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A message from RainMachine Team

Dear RainMachine user,

We are tremendously honored to have a large community of RainMachine gardeners who joined the movement towards water conservation through technology. Since the early days, this has been our mission all along.

Over the past 9 years, we have continuously improved RainMachine. For example, we recently enabled access to thousands of NOAA certified weather stations (in addition to tens of thousands of personal weather stations). Combined with forecasting data from geostationary, polar orbit and deep space NOAA satellites, RainMachine is fundamentally the best irrigation controller available on the market.

Unlike other controllers, RainMachine was designed from ground up for cloud-independent operation. RainMachine performs direct access to weather services, locally computing weather science and water schedules. RainMachine will remain fully controllable via open APIs and open-source SDKs as long as a third-party cloud connection is not required.

Regardless of our cloud status, your controller will continue getting weather updates and being able to connect using smartphones and desktops. This is not true for other controllers on the market because they are entirely cloud-dependent.

Why are we offering RainMachine Premium services and why cannot grandfather free cloud services?

Like many other companies, recent economic situations have made it extremely difficult for us to maintain the cost of services, such as cloud support, software updates, and most importantly, our dedicated support team.

In order to continue operations, we need your help!
We understand these are difficult times for our customers as well, and we hope that a $29.99/year ($2.49/month) subscription will help with the costs of operations.

As of June 8, 2022 we are no longer offering free remote access through our servers which will also affect recently introduced features like Shared Account access, IFTTT and some cloud dependent RainMachine Integrations like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. For Premium Services list of benefits and more info please see this page: https://www.rainmachine.com/premium/

Access “from anywhere” remains 100% free, but not as easy to configure. For “DIY” remote access instructions (Port Forwarding), please visit this page.

Thank you,
RainMachine Team

2021 Winter update: More Weather Sources

This is a cumulative software release for RainMachine HD-12/16, RainMachine Pro-8/16, and RainMachine Mini-8.
For more info please visit this page.

New interface to install, update and manage Community Weather Services on mobile/web RainMachine apps. Instead of manually installing a new weather service from different sources, now RainMachine shows a list of verified weather services created by the community which makes it easier to install and update.

Introducing NOAA Alerts and Advisories

• Weather Alerts and Advisories from NOAA shows important weather events happening in your area, like Excessive Rainfall and Winter Weather Forecasts, River Flooding, Thunderstorm/Tornado Outlook, Hurricanes, Fire Weather Outlooks, UV Alerts, Drought
• The alert is sent instantly via mobile push notifications
• On the RainMachine web app the alert is listed under the NOAA weather service settings
• The RainMachine NOAA weather service now allows users to select NOAA verified weather stations in vicinity and receive observed data

CWOP (Citizen Weather Observer Program) as weather service

A new weather service for CWOP (Citizen Weather Observer Program) to receive observed data from weather stations all over the world. Available as community weather service called: Weather Stations

Screenshot showing some of citizen weather stations available around the world.

The Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP) is a public-private partnership with three goals:
1) to collect weather data contributed by citizens;
2) to make these data available for weather services and homeland security;
3) to provide feedback to the data contributors so they have the tools to check and improve their data quality.

Other improvements for the RainMachine Web app

• - Improved RainMachine NOAA weather service with latest forecast service from NOAA NCDC.
• - RainMachine weather services can now be updated without restarting the device separately from the main firmware update which should allow more frequent and silent updates.
• - Improved UI for selecting stations on WUnderground and NetAtmo.
• - Fixed issue with NetAtmo and unnamed modules.
• - Fixed issue with NetAtmo where users have multiple indoor stations without external modules.
• - Improvements and fixes for Web Interface.

Firmware

• - It's now possible to set Flow Meter clicks externally through API. This will allow future integrations with smart water meters.
• - Fixed an issue with End By Sunrise where watering won't start due to a combination of programs, running time and day of year.

2021 Spring update: RainMachine Firmware fixes and improvements

This is a cumulative software release⁽¹⁾ for RainMachine HD-12/16, RainMachine Pro-8/16, and RainMachine Mini-8. It contains improvements and fixes for Met.no data service (European Weather Service API) as well as web interface improvements. See below for details.

Common firmware improvements and fixes

Weather Services

Met.no
 - Update for the latest Met.no API as the previous version used by RainMachine is no longer accessible.
Netatmo
 - Fixed issues with automatic re-login after the expiration of the previous login.
 - Allow the possibility to specify modules for other base stations if the user has multiple base stations.
 - Allow the possibility to select modules from devices being shared by other users.
NOAA
 - Better caching of day data for cases where further reports have missing data.
WUnderground
 - Report observed RAIN for today instead of just for the previous day.

Programs

- Improved Program feature "Finish by Sunrise/Sunset". We have identified the cause that in certain cases can cause the Finish Before Sunrise programs not to run. To prevent this from happening we are now restricting the program to start to be on the same day. If previously the programs could theoretically start way past midnight (for programs with long duration) this is now limited to midnight to prevent the same program from starting on the same day twice leading to confusion.

Wi-Fi

- Improved Wi-Fi behavior on multi-point access points disconnects.

Smart Integrations

- Apple HomeKit support on all current devices (RainMachine Touch HD-12/16 and RainMachine Pro-8/16).
- Powerful new IFTTT additions, you can now send weather information from various IFTTT weather services and stations to your RainMachine, change programs start time and date, and many new triggers for program stopped with reason, rain delay, weather updates, leak detection.

RainMachine Touch HD-12/16 related

- Wi-Fi reconnect improvements.
  - A separate experimental mode Wi-Fi reconnect algorithm has been added.
- Expanded the list of Wi-Fi adapters that can be used on RainMachine Touch HD-12/16 devices.
  - Added support for TP-Link Archer T2U Plus Wi-Fi adapter.

Mobile Apps refresh (Android, iOS)

Several incremental updates for the RainMachine mobile apps were done for the iOS and Android clients, updates available at the Apple AppStore and Google Play. Notable changes for the RainMachine iOS app are in the User Interface such as 'dark mode' and the ability to change the landing screen.
- Introducing RainMachine iOS "Dark Mode" layout theme that automatically applies if your Apple mobile device is set to Dark Theme mode. Open Apple iPhone/iPad "Settings > Display & Brightness > Dark".
- Select the landing screen of the RainMachine iOS app, either DASHBOARD or ZONES. Open Apple iPhone/iPad "Settings - scroll all the way down to RainMachine app - scroll down to "Landing Screen" and choose the preferred screen.
- Device names are listed in alphabetical order on the DEVICES screen.
- Find and access to the RainMachine Smart Integrations. Open "RainMachine mobile app > Settings > Smart Integrations" and learn how to integrate IoT services with RainMachine.
- Many "under the hood" fixes that improve the user experience, like fixes for the Setup process, mobile Notifications, fast loading DASHBOARD graphs, ZONES images, Watering History.

RainMachine Web app interface

- Fix issue with chart graphs being cramped on the left side that sometimes happen after a refresh.
- Improved NetAtmo Weather Service configuration UI.
- Added dark mode with the possibility to switch between light mode and dark mode from "Settings > System Settings > Web Theme". 
- Other improvements.

Currently, in development

- Flowmeter visualization charts.
- Ability to push flow meter data to RainMachine.
- Ability to install and update community-developed weather services.

⁽¹⁾ The RainMachine firmware update will be released in stages. The final roll-out will be available in up to three weeks.

For more info please visit this page.