Schedules in Australia in local time zone? Adelaide local weather?

Dear Australian users and/or Rachio Team,

I am considering to buy a Rachio controller for use in Adelaide, South Australia. Looking at other posts in this forum, it appears that many people have successfully implemented the product down under. However, I have a couple of questions before I proceed with a purchase:

  • Tim zone: Considering Rachio does not officially ship outside of the US and all watering schedules are stored in the Rachio cloud in the US, would my watering schedules reflect my local time zone – or would I have to convert the time to a time zone in the US?

  • Local weather: Is there anyone out there who has successfully implemented in South Australia? I’d be interested to know if there is a weather station in Adelaide configurable in the Rachio system.

  • Apart from sourcing an aftermarket power supply with Australian plug, are there any other snags Australian users should be aware of?

Thanks for your help in advance!

Cheers,
Carsten

I’ve just got a new rachio and am in Sydney, Australia.

Works fine here. The timezone picks up local time. For local weather it uses the airport or any of these local stations, check this map for your city. https://www.pwsweather.com/

For the power supply I went to jaycar and got one from there before the rachio arrived.

Hello rowdybeans, thanks for your reply.
i pulled the trigger in the meantime and ordered from Amazon US, expected delivery date 2nd of January. Like you, I already got the power supply from Jaycar which other users recommended as well. :wink:
I can’t wait to receive the unit!

I am in WA, and have it working fine. There are a few limitations though. If I understand correctly, the seasonal adjustments require local statistics to work correctly, and they don’t have the necessary stats for my region. Every month I get a message saying it is adjusting my watering times, but it is a “null” adjustment. There are various ways around this though. Have fun… I think you’ll like to…

Richard.

Thanks for your note Richard. Fingers crossed the guys from Rachio will think more global and cater more for the international markets as they keep growing. Let’s see what the next app release will have in store when it comes out…

I’ve been using 2 units in Sydney for over 18mths. Also added a Netatmo Weather station in the last 6 months that Rachio now pulls my local weather the data from (in a round about way) instead of a nearby PWS. My wife is also able to use the Rachio without issue from her iPhone. There are some oddities being in Oz but overall it works well.

Some feedback since I have received the controller: I have used it for about a week now. I totally love it! It’s a nice, sturdy, solid unit. Setup was a breeze. So far it has followed my (fixed) schedules to a tee and without fail. I am yet to configure smart schedules.

Jmone, was the netatmo integration easy? I am looking at doing the same (including the rain and wind sensors)… and to hook up an Amazon Echo dot as well.

The Netatmo was pretty easy - the guide is here.

I’d only bother doing this if your local Airport info is too far away to be reliable. I also previously used other peoples data from nearby stations but I was never sure how accurate it is. If you do go the netatmo you will want both sensors. I got my from Amazon in the US.

I also did the Google Home integration. It was a bit trickier as Rachio did NOT appear if the location was set to Australia (had to be US… this may have changed). Also I have 2 x Rachio and the integration only supports 1 device. In the end the App on Andriod / iOS is much easier and just works.

Great, thanks. I’m pretty sure that I will proceed with the personal weather station because I live up in the Adelaide foothills and the weather station is in a completely different micro-climate (23 kilometres away in the flats, at the airport). Looking forward to that next step! …then I might look into Alexa at a later stage.