Transferring zone settings to new Rachio 3?

Installed my new Rachio 3 replacing my 2. Took less than 5 minutes, same mounting holes and WAY, WAY faster to install wires. Nice. I had no issues adding it to my Rachio app on the iPhone however my account now has two controllers, the old one and the new one that I can change between.

Is there anyway to copy over all the zones settings, photos etc. to the new controller before I select “remove” for the old controller? Right now the new controller is a blank slate.

Also if anyone knows why, the Rachio website on the computer when I try to login just then shows an “updating user information and spinning circle.”?

Thanks!

1 Like

@boldblue737 - according to @Franz that was supposed to happen during on boarding:

Do you have a 16 zone Gen 2 and an 8 zone Gen 3? Is so, then I’d contact support and see if they can move the first 8 over. Otherwise, ???

That’s correct, my Rachio 2 was a 16 zone (I only used 8) and my Rachio 3 is an 8 zone. I guess that is the problem, no big deal… no need to call support, I’ll just reenter everything, shouldn’t take too long but now I know.

@boldblue737

Unfortunately we do not support 16 zone to 8 zone. It’s gets difficult mapping zones from 9-16 (if there are any) scheduling data or zone characteristics and we end up making bad assumptions :wink:

:cheers:

no problem, i totally get it thats a niche use case. i just realized i have only had 8 zones for 13 years and although i keep saying one of these days i’ll add some drip zones or something i never do. the 16 i had before was overkill, especially since i’m having a habit of buying each of your new controllers. :wink:

1 Like

I’m on the same boat. Bought a 16-zone Rachio 2 two years ago, never used the “extra 8” zones. As a matter of fact, all I’m using are 6 zones of the 16 . . . .

Having said that, and considering I also work in the computer industry, I think this answer (“it gets difficult to map 16 zones to 8 zones”) is not very useful, or even correct. It is correct, I think, that it is IMPOSSIBLE (not “very hard”) to map existing 9 zones or more to 8 zones. But if the “source controller” is 16-zone, and only 8 or less are in use . . . what is the challenge here ?

At least, if not 100% automated from “16 (with less than 9 in use) to 8”, there should be an option to a guided migration, or at the absolute very least, to be able to “clone” a zone from the 16-controller to the 8-controller . . .

2 Likes

Spent the last hour trying to find out why I didnt see a Transfer button… must be the 16 to 8 zone.

This is so lame. Rachio really how hard is it… if you are only using zones 1-8 on a gen2 to map it to zones 1-8 on a gen3. If i had realized I could not have done this I would have never bought a Gen3. It’s a royal PITA to go though and remap, take picture and screw with all the settings.

FAIL!

1 Like

@void64

Currently investigating the difficulty of this. Thoughts on allowing us to transfer your settings for you?

:cheers:

I would be fine with having you guys transfer the settings for me. I just hide the upper 8 zones to keep them from cluttering the UI, and there not part of any schedules.

I also took advantage of the early 16-zone deal for v2 because it was available first and we were collectively told that the 8-zone unit wouldn’t be cheaper than the 16-zone early bird deal. I’ve customized my eight zones enough that I don’t want to manually transfer them over, but if Rachio wants to help, I have a v3 sitting in a box ready to go :slight_smile:

@franz, any update on transferring settings from 16-zone controllers to 8-zone, even if done on a case-by-case basis?

@franz ?

@rccoleman

I’ll make it happen, sit tight! One time offer :wink:

@rccoleman

Controller settings, zones and schedules are now copied over.

Things to note:

  • Soil moisture is too difficult to copy over. You can manually fill/empty on the zone soil moisture graph for each zone.
  • You have picked a national station that is about 8 miles away from your house. If that is working well great!, if not there are a lot of stations much closer, one is on top of your house. One of the benefits of weather intelligence plus.

Thanks for your patience.

:cheers:

Thanks, Franz! I believe that the weather station that I picked is the closest non-personal station near me and I didn’t have good luck with closer PWSs. I now have my own WeatherFlow station, and I’d prefer to use the station that I’ve set up through WU - KCASANDI4307. It looks like I can choose that now with Weather Intelligence Plus, so I switched to that.

I’ll take care of the soil moisture.

1 Like

Awesome!

@franz - Is this an offer for any 16 station 2 -----> 8 station 3 user (assuming stations 9-16 on the 2 are unused)? I am in the same boat. I emailed support asking if the service was available to me and they simply sent me a link describing how to use the tool to transfer settings, which will not work in my case.

Thanks.

Hi Rccoleman,

I was wondering which weatherstation product you have for your house. I live in a rural area and in the mountains where we experience alot of micro climates and the nearest weather station is quite a waze away. I think its cool your weatherstation is accessible through Rachio. I would be interested in putting one at my location. Any advice?

As I mentioned above, WeatherFlow. Weather Underground has restricted their API access, but presumably you can still access your station that you’re publishing publicly.

@fraz.

So I have a simpler issue, but in the same predicament.

I have a gen2 16 zone, but just bought and installed a gen 3 16 zone. I too have a very highly customized schedule.

Is there a way to copy over the settings from controller to controller ?

Doug