TLDR: Wiped the unit, couldn’t find Wi-Fi, fixed that Wi-Fi issue, set it up on a new account, schedule still didn’t work. After two summers of dead grass and wasted hours on hours and hundreds of dollars, I’ve ordered the Orbit B-Hyve and hopefully it works well.
I wiped my unit one more time and tried to set it up with a new Wyze account. This time it couldn’t find my network. Networks that must be multiple of houses away populated the screen but not the one 10 ft from it. I thought there’s no way that a shared name for 2.4/5 GHz was causing the issue but I took off the 5 GHz band from my dedicated Smart Device subnetwork anyway (FWIW I have 102 devices on my network and this Sprinkler System is the only one with issues). It still didn’t show up but it seems this was because there’s no way to refresh the list. Even when reconnecting to it, it’s will show the same networks in the same order. I rebooted the unit and my network appeared. The fact it appeared gave me some hope that it would now work properly. I went through and set up all the zones as they were and set up my first schedule and it still ghost skipped.
Last year my grass completely died due to this sprinkler not working and this year it’s almost all dead again after resodding and reseeding at the beginning of this summer so I went ahead and ordered the Orbit B-hyve. If everything goes well I’ll let y’all know. There are some Wyze products I use daily (the smart lock and the vacuum) and have never given me little issues but unfortunately this seems to be one of those Wyze products that can’t do the one function it’s designed to do
The B-hyve stores the schedules on device and lets the cloud tell it to skip rather than relying on the cloud to tell it to run. I think this is the big issue with Wyze’s sprinkler based on my understanding of how it runs and I’m sure they’ll fix it in the next version like they fixed their motion sensors (although not ideal they left us in the dust with the first gens permanently dying)
A final log (taken after failed schedules but during a quick run): 1130715
It appears I am also skipping schedules and didn’t realize it.
I have a schedule for drip lines to run at sunrise on Tuesday and Saturday. It looks like my wife created a schedule for the garden at sunrise on Even days.
On the days that the garden and drips schedule are both on even days, the garden zone runs and drips zone does not. (Maybe the garden takes priority because its schedule was created last?)
When the drips schedule are on odd days, without a conflicting garden schedule, it seems to be working.
I didn’t think the schedule would be that finicky. I expected the Wyze sprinkler controller would prompt you for scheduling on top of each other. Or without the prompt, smart enough to handle it by running the zones consecutively.
Echo chamber most likely. Theyve “addressed” it at this point and its like the spiderman pointing meme. None of them know whats at fault. Seems like their coding department isnt up to the task, or is too busy doing other things. Unfortunate but id suggest getting a different brand for smart sprinkler control at this point…
I’m retired but use to design telco class communication equipment. To me it sounds like you have a power supply issue. Areas in drought may also be experiencing brown-outs (low voltage) issues. When I got my Wyze sprinkler I measured the supply voltage and found it to be on the low side so I used a higher capacity power brick (higher open circuit voltage and higher current rating) . I have not had any issues. Power glitches when solenoids activate could corrupt stored data. If “rules” are internet based then they would not be corrupted. As a test I would send some of the customers experiencing issues upgraded power supplies with higher capacity and better power filtering to see if that solves their problems. Just a thought.
that is a very interesting thought muskokamess. The code might be firing just fine but lacking power to trigger the zone so it doesn’t record as ran or something. Do you have a suggestion on a power supply to try?
I have been having issues with Smart Scheduled skips, just pushing to the next day, randomly, for over a year now. Way back in this thread, it was mentioned that Wyze would offer a replacement unit. How does one go about getting this done? Seriously, I am beyond frustrated. Yesterday morning, I had to keep pushing the start time of my smart schedule start, ahead in the future, by a few minutes. I did this probably 15 times, before it started watering. I can’t even begin to tell you the hours of sleep lost over this. I have trained myself to just wake up shortly after 5 am everyday and check the app, and then start tinkering with it to get my grass watered. Again, South Texas, drought, 100 degree heat, every day for over a month. I love Wyze and their products. However, this Smart Sprinkler controller has not made my life easier, by any means. And adding a rule, for each zone, to water, is pointless if I paid for Sprinkler Plus. Forever, I could not post to this thread, as it said I was a new member and limited to 3 posts. Which again, I first posted about this in July 2022. Over a year, same problem, and Wyze does not have a fix.
doldag do you have a multimeter? If so I’d be curious what your power adapter is outputting. If you do then let me know what you get and I’ll measure mine as well. Someone mentioned there was possibly power supply issues and I’d be curious to see the difference.
