Missing Alerts on Solenoid Failure, Rachio Reboot

post by mpleitner on Mar 23

We came home from a trip to find plants were dying. It turns out a couple of our solenoids were bad, but in a way that caused the Rachio to reboot rather than detect a Zone Fault. I was surprised to find that there is no way to be alerted to when the controller reboots during a run, or even any time it reboots. It would seem to be something that would be easy to add in terms of when to alert. I asked why COLD_REBOOT was not an reportable event, and I was told it would be a product enhancement, so here it is, a request to add COLD_REBOOT to the events that can be pushed as an app notification or sent via email.

I was also disappointed that the history was no longer available on the web, so I solved both problems. I wrote a monitor program that runs at midnight every day, gets all of the history since the last monitor run, and writes it to a monthly csv file. I get an email just after midnight with the monitor summary. The program also examines the new records it finds for any COLD_REBOOT events and calls them out in the email, so I would know a day later that the controller rebooted. I can then load the history into Excel and see what is going on. Looking at the history, I found the COLD_REBOOT events at the same times every day, which means it was when those zones were run on a daily schedule.

post by nadnerb on Mar 24

The fact that multiple solenoids died and your Rachio rebooted leads me to believe that either your power supply is going bad or there was a momentary voltage dip/spike, either way I would recommend a UPS for your Rachio.

post by mpleitner on Mar 25

Do you have any suggestions as to a suitable small UPS as this is the only device in the garage that might need it.

post by RPostWVU on Mar 28

I have mine on a basic UPS, like a 600VA APC. They’re like $70 new. The battery lasts around 8 years and costs $20 to replace with generic. My modem and router and dog fence controller are all there, so they are all on it.

post by Toolworker on Mar 28

When Rachio says “product enhancement,” does that mean a regular update to the app or another $29.99 feature?

And in the meantime, would you consider making your monitor program available?

post by mpleitner on Mar 30

I still need to iron out a few things, and make sure it transitions properly into April. Once I know it is reliable over time, I will figure out how to share it.

post by JBTexas on Apr 14

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