s soil moisture and reality will be in synch).
Are you using the reduce water hammer feature? If so, I might turn this option off for a test run as this keeps the running valve open while the next valve opens, so there can be three (if there is a master valve) or two valves open at a time. Rachio is built for this, but I’m wondering if a valve is pulling more current than it should.
Is the standard Rachio power supply being used? There are posts where other users (some outside the US) bought an undersized replacement power supply. Don’t buy a larger power supply as I’m not sure the currently handling capabilities of the Rachio motherboard over 1 amp.
So I’m wondering what in the seasonality would change the resistivity in the wire or the solenoid that would cause an increase in the electrical current usage?
1 Like
@DLane No master valve and not using water hammer feature, no water hammer. Using the OEM power brick. Could be the power brick is going bad under load but seems like it wouldn’t be significant enough power draw during watering to cause this, especially since it doesn’t occur every time. I don’t think its power related. Could very well just have been coincidence it went offline at that moment. I’m keeping a closer eye on when its going offline so I should be able to verify that soon, if it continues. I still think its just a janky wifi module.
1 Like
@questioneverything - That was my best guess given the situation. A normal solenoid pulls somewhere around 325 milliamps on the inrush when it is opening, but considerably less when it is just holding open.
If you figure anything else out on when it is occurring, post back and I’ll see if I can come up with something else.
1 Like
@DLane Ironically, just received an email my controller went offline. So not related to my schedule. I’m home and no power fluctuations occurred, and no internet/wifi issues elsewhere. No reason I can think of
Thank you.
@DLane Offline again, no rhyme or reason. I also find it odd, out of the 30 or so times its gone offline since May this year, I’ve only received that one email notification last week about the controller going offline.
@questioneverything - I don’t have any other insights. I don’t know enough about Rachio’s backend to know what triggers an off-line email message. Thirty disconnects does seem excessive.