An Update On The Wireless Flow Meter

Hey there Rachio Family,

At Rachio, we’re incredibly proud of the three generations of Rachio controllers and accessories we’ve created, and are even more grateful for the dedicated customers we’ve earned along the way.

Our mission is to provide our customers with products that are easy to use and personally rewarding. In particular, the Wireless Flow Meter has saved hundreds of thousands of gallons of water by notifying customers of unusual flow rates, and it will continue to help users like you monitor your lawn and save money from wherever you are. Unfortunately, the variability in irrigation system configurations made for a more complicated Flow Meter installation process for some of our customers—something that falls short of our mission. Because of this, we’ve decided to discontinue sales and production of the Wireless Flow Meter.

We want to stress that the Flow Meter is and will continue to be a supported and working Rachio product. Customers should not be concerned about their currently installed Flow Meters and can trust that the reason for this decision is not due to its current performance or accuracy.

This has also been communicated via email to all current and waitlisted Wireless Flow Meter users. Please check your emails for more information.

Have questions? Click here to learn more.

We’re so thankful to be part of your home and are excited to continue to bring you products that support our mission—and yours.

Best,

Lo + the Rachio Team

post by laura.bauman on Nov 6, 2019

Hey Rachio Family! 👋

This has also been communicated via email to all current and waitlisted Wireless Flow Meter users. Please check your emails for more information.

Additional Responses

DLane

@laura.bauman - just wanted to let you know that as one of the above WFM users, I have not received an email (yet and yes I did check the SPAM folder).

If it is a support/complicated install issue, it seems like it would be a perfect opportunity to license out the firmware (for a reasonable fee) to someone and let them deal with the support issues. Unless Rachio is planning on ditching the 900 MHz radio for a different reason in a future version.

laura.bauman

Hey @DLane! I’m so sorry that email didn’t come through. Thanks for letting me know—I’ll send it to you manually right now!

If anyone else didn’t see an email come through, please let me know!

Additionally, thank you for the feedback about licensing support to a third party! While we don’t have plans to utilize a third party vendor for support, our internal Product and Engineering teams will continue to release software and firmware updates as needed and we won’t be discontinuing support of the product at all 🙂 We have also not made any decisions about discontinuing the 900 Mhz internal radio.

top_gun_de

Hey Laura, I think the next step should be to give more documentation on the kind of wired flow meters you support.

From my current knowledge, there are two basic types:

• Frequency modulation: Devices that modulate a frequency onto an electric dc signal. The higher the flow, the higher the frequency.
• Pulse-generating meters: Devices that get 24V from the controller, and one per gallon or per liter make a short electric pulse. Usually, it’s a classical meter with rotating numbers and digits, and there is a magnet fixed to a wheel that passes a reed sensor once per gallon or litre. This is what Hunter ie sells, and this is what is common in Europe, as it’s basically a house meter plus the magnet and reed sensor.

What do you support? Atm, you only hand out a list of US brands. It’s time to clearly state your specification.

laura.bauman

Hey @top_gun_de! Thanks for the feedback 🙂 We do have these support docs available - is there anything missing from this that you’d like to be considered?

Thank you for all the detailed information and suggestions @top_gun_de! Sending all this info and your recommendation to the team so they can dig into this option a little further 🙂

For further details on the installation process and feedback, please reach out to the support team to ensure seamless integration of your devices without complication. If you have received discrepancies in communication about feature or product management, we encourage direct engagement with our operational team.