Finished before sunrise scheduling issue? - Schedules & Zones / Flex Daily - Rachio Community
Finished before sunrise scheduling issue?
post by johnny2678 on Mar 10, 2018
Dashboard is reporting the next scheduled watering starts at 2:41 am and ending at 3:27 am. Only one zone out of 5 in the schedule is going to be watered, and the zone run time is ~1 hour, so shouldn’t this start an hour before sunrise?
DST issue maybe?
post by franz on Mar 12, 2018
Thanks for posting this, I’m having the engineering team review, will let you know what we find.
post by johnny2678 on Mar 12, 2018
Thanks @Franz, Of course the app has recalculated since I posted this. It rained here, so the single zone that I highlighted above is now going to be watered with my other 4 zones in the schedule and is ending at sunrise as expected. However, as the zones get out of sync again and, I suspect I might see this again. Will post back if I do.
post by theflexdude on Mar 12, 2018
Since in flex daily schedules not all zones are guaranteed to water each schedule run, in end-by configuration in order for the system to guarantee that all zones have enough time to finish watering before configured end time in case of observed ET and precipitation changes we determine start time based on maximum duration of the schedule. So you may see schedules ending earlier than exactly at configured end-by time. This is only applicable for flex daily end by schedules. Since we now support freeze and wind skips for flex daily schedules this also gives us a definite time window of when to check if schedule should be executed.
post by scorp508 on Mar 12, 2018
I may be reading this wrong, but the explanation kind of sounds like it essentially kills much of the purpose I envisioned the complete before sunrise option was invented for.
I would suspect many people were already scheduling the start time of a flex daily schedule to start and finish roughly before sunrise, but we’d end up with the same problem of maybe a couple zones running and being complete a lot earlier than desired compared to if all zones needed to run. Of course, changes in sunrise would mean there’s a bit of a shift throughout the seasons.
post by johnny2678 on Mar 12, 2018
Sounds like the End Before Sunrise option isn’t as intelligent as I thought it would be. It just adjusts the start time by a minute or so each day to account for the change in sunrise time:
[Start Time] = [Sunrise] - [Total Schedule Run Time]
Instead of:
Foreach [Zone] in [Schedule]:
If [Zone Moisture Balance indicates zone will water today]:
[End Before Sunrise Offset] += [Zone Watering Duration]
[Start Time] = [Sunrise] - [End Before Sunrise Offset]
post by johnny2678 on Mar 13, 2018
Also, I’m still not sure I understand only checking weather “intelligence” once a day on watering days. It might not be windy 1 hour prior to schedule start, but 2 hours later the wind could be howling, right in the middle of a 5+ hour schedule.
The explanation here seems like if the system determines not all zones need to run, then we’re still going to still be done way before sunrise rather than just before it, though it should reduce some of the seasonal shift since.
post by mwbehr on Mar 19, 2018
Just throwing my two cents in… I have 14 zones that water for just under 1 hour each if they were to all water at once. Obviously, I never want them to ACTUALLY run all in the same day since it would mean watering from sunset to sunrise. I have the zone settings just different enough from each other to basically assure that this never happens. Unfortunately, the “before sunrise” feature feels that it is possible, however, and always wants to start watering at 9 p.m. Though I was excited to see this feature added, I am sadly unable to use it.
post by toddbecker on Jun 24, 2018
This is my conclusion as well.
I’ve set it to start watering at 4 AM instead of “end before sunrise” and it seems to be a lot better even though it isn’t ideal.
post by diabetic_debate on Jul 14, 2021
I am surprised and disappointed that this has not been fixed for three freaking years. My flex daily is supposed to run for 2.5 hours and it is starting it’s run at 1AM and ending at 3.30AM. Rather than starting 2.5 hours before sunrise (sunrise is at 6am, so starting at 3.30AM).
post by scorp508 on Apr 28, 2023
It is entirely disappointing to see this is still the case five years later. May as well remove it from the user interface, so what little hope we had can be stomped out.