In April my husband and I moved into a new house. It was big step for both us: our first place after moving back to the US from London and our first “suburban” home with a yard on a quiet street.
The previous owners had fixed it up nicely with new kitchen appliances and a few bits of smart home technology including a Nest Learning Thermostat, two Nest Protect smoke detectors and a Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller. It’s not CNET’s house of the future, but it’s the most grownup place I’ve ever lived.
I’d thought about making our previous two homes more connected, but never followed through either because we were renting (that said, a smart rental is possible!) or I was just too lazy. Though I’m moderately handy around the house, this time I savored the idea of moving into a place with gadgets that were already set up. As I saw it, we had only to unpack and add Wi-Fi. Easy, right?
Well, not completely. I was able to skip installing the equipment — the process for setting up the thermostat is intimidating — but learning to use them brought its own set of challenges.
Kent German/CNET
Watering with the Rachio
After hooking up Wi-Fi (a drama in itself, which I’ll conveniently blame Comcast for), I started with the Rachio to save our browning lawn. As the controller was already there, I figured I had only to create an account, download the Rachio app and activate the controller using my phone. At least that’s what Rachio’s website directed me to do.
The first two steps went fine, but I was unable to finish because the controller couldn’t find a Wi-Fi connection. At first, I thought the problem was that the signal in our basement laundry room was too weak (I was down to one bar one my phone) so I bought a Wi-Fi extender. That boosted the signal nicely, but still I was fumbling in the dark. Grrr.
I tried a few more times but had no luck. I was just at the point of calling Rachio’s customer support when it finally hit me — the controller was automatically searching for the previous network, which (of course) it would never find. OK, fine, maybe I was being a tad dense at this point, but the minimalist design of both the app and the controller (unlike Nest’s thermostat, it doesn’t have a display) make it difficult to work out exactly what’s wrong. Outside of a series of status lights, there are no clear messages to guide your troubleshooting.
Once I performed a factory reset, I was ready to water. It’s just that now I had to figure out what to do with the Rachio — an even bigger challenge when you don’t have a green thumb. Fortunately, the sellers had left a list of the sprinkler zones. But if they hadn’t been so helpful, there would have been no way to find where the zones covered outside of starting a test run and going outside to watch.
Read the rest of Kent German ‘s story HERE.