Rachio

Posted on
Mon Mar 26, 2018 5:31 pm
Professor Falken offline
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Rachio

Was going to jump on to the old Rachio thread, but it has been locked...

Is anyone having issues with their Rachio since the updated app came out? I mean irrespective of the plugin, even just using the updated iphone app?

I had my irrigation people out this afternoon opening my system for the Spring, and I could barely get the zones to trigger. Had to keep going back to the box and rebooting it between each zone to even get it to recognize a request to trigger the next zone.

I came inside and disabled the plugin (fully updated version) to see if perhaps that was causing issues, but doing that had no effect.

I have no idea if Indigo triggered zones will work any better, but I kind of doubt it if their own native app can't walk from one zone to another.

It's a real shame, because they have a cool product, but each successive software update makes it worse and worse. I was an early adopter of this product. I think this would be my 4th year on it, with it completely controlled by Indigo last year, and yet I really think i'm going to have to look for some other irrigation solution.

Are other users having similar issues or am I missing some important step?

EDIT: As expected. Indigo seems to have no control over the box at all, despite running the newest version of the plugin. Similarly, I am unable to trigger a zone with the browser based web app either. After unplugging and re-plugging in the box, I can trigger one zone from the app, and can stop that zone, but it will not allow me to trigger another one until I again go and unplug the box.

This is very discouraging, as I really enjoyed my Indigo managed irrigation last year. Guess it's time to start looking at other options. Are there other Indigo integratable irrigation systems? Are Irrigation Caddy users happy these days?

Posted on
Tue Mar 27, 2018 8:42 am
Korey offline
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Re: Rachio

My Irrigation Caddy is still kicking. the company has not had any firmware or software updates since 2015, so I was about to give up on it and go with a fancy feature rich Rachio until I learned that it did not have local Indigo network control and had to go thru the "cloud".

The plugin is quite basic and has not had any updates in years either but has been purring along nicely.

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Posted on
Tue Mar 27, 2018 8:53 am
Colorado4Wheeler offline
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Re: Rachio

I'm a new convert to Rachio and am on the fence about it. One one hand I think it's has some pretty amazing features but I hate that it has to go to the cloud and back down for control - I have this with my Nest and it's fine 99% of the time but that 1%, when it pops up, irritates the heck out of me.

I've not used the Rachio but am anxious to try it out because I spent weeks writing an ETo program for Indigo sprinkler controllers and it works well but has a quirk here and there, the Rachio has it built in.

Fortunately I used my Insteon EZ-Flora for years and it's still functional, easy enough for me to revert if I must. It works amazingly well, never had a problem with it.

My biggest concern with Rachio right now is the same as my Nest: what happens when there's a glitch and it 'stays on' when not wanted. With my Nest, if the Internet is down and I change the temperature via Indigo it doesn't work (i.e., get up and the house is quite chilly), what happens if a zone is turned on and the Internet goes out, will the Rachio water for hours?

But, I'm committed to trying it anyway because I paid for it and mounted to my wall and don't want to patch my garage drywall without even attempting to use it. If it sucks, I'll go back to the EZ Flora and call this $200 wasted - 1st world problems :).

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Posted on
Tue Mar 27, 2018 9:51 am
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Re: Rachio

FYI, I'm not seeing any issues with my Rachio (ran this morning on schedule, also ran yesterday morning as well). Is yours a v2 controller? I wonder if it's just malfunctioning. I'd contact Rachio. I did have a hardware problem with my first one and they replaced it quickly and without any hassle.

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Posted on
Tue Mar 27, 2018 10:03 am
Professor Falken offline
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Re: Rachio

jay (support) wrote:
FYI, I'm not seeing any issues with my Rachio (ran this morning on schedule, also ran yesterday morning as well). Is yours a v2 controller? I wonder if it's just malfunctioning. I'd contact Rachio. I did have a hardware problem with my first one and they replaced it quickly and without any hassle.


It's actually a V1. I was an early adopter. I get the downfalls of early adoption, but what I don't like is when something is working and updates break it (something Apple is also occasionally guilty of as well). I can't tell if the Rachio boxes get firmware updates -- the company is a bit obtuse on this in their documentation, and no firmware version is reported back by the box, at least when viewed in the app-- but I am wondering if their new iOS app was accompanied by a box firmware change that is making it misbehave.

