I have a Rachio 3 controller and according to the documentation you can pause watering (Rachio - Home Assistant) but I’m not able to find this in my automations. Currently have motion sensors that activate a particular sprinkler zone when triggered. This works using different sensors and different sprinkler zones around the yard.
The issue I’m running into is trying to make it easier in the automation to interrupt a currently running schedule. Example: All sprinkler zones are scheduled to run on a Sunday between 4a-6a. If a motion sensor activates at 5am, pause the currently running schedule, activate the triggered zone, then resume the paused schedule. To enable the sprinkler schedule to run to completion, I have put in an exception for those days/times in the automation so it ignores the sensor event during that window and the Rachio schedule can run as expected.
I have to put this exception into every related automation which makes it cumbersome to manage if I change the schedule. Has anyone had success with the referenced documentation? Any other ideas on how to simplify this setup?
What you’re wanting to do as far as pause, go run something else, then go resume the schedule is not possible. Once you have the controller do something else, the previous running schedule is done.
Seems like the exception you have in place is an ok option. A better option might be use a condition to not fire those sensor events if a schedule switch is on, which might be easier then a fixed date/time if the times of the schedule were to change and might be easier to copy/paste as a condition.
Thank you for providing instructions on where those additional Rachio options are. I have not been able to find them.
For the issue at hand, I figured my options were
Manually create and maintain an exception window in the automations.
Try the pause/resume feature of the device.
Build out infrastructure pods that queue stop/start messages as motions are triggered.
Started with the easiest one first but it’s become unmanageable. I like your schedule switch suggestion as that is much easier to manage across the automations and without the overhead of infrastructure pods using a queuing mechanism to continue a set schedule.
