![]() Thrive is built into the Rachio app, which alerts you to apply the stuff to your lawn roughly every 45 days. The Rachio app now includes prompts that tell you when it’s time to fertilize. Lawn Champion isn’t your typical fertilizer it’s a natural, kid/pet-safe product that includes “microalgae and other nutrients feed healthy microbes in your soil to create a living environment plants love.” So, better than Brawndo (despite the absence of electrolytes). The company crunches the numbers and determines your soil type based on your location, then sets you up with a kit that includes an expandable hose (up to 100 feet in length), applicator nozzles, and several bottles of Lawn Champion, its homegrown fertilizer which looks a lot like the “green juice” that you’d get at Whole Foods. With Thrive, you plug in your address and outline the shape of your yard on the Rachio website. The other new feature withing the Rachio ecosystem-whichever model you have-is the introduction of Thrive, a completely optional, subscription-based liquid fertilizer concept. Rachio’s new subscription-based fertilizer service comes with an expanding water hose, your initial liquid fertilizer needs, and a dispenser. And Rachio continues to update its app regularly, taking baby steps toward making the system easier to use by un-burying the most commonly used features. ![]() Other than some setup headaches, I encountered no trouble in day-to-day use, from scheduled waterings to manual runs, as the 3e is indistinguishable from the 3 within the Rachio app. For a seasoned Rachio user like me (this is the fifth model I’ve tested), it wasn’t difficult to figure out, but new users may be stymied by what can be a fairly steep learning curve. It took another four tries from there to get the unit to connect to my Wi-Fi network.Īs well, somewhere along the way, the wizard-based setup routine died, and I later had to manually enter all the information about my watering zones in Rachio’s settings instead of following the usual guided tour. Scanning the bar code with my camera didn’t work at all, and it took several tries of manually entering the unit’s serial number before it connected to the Rachio app. While the wiring of the sprinkler leads was as simple as it is on the standard Rachio unit-the 3e uses the same easy clip-on system for your wiring-the app struggled to register the unit wirelessly. I did have some unusual setup hiccups with the 3e. The Rachio 3e’s biggest limitation is that it can control only eight zones. Other than these few missing features, you won’t find any other major differences between the 3e and the 3-although Rachio warns that future features developed for the 3 might not be extended to the 3e. Also, the 3e does still support Alexa and Google Assistant as well as IFTTT, so if you really need to integrate it with another device, you can probably find a way to make it happen. ![]() ![]() HomeKit adds little to the Rachio experience, and I’ve yet to find any legitimate need to sync my sprinkler controller to my smart lights. This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best smart sprinkler controllers, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping.Īdmittedly, you’re not missing out on a lot.
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