I did open a support ticket, so will see what comes back. Very odd that it will take an initial "start zone" order after a reboot, and even a stop order on that zone, but then won't let me trigger another zone unless I reboot. It feels kinda "cloudy" to me, but that's certainly not my area of expertise.

I'll report results back here.

Posted on
Tue Mar 27, 2018 7:17 pm
Professor Falken offline
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Re: Rachio

lanbrown wrote:

I think that would depend on how you use it. I have a Skydrop but the Rachio is similar. It does have a schedule so before it starts watering it knows what it is going to do, so if the Internet is out, it can still start and stop. The Internet aspect is just for configuration changes, weather, etc. If you used Indigo to control the watering (turning on and off the valves) then yes, you would have an issue if your Internet went out or they had a issue in the cloud.


Yeah, I think that's what I'm becoming a bit concerned about. I believe Jay mentioned in the other thread that with Rachio's new call limits, the best way to keep Indigo in sync would be to have Indigo manage the schedules (that is, starting and stopping each zone rather than simply starting a full Rachio schedule as I had previously done). But as you point out, if a zone gets started, but then the Rachio cloud server or my internet connection or who-knows-what in-between hiccups, then the zone could just go on forever.

Of course, in my particular case all of this is academic. At the moment, I can't get my box to trigger more than one zone without having to reboot it.

Posted on
Thu Mar 29, 2018 11:17 am
Professor Falken offline
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Re: Rachio

Update:

So it appears that Rachio is sending me a Gen 2 to replace my device. I don't know if they did any diagnostic work on their end or if this is simply their response based upon my complaint, etc. Either way, I am glad to have an option to get my irrigation system back up and running.

Here's my follow up question, I guess for Jay or anyone else in the Indigo community who may have replaced a Rachio in their Indigo integration. Will there be a way for me to replace the (physical Rachio) device and have it pick up where my old one was within indigo? I ask because I have control pages, variables, and scripts that are obviously tied to the old one that I am not relishing having to go and recreate. I suspect that there is no easy way to "swap out" a new box and have it still talk to an old Indigo device, but figured I'd ask anyway.

Thanks

Posted on
Thu Mar 29, 2018 1:17 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Rachio

I honestly can't remember exactly what the process was on the Rachio side. I think I just added the controller via their app. Then I think I just had to edit my existing Rachio Indigo Device, select the correct controller, and save. From the Indigo side, in any event, all you have to do is edit the existing sprinkler controller device - that will maintain all the existing connections in Indigo.

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Posted on
Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:01 pm
Professor Falken offline
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Re: Rachio

jay (support) wrote:
I honestly can't remember exactly what the process was on the Rachio side. I think I just added the controller via their app. Then I think I just had to edit my existing Rachio Indigo Device, select the correct controller, and save. From the Indigo side, in any event, all you have to do is edit the existing sprinkler controller device - that will maintain all the existing connections in Indigo.


Oh, that is really good news. I was picturing a lot more trouble rebuilding my CP's and scripts.

Thanks.

Posted on
Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:38 pm
Professor Falken offline
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Re: Rachio

As promised, I'm reporting back here with my experiences in case anyone else later has similar issues. I'm also having at least one lingering issue that I'm hoping someone might have some ideas on.

Rachio sent a gen2 controller to replace my gen1, which was great. This installed simply, and within their app/system was working correctly from the start, which I guess means something went bad in my gen1 causing it to act squirrelly. I wish they had a way to quickly import all the settings from an old controller rather than having to rebuild all zones/schedules/etc but that's a minor quibble. In fact, looking a the newest app update (just dropped yesterday, I think-- 36 hours after I needed it) they may have actually added this feature going forward.

Unfortunately, I was unable to successfully transfer my Indigo Rachio device to the new box. I reconfigured the Indigo device to the new controller (which Indigo could see), but it still wouldn't control the zones, etc. I noticed that it was still listing schedules from the old controller, for example, so I assume it wasn't able to fully make the jump to the newer box..

So I bit the bullet and just created a new Rachio device in Indigo. This necessitated a bunch of CP changes, as well as searching through a few scripts, but overall not that difficult. I think I found everything.

