Well seem to be up and running for over a week now. Been tweaking on automation settings to maximize the run time efficiencies of my well so as to not short cycle it. The only issue still pending (which I believe is a Rachio issue) is that my primary flex daily stops short every morning at about 7:09AM. This has consistently happened over the past several days where the schedule ran. I do have it set to “start at sunset” and not “finish by sunrise”, but I may just try switching that to a hard start time and see if that makes a difference. Either way I have a ticket in with Rachio support. The other small issue is reported water time in the history. The way their app works it only reports the last run time after the last pause and not total water time for the zone. Kind of annoying but they assured me when setting the next flex daily schedule it takes the total watering time from the previous schedule into account. We shall see…
The way their app works it only reports the last run time after the last pause and not total water time for the zone.
That’s strange…When you look back at a previous day does it show the correct amount or is it always just the time after the pause?
Glad to hear the rest seems to be working.
When I look at the history of “watered” it only show the time from the last pause, not total watering time. Hoping to hear back from Rachio on this, but they did state this was expected/intended behavior which doesn’t really make sense to me. Will report back when I hear from them.
Hey @brg468,
My saga with Rachio continues. I’ve been discussing with them the manual shut off that seems to happen every 12 hours after my flex daily schedule has started. Do you think I could be over-polling their API?
thanks for your thoughts.
Chandler
Emma N. (Rachio)
Nov 6, 2020, 5:50 AM MST
Rachio’s public API has rate limiting in order to improve server performance for all users. We only allow 1,700 calls per day, which is over 1 call per minute. In general, this limit is only reached by integrations that are polling.
If you’d like to explore a non-polling method, we do support webhooks. We are absolutely willing to work with users to discuss exceptions on rate limiting for specific use cases.
Rate limiting is reset at midnight UTC and the response header can be viewed for the following data:
X-RateLimit-Limit – The limit that you cannot surpass in a given amount of time
X-RateLimit-Remaining – The number of calls you have available until a given reset timestamp or calculated given some sort of sliding time window.
X-RateLimit-Reset – The timestamp in UTC formatted to HTTP spec per RFC 1123 for when the limits will be reset.
Example of response header data:
x-ratelimit-limit →1700
x-ratelimit-remaining →4
x-ratelimit-reset →2018-03-13T00:00:00Z
To learn more about our API token, check out our Rachio API Documentation
One other thing to notice is that, if your system goes offline, it will follow the normal schedule, without the automation control, which could possibly damage your system.
Another great resource I highly recommend is the Rachio community, where you can find users with similar issues: community.rachio.com
I hope this helps and let me know in case of further questions or concerns!
Best,
Emma N.
Rachio Support
The only time we poll is on startup of HA. Everything else is webhook-based, the exception being any commands we send to the controller would count towards the rate limit.
Did Rachio say they think you’re hitting the rate limit?
How often is the pause/resume automation running? Unless its triggering almost constantly I can’t see that being an issue…
They were stating the rate limit might be the cause, but I’m comfortable stating I know we are not hitting their rate limit. Over the 12 hour schedule, the “integration event” on the history of the Rachio was activated 43 times and at almost exactly 3 hours (10:30AM) it says Schedule Stopped - Primary was manually stopped after 723 minutes. However, I know I didn’t manually stop anything.
Thoughts?
Is the schedule being started through the app, i.e. a flex schedule, or are you starting it from HA somehow?
I don’t know that it matters but just trying to rule things out
Also what kinds of integration events is it showing in the history?
Sorry for the delayed response. I am starting the schedule via the app, the only thing I’m using HA for is the pause and resume and not running more than one controller simultaneously. I’ve attached two screen shots below from the app’s history to help show you what I’m seeing. One shows the manual stop which is happening and the second shows the pause/resume logs which are showing up on the app. Hope this is helpful.
That’s really odd. I would think if it was anything that HA was doing to stop the schedule it would show up as an integration event. And if we hit the API rate limit (don’t think that’s happening either) it wouldn’t stop a running schedule.
The only thing I can think of since you mentioned 3 hours was that there is a limit when starting a zone (not a schedule) that the max duration can only be 3 hours, but I don’t see how that should be a factor since no one zone is running for 3 hours and your not starting it from the API…
Unrelated I think, but did you catch the error in the pause automation I posted a while back? I just noticed it:
sequence:
- wait_template: "{{is_state('switch.<controller_1_schedule>','off')}}"
# Wait just under the 1 hour and if the other controller is still running, re-start the pause.
timeout: '59:00:00'
Should be:
timeout: '00:59:00'
That was 59 hours…oops 
well I certainly did NOT catch that, but I’ll definitely check it now!
I’ll let you know what Rachio says about the 12 hour thing I’ve observed.
thanks again!
well not good news from Rachio, see below. I might look at switching to the RainMachine as it looks like the inegration currently supports the pause/resume feature, thoughts?
This is Dane with Rachio Support, stepping in for Rodrigo. We were unable to determine what causes the stop after 12 hours and our engineering team is not resourced to support API related issues including IFTTT integrations.
I think the issue is likely due to the number of pauses occuring during a schedule run. Your schedule on Monday should have ran for 6.15 hours (369 minutes) and started at 10pm Sunday. The pausing caused the schedule to run for over 12 hours and triggered a stop. Operating a Flex Daily schedule normally will allow runs for up to 20 hours. What is likely happening is that the integration pauses are causing the run time to exceed 20 hours total which causes a potential conflict with the next scheduled run.
You might try putting a day in between allowed watering days to see if that helps. I also noticed that you have both your integration and Smart Cycle activated which is extending the schedules total runtime further.
I understand that switching to the Fixed schedule defeats the purpose of buying a Rachio. If you’d like to return the Rachio controller, please provide a receipt and I will send you an Amazon gift card in that amount once the controller is received.
Well it sounds like pause/resume could actually be what’s causing the issue, so I guess the question you’d have to look into is how Rainmachine would handle the same scenario. Pausing Rachio from HA seems like it works fine, it’s the extended duration of the runs because of the pausing that sounds like the problem. I don’t know anything about Rainmachine, maybe they have more flexibility when it comes to longer runs. Maybe someone familiar with that integration can chime in?
Follow up…Is the majority of the pausing coming from the well pressure sensor or because the controllers are trying to run simultaneously?
Yeah, not exactly switching yet, but I was definitely planning on talking with rain machine before just switching. and yes agreed because of the amount of water I need to put down, my irrigation could run up to 24 hours a day especially in the summer, which would not allow the rachio to “re-calibrate” for the next days watering. Also I’ve noticed, with the manual stop the rachio does not record the entire watering amounts, only the amounts from the last pause to the manual stop thus making it look like I need even more water the next day. Frustrating. If the Rainmachine would potentially run up against the same problem, I’ll be in even more trouble. Hopefully someone on RainMachine can chime in here as you’ve said…
On your follow up, I actually changed the start time of the secondary controller to about 1PM in the afternoon, keeping it well separated from the primary controller. This is outside the 12 hour window for the primary controller so the pause of the secondary controller has not really been a factor at this point.