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Irrigation Controller for 2020


zaphod

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I had a hydrawise system put in last week and the hydrawise driver on annex4 isn't too bad. Doesn't give you nearly the control of the hydrawise app, but it gives you manual zone on/off control which is nice. The hydrawise has so many different factors it takes into account (wind, temp, humidity etc) and is pretty self sufficient in my experience so far. I would say I integrated it into c4 because I could....less so because it needed to be if that makes sense? I would only use the driver if I was planning specific programming based off zones being on/off etc. My boss has setup a rachio before and he said the app is nicer than hydrawise but I personally don't mind the app.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have a driver called Weather Station that seems to have replaced the WU driver.  I have a station, but this works even with folks that doesn't it?  There doesn't seem to be a spot in the driver for an API key so this should work for anyone.

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17 minutes ago, zaphod said:

I have a driver called Weather Station that seems to have replaced the WU driver.  I have a station, but this works even with folks that doesn't it? 

that driver supports control4's own weather API as well as WU but requires your own API key for WU

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  • 3 weeks later...

Tried to start up my Rachio Gen 1 yesterday but although the Rachio ap and C4 think a zone is active, the sprinkler never fires and thus no water.  The wiring hasn’t changed in 5 years.  Cant see anything obvious; waters on, controllers connected to Wi-Fi but no water.  Not going to mess with it.
 

Ordered a Gen 3 to replace it and migrate the settings.  Anyone done this with C4?  If I migrate the Rachio controller in the Rachio ap, are any changes needed in C4?
Does the Blackwire driver provide any function not available when using a gen 1 controller?

 

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16 hours ago, jfh said:

Tried to start up my Rachio Gen 1 yesterday but although the Rachio ap and C4 think a zone is active, the sprinkler never fires and thus no water.  The wiring hasn’t changed in 5 years.  Cant see anything obvious; waters on, controllers connected to Wi-Fi but no water.  Not going to mess with it.

In my experience, if the sprinkler controller thinks it's on (and the LED on the Rachio is on), your zone valve or wiring has issues, not the Rachio...

Most likely a valve solenoid gone bad.

RyanE

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22 minutes ago, RyanE said:

In my experience, if the sprinkler controller thinks it's on (and the LED on the Rachio is on), your zone valve or wiring has issues, not the Rachio...

Most likely a valve solenoid gone bad.

RyanE


I’ll see later tonight when we move the wiring to the new controller.  I just found it odd that not a single zone fired the other day.  It wasn’t just single valve.

 

To answer my own questions for others - the setting migration in the Rachio ap during setup of the new controller was almost instantaneous.  Once that was done, I deleted the gen 1 controller.  In C4 just delete/add the last digit of the API key in the properties tab to update the controller info.  All programming info remained intact.

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18 hours ago, jfh said:

To answer my own questions for others - the setting migration in the Rachio ap during setup of the new controller was almost instantaneous.  Once that was done, I deleted the gen 1 controller.  In C4 just delete/add the last digit of the API key in the properties tab to update the controller info.  All programming info remained intact.

I have to do that on a regular basis (at least once a year even without any major system hardware changes), it's annoying but hopefully I have enough notes now I will remember to do it before it shuts off my water because it thinks my sprinkler system running is a leak.  Maybe by next year I will remember before it bites me...

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Well, don’t know what it was but switched the wires to the gen 3 and everything is fine.  The gen 1 is relegated to the recycle bucket.  Sure won’t miss that wonky Wi-Fi setup.

 

The Rachio Gen 3 is a major step up.

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3 hours ago, jfh said:

Well, don’t know what it was but switched the wires to the gen 3 and everything is fine.  The gen 1 is relegated to the recycle bucket.  Sure won’t miss that wonky Wi-Fi setup.

Glad to hear it was not a wiring / zone valve issue.

I didn't understand from your initial description that *all* your zones were not working...  :)

RyanE

 

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Wow...lost the population of the controller information just 4 days after I forced it to re-populate...so another night of partial irrigation (even though Rachio thinks it completed) and waking up to no water because of a false positive on a water leak.  Ticket opened.

Is this happening to anybody else?  I'll have to search old posts, but the only time I remember it mentioned was in @jfh post above mentioning moving to new controller and forcing a re-population.  I'm not doing hardware swaps, although I have had to reboot the controller some as I've been doing a lot of programming lately.  Something has to be triggering it losing the controller info.

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Update: I found something I either missed in 2018, or the Sprinkler Timer Experience driver was updated.   You can program off of on / off in the Sprinkler Timer Experience driver (this driver treats each zone as a control relay) for each zone.  I previously only saw "selected" or by time left.  They are at the bottom (see screenshot) so I guess I could have missed it, it wouldn't be the first time I've been stupid about programming.

