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by Be Kind1

Looks cool, seems like it will work great when you program it, and easy to program. However so many inconsistencies and errors, if program to run in morning for short time, instead it’s running in evening for hours. Or program is set to run at 6:30 am, and it runs at 11:45 pm. Or we have it set to run every day but Monday when it will getting mowed, and instead it says next scheduled run is two weeks from now. Often I’m shocked to find it running at various times when it’s not meant too. Often I find that it tries to conserve so much that instead if running for 15 minutes it runs for a minute or two and new plants are dying. One zone we can’t get to run, we have had a sprinkler company come out and verify, it’s getting power and water and it’s set up and programmed right, and was working on our previous system just before switched over. It is either so convoluted and too smart for its own good, with all the skips and conservations, or even when you program it to not be, it’s doesn’t run when it should. Takes way too much time to continually manage and override after you get it all set up and programmed, setting it up was the easy straight forward part. We have two computer science engineers at our house and neither of them like it. I do not recommend, needs major software improvements.

by Wsicjtidbduvt

System is so “smart” that it deprives you of control and easy adjustment. If you aren’t a farmer, the advanced settings on the app require an advanced understanding of soil composition / water retention that is not explained and is utterly impossible to understand. Meantime, it is watering lightly (<30m/zone, every 4-5 days), contrary to everything my local cooperative extension has taught me about deep watering to have grass roots grow deep ... and this in mid-August on eastern Long Island. Guess what? Grass is brown, plantings, dying for weeks, are now dead. I’ve implored Rachio for assistance, got a robo-reply saying I’d hear from them in 3-5 days. Now more than a week later: Nothing. Now I’m just using a hose-end sprinkler (love it!) and setting the irrigation to go on manually every day or two for at least an hour/zone. Hoping at least that I get my lawn back through artificial resuscitation. The hydrangeas and Rosa rugosa look like lost causes. Hey, thanks Rachio. (And Rachio, don’t send me to your freaking website to spend half a day trying to find solutions in your community. Either give me a manual with detailed instructions, or give me a freakin human being to walk me thru set-up. Otherwise, just send me back my old irrigation controller!!!)

by IPad Mini User 75000

The app has an annoying habit of going to a completely blank screen (on iPad Pro using iOS 12.4) at least once a day whenever I switch from a screen (for example, changing a watering duration in a given zone) back to another screen (like ‘home’). There is only a white screen with a smallblack line across the bottom center of the screen. Nothing works to get the app to respond except to delete the app and load it anew from the App Store, which gets old very quickly. Additionally, its ability to postpone scheduled waterings based on upcoming weather forecasts of rain is too dependent (100%) on a weather service, which historically is nowhere near that perfect; while it is relatively easy to override such a “rain skip” of a scheduled watering by clicking on a “run” button, that has become the antithesis of automated watering for me in five months of usage in the DFW Metroplex. It is actually proving to be easier and more efficient to turn OFF all of the apps vaunted watering aids and do a manual shut-off when experience shows heavy rain, saturated ground or high winds