At this point the native controls in Indigo seem to be working (i.e., the ones on the device page). In addition, CP controls seem able to trigger zones correctly. I haven't fully tested schedules, as we've just had a rather cold snap here, but I'm assuming they will work.

About 24 hours after the above, I started getting those "too many API call" errors that others had reported. I thought this was odd since I had left the config untouched in the newest plugin version and understood those to be set below the max number/day allowed. It took me a few minutes to realize that the two Indigo Rachio devices were probably creating the issues. Deleting the old one (which now served no purpose anyway) seemed to solve that.

Which brings me to the one little thing I can't seem to fix...

On my sprinkler CP's, I have an image for each zone. It's basically a device state linked image set of a property map with sprinklers running in the correct zone. For some reason I can't quite get this to work correctly. Zones 1,2, and 3 show the correct image. Zone 4 shows the zone 5 image, and zone 5 shows the zone 4 image. Zone 6 (last zone in my system) shows the zone 3 image again. If I swap the zone 4 and 5 images (which you would think would at least solve that pair) they still show up reversed, even after restarting the app on my phone.

Even though I am keying on the "active zone name" device state, the images are named ...+1.png, +2.png, etc., as I learned last year (on a tip from Matt I think) that for some reason that's the way the plugin wants the images named. That's a bit weird, since if you display the exact same state as text instead of as an image, it will show the text name of the zone (not 1,2,3...). Just to see, I did try renaming the images with the actual zone names but none of them showed, so I guess it still wants the zone number on the png image names. I am pretty sure all the zones are named correctly-- you can look in the scheduling feature under actions, and it shows the zone names in the order of zone number (including the unused zones 7 and 8 in my system).

I am almost positive this is an issue with the image cache on Indigo Touch, because when I load the CP through a browser, all of the images behave correctly. Is there a trick to clear the cache on the iphone beyond force restarting the app? I also rebooted the phone without effect.

Posted on
Fri Apr 06, 2018 8:54 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: Rachio

Professor Falken wrote:
So I bit the bullet and just created a new Rachio device in Indigo. This necessitated a bunch of CP changes, as well as searching through a few scripts, but overall not that difficult. I think I found everything.


Did you happen to try to change the old one to a different sprinkler - say an X10 sprinkler - then reconfiguring at a Rachio? I suspect that would have worked.

Professor Falken wrote:
I am almost positive this is an issue with the image cache on Indigo Touch, because when I load the CP through a browser, all of the images behave correctly. Is there a trick to clear the cache on the iphone beyond force restarting the app? I also rebooted the phone without effect.


Tap the Clear Image Cache button at the bottom of the Indigo Touch settings screen. ;)

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Posted on
Fri Apr 06, 2018 10:57 am
Professor Falken offline
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Re: Rachio

Did you happen to try to change the old one to a different sprinkler - say an X10 sprinkler - then reconfiguring at a Rachio? I suspect that would have worked.


No, but that would be a good idea to know for the future, or for other users, thanks.


Tap the Clear Image Cache button at the bottom of the Indigo Touch settings screen.


I don't think I have that button yet. I have resisted upgrading from the 2.0.5, because when my wife did it on her old phone last year, I could no longer get her set up with a functioning custom icon pointing to a "kiosk mode" version of Indigo touch:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=18606

I really like the way I have mine set up that way (full screen, no menu or status bar) and don't want to lose that functionality (I just drag that regular icon deep onto a further down homescreen in case I need to get to the log, etc).

I haven't yet tried using the configurator since she upgraded to an iphone 8. It might work fine now. Eventually I'll have to do something, since it also traps me on a lower iOS as well. But y'all added that "clear cache" on the newer version of the app, right?
Last edited by Professor Falken on Tue Apr 10, 2018 12:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Posted on
Sun Apr 08, 2018 10:39 am
Professor Falken offline
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Re: Rachio

I have resisted upgrading from the 2.0.5, because when my wife did it on her old phone last year, I could no longer get her set up with a functioning custon icon pointing to a "kiosk mode" version of Indigo touch


FWIW, I just tried the configurator on my wife's newer iphone 8 (iOS 11, most recent Indigo Touch) and it seemed to work perfectly, including both the custom icon and the full "kiosk mode" on the app.

So I guess my previous issues were related to the older phone hardware or something. I am happy that I should now be able to update both my own phone OS and to the current Indigo Touch version.

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