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Rachio Iro - The Nest Of Irrigation Control


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Troyfreeze - I am not too worried about the driver.  That may or may not come eventually into my system.  For the cost I've sunk into C4, though I'd rather not spend $300, its not going to make it or break it for me either.  That being said, to answer your original answer to me, my tech needs to come out anyways to repair a few heads, and he offered to wire it up for me.  I just dont want to waste his time if he has to stand and watch me input data, create accounts, etc.  Which is why I was hoping, and if I am reading properly I think the answer is yes, that I can initialize it, create the accounts, set up the app, etc, then wait til he comes and have him wire it up then its ready to roll.

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Yes, assuming you haven't done it already...you can go ahead and get the app going and then flash your wifi info to your box and configure it. The only issue is that say you configure zone 1 as front yard grass and your tech wires it for zone 2 instead. Simple fix. You can still go in and test each zone once the wiring is connected and then reconfigure your zones from the app as needed to match the actual wiring.

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Wow, just installed and I love it!

Replaced my Orbitz unit and in love with this. So simple to change out bout what I really love:

1. Set up wizard. So simple and asks all kinds of questions like what is planted, soil type, nozzle type and slop....with that it then recommends watering days and times

2. Manual operation for testing zones is so simple from your phone. I used to have to run to side of house and turn on one zone at a time in the spring when turning on the system.....then when I noticed what broke over the winter run back and turn off, now I can do easily from my phone

3. Integration with local weather to auto adjust times based on temp and rain

Love this :)

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2. Manual operation for testing zones is so simple from your phone. I used to have to run to side of house and turn on one zone at a time in the spring when turning on the system.....then when I noticed what broke over the winter run back and turn off, now I can do easily from my phone

To be fair, any C4 connected system can do that, with that being said, I'm looking at replacing my "dumb" Rain8 setup with this as the programming is too complicated to match what you get with these newer ones and I need more zones anyway.  And I just got my Cumulus weather station on the same network that Rachio uses, so I should have close to real-time data for Rachio to work with from my yard, not a station 20 miles away.

 

Does anybody know if Rachio will use more than one station to determine its logic?  I know the guy that has two other Cumulus stations in town and I might encourage him to add more networks if Rachio would take advantage of it.

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Since you are all using the Rachio, I was wondering why you chose this unit over the Irrigation Caddy which also has a driver for C4?

Thanks in advance.

This has a driver too. But really I choose this because it's superior imho to ic. I also don't think integration matters for this.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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This has a driver too. But really I choose this because it's superior imho to ic. I also don't think integration matters for this.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

What exactly is superior?

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This has a driver too. But really I choose this because it's superior imho to ic. I also don't think integration matters for this.

 

It matters, not as much as a "dumb" controller but it matters.  I have my Rain8 tied into my leak detection.  Many do leak detection after the sprinkler system, but then what if you have a sprinkler system leak which seems to be as much or more likely than an internal leak.  I turn off leak detection while sprinklers are running using programming.  Just one example.

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I only went with the C4 driver because I'd prefer my tech to have a screen to use.  When my tech is at my house I do not want to follow him around with my phone turning zones on and off for him.  I believe there is an app for tech's to install to use their client's rachio systems, but my tech is well, not tech saavy to say the least.  There is a c4 touch screen in the basement, so he can access the zones and turn them on/off for spring turn on and winter clean out/turn off services.

 

That was the drawback to IC and Rachio at least for me, no touch screen on the control box.  Those that had local control on the control box did not have any C4 integration and at the end of the day were close in price to hardware + C4 driver anyways so no real cost savings.

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I only went with the C4 driver because I'd prefer my tech to have a screen to use.  When my tech is at my house I do not want to follow him around with my phone turning zones on and off for him.  I believe there is an app for tech's to install to use their client's rachio systems, but my tech is well, not tech saavy to say the least.  There is a c4 touch screen in the basement, so he can access the zones and turn them on/off for spring turn on and winter clean out/turn off services.

 

That was the drawback to IC and Rachio at least for me, no touch screen on the control box.  Those that had local control on the control box did not have any C4 integration and at the end of the day were close in price to hardware + C4 driver anyways so no real cost savings.

 

The IC has a front panel screen with buttons that lets you manually trigger any zone.... 

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The IC has a front panel screen with buttons that lets you manually trigger any zone.... 

My mistake - did not see that on your website.  Its on the IC website but I know your site has the C4 specific model and its not mentioned - just Web control, Smart phone/tablet control or Home automation control.  

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