To try to workaround the controller de-association I am running into on the Blackwire driver, I've moved all my on-off programming (for my leak detection override) to the individual Sprinkler zones.  I guess I will probably still lose the bindings when the controller de-associates and everything will break again, but I'll give it a shot as something different to try. 

I did leave the "all off" programming in the Blackwire driver as kind of a secondary precaution to my Flologic leak detection being left in an override state indefinitely.

And I searched all old posts with "Rachio" and "Blackwire" and can't find anybody else mentioning the recurring controller de-association issue...sigh

image.thumb.png.78348f6278d6174d3cee88e1395b509a.png

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@turls - let us know what Blackwire says.  I’ve never seen the Rachio driver loose the details of the connected system.  
 

Blackwire is apparently updating the driver soon because the current weather and temp fields aren’t being populated (and there may be other things fixed because of Rachio API changes).

C4 to Rachio works fine (though you can’t do anything with schedules or water delays), but Rachio to C4 seems to be missing a lot.

I realized the other day that theIr Rachio driver doesn’t have events for individual zone off, just on, and does not fire events when Rachio stops/starts zones during a schedule where a given zone turns on/off multiple times (e.g. when there is a soaking cycle) so doing anything in C4 based on a Rachio initiated event Is somewhat pointless.  I would like to see the Rachio driver provide events by zone that you can see in the Rachio ap history or at least fire a message event whenever the Rachio ap writes a message to history (assuming of course the API supports it).

 

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On 6/5/2020 at 7:12 AM, jfh said:

@turls - let us know what Blackwire says.  I’ve never seen the Rachio driver loose the details of the connected system.  
 

Since I've been keeping track, every time I restart the HC800 it loses the details.  Wish I could find some other users this is happening to.  I don't normally restart the HC800 that often but for various reasons it has been lately.  Hopefully support comes up with something.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well, I spoke way too soon.  The bindings are completely non-existent for me with the new driver.  Anybody else try driver 211 yet?  The good news is the Rachio doesn't de-associate every time my HC800 is rebooted, but the bad news is the driver is now completely broken for me--I could at least workaround the issue before.

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17 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

Yes. I beta tested it and could never break it. Try this to get the bindings back. Delete last char of your API key. Set. Add it back. Set.

Then deslect your system. Set. Reselect your system. Set.

Nope, already basically tried this.  Did it again exactly as you describe.  No bindings.

When I mess with the API key the system entry disappears. But it still associates and populates.  I can then do the deselect / reselect system as you describe and nothing changes.

I can tell it is talking to the Rachio cloud because the API call number increases when I do these.

EDIT: did all this again after a system reboot and I got bindings.  Not convinced this is fixed though because I had already rebooted after I loaded the newest driver.  I guess I will just have to wait this out to see if the bindings stay or not.

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5 hours ago, turls said:

Well, I spoke way too soon.  The bindings are completely non-existent for me with the new driver.  Anybody else try driver 211 yet?  The good news is the Rachio doesn't de-associate every time my HC800 is rebooted, but the bad news is the driver is now completely broken for me--I could at least workaround the issue before.

I noticed some weirdness last night, but haven’t had time to look into it.  Started a zone on the Rachio site and C4 didn’t recognize it and Rachio didn’t recognize the standby off/on commands from C4

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For anyone who lost their bindings add and remove a space from the API key. If you only have 1 controller on your system there is no need to even select the system. it will work whether your system is selected or the box is blank. The only time you need to use that system drop down box is if you have more than 1 Rachio controller on your account. 

If after that you are having issues post up debugging logs and we will reivew them. 

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5 hours ago, jfh said:

I noticed some weirdness last night, but haven’t had time to look into it.  Started a zone on the Rachio site and C4 didn’t recognize it and Rachio didn’t recognize the standby off/on commands from C4

We worked on fixing the other bug and ended up creating another I guess. We tested this for a full weeks without this issue coming up. Not sure what you are seeing here. Maybe a reboot is in order for you too. 

 

In theory you shouldn't have to mess with your API key or reselect the system if everything was working before the driver updated. Emphasis added... If the driver was in a non-functioning state where the system wasn't selected it probably didn't update correctly. I'm still not sure why it was getting in that state before but there are a lot of factors. It seems a reboot of the controller fixes most issues if the update process doesn't work. 

There is a UI bug I'm trying to track down in composer where the drop downs are not showing what was selected. You can click off the driver (on to another driver) and back and it will be set. Weird. 

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