Launching Smart Zone Settings

Hey Rachio community! 👋 I’m James, a machine learning engineer at Rachio, and I’m excited to tell everyone about the first machine learning (ML) feature we’re launching today… Smart Zone Settings. The TLDR is that this feature will help optimize your controller settings for Flex schedules, keeping your lawn healthy while saving you water. Keep reading for more details on how the models work and how we measure water savings.

Advanced watering schedules like Flex Daily require a variety of lawn settings to operate efficiently. Some examples include soil type, crop type, root depth, crop coefficient, sun exposure, slope, and spray head type. These settings can be applied through the mobile app, but they’re often tricky to set accurately.

Naturally, three of the most vital settings for advanced schedules also happen to be the most challenging for users to set: soil type, root depth, and crop coefficient. Since these are the most difficult, we’ve chosen to optimize these three components for advanced schedules through our new ML models. The main purpose of these ML models is to apply smart settings for a newly registered controller without requiring users to do so, making for a streamlined user experience. (Note: users are still free to modify their lawn settings at any point in time; these ML generated Smart Zone Settings are merely the default values initially set at device startup time.)

Behind the scenes, we’ve trained ML models using millions of data points. The models consume the controller’s climate region and the zone’s crop type to deliver optimal predictions for each of the three components. These updated default settings are personalized and smarter than the previous defaults and according to testing, we’ve found they will save our users water without adversely affecting crop growth.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is the process by which water is transferred from the land to the atmosphere by evaporation from the soil and by transpiration from plants. We take into account ET and precipitation to determine how much additional irrigation a lawn needs to remain healthy. Using these historic measurements we can run an irrigation simulation across Rachio controllers that estimate how much water would’ve been irrigated if the Smart Zone Settings were applied. We compare those numbers to the observed irrigation numbers using the current lawn settings and see up to 15% in water savings for Flex schedules, depending on the month.

Based on this thorough evaluation, we’re confident that these machine learned Smart Zone Settings will not only remove the challenging step of initially tuning your Flex watering schedules, but will also yield water savings without hurting your crops.

Comments

post by james.foley on Apr 30, 2020

This is so cool James.

post by laura.bauman on Apr 30, 2020

post by franz on Apr 30, 2020

post by Gene on Apr 30, 2020

Sounds great, anyway to see the suggested settings for those of us already using flex schedules? Would recreating the schedule set the defaults based on the new models?

post by tmcgahey on Apr 30, 2020

I messaged him with the same question @Gene. I might have to set up one of my old controllers and create a fake yard. I assume this will work on Gen1’s?

post by gizbug on Apr 30, 2020

So how do we get these new settings?

post by joylove on May 1, 2020

Would it be possible to back up our existing settings, and then try the new ones? Like you could flip a switch to go Smart, but if you unflipped it, your old settings where not lost.

post by robross0606 on May 2, 2020

Same question about existing systems. Without Rachio addressing this, it feels more like a cash-grab than a new feature for the community. Does this only work with new controllers?

post by andylon on May 2, 2020

Please include guidance from local authorities in the mix. With drought-like conditions returning every summer, the local authorities restrict use of water (on days and the amount to be applier). Happy to help if any more inputs are required.