While this is worth exploring, I’m not sure if that would fix my issue. My zones will always turn on if I manually trigger it in the app, or if I don’t use a smart schedule. For me, that implies it’s not a power problem, but a logic problem.
For me, the smart schedule keeps deciding watering isn’t needed, but doesn’t tell me why. I’m in Texas and only allowed to water on Tuesdays and Fridays. It hasn’t rained in a long time with none in the forecast, there is no wind to speak of, and no risk of freeze. The app shows saturation to be at 0%. There’s no reason to skip. Yet, it does, silently. I know it’s not an issue where it was a power problem that caused it to not get logged because if I happen to wake up a few hours before it was supposed to start, I often see that it’s been removed from the schedule and pushed forward.
I wake up early every Tuesday and Friday, and if I see that it decided not to run, I run it manually. It’s a pain because I manually cycle/soak, so it takes a great deal of handholding twice a week. I have to wait for the calculated saturation to update after each cycle to see if I need to water more. I’m about to give up and switch entirely to non-smart schedules and resign myself to adjusting the watering times based on the weekly extension guidance.
New symptom this morning - controller went offline in the middle of watering
2:00AM - Confirmed schedule set to run at 3:30AM for 4.5 hours
5:00AM - Schedule running as expected
7:00AM - Sprinkler Controller offline
9:30AM - Power Cycled Controller - Controller back online but shows that no schedules ran this morning. I can confirm that the schedules did run based on overspray. (Does the controller not have local memory that it can sync to the cloud when back online?)
About the controller going offline - I can’t explain how that happened. The controller is 12 feet from the wireless access point. On the same wall is my EV charger, but 20 feet from the AP. It did not go offline. Further on the same wall, but 30 feet from the AP is a smart bulb that did not go offline. On the opposite side of the same room, but probably about 45 feet from the AP is a Wyze Cam V3 and a smart bulb that did not go offline. Every device, including the Sprinkler Controller, has strong signal according to my router and their respective apps.
I’d still contend that a poor power supply unit could cause that. Sprinkler solenoids need to be constantly powered to stay open. What’s interesting to me is that you know it came on but it didn’t log that it ran so I wonder what pieces of their code are using to fire on and then back off and finally how does it record that those actions took place? No clue- just a thought.
I think this week’s update may be referencing the power supply issue theory. It certainly would explain why it’s inconsistent and seems to happen to some people, but not necessarily everyone. though it’s also possible that many people don’t pay close attention to their schedules, so there are probably people who just haven’t noticed. It doesn’t happen to me, but I don’t use a set schedule of certain days for it to water, I tell the AI to decide the best days based on the water saturation with full control, so my schedule always varies for each zone based on lots of random factors. Anyway, here is the latest update:
Got the Orbit B-hyve and the smart schedule has been working perfectly so it’s here to stay. However, if the Wyze sprinkler actually worked, I think they could dominate this market at their price point but I understand their other markets are probably bigger and therefore more important to focus on. Here’s some notes from my experience
Wyze
Orbit
Allows seemingly infinite smart/dumb schedules
Only allows for 1 smart schedule and 4 dumb schedules
Cloud Based, with one default schedule saved locally which won’t trigger until one week+ offline
Local, only relying on cloud to tell it to skip
Sleeker more modern app. More intuitive and easier to trigger a quick run
Clunky, dated app but still not difficult and allows for more data to be input such as evaporation time, etc. However, while they actually save (unlike Wyze’s root depth data), it’s not clear to me how it actually affects the runtime. Also don’t really need to trigger quick runs anymore since schedules work
No Home Assistants
Supports Alexa and Google Home (and Apple HomeKit with HomeBridge), however I do not recommend the Alexa skill as for some reason they’ve hijacked “Alexa Stop” so if you try to stop music, it turns off your smart schedule
So in summary, both have their pros and cons but Orbit actually works for me so that’s what I’m using for now. If they find a way to fix Wyze, I’ll probably switch back due to being able to share control and ease of use
I don’t believe it’s a power issue. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve chased the schedule and it refuses to run but then do a quick run and it runs immediately. Unless for some reason the schedule uses less power than the quick run that doesn’t make much sense to me but then again, I don’t know much about power and solenoids or how the Wyze sprinkler work.
I’m sure this has been discussed but with @carverofchoice mentioning the use of only AI schedule with no selected days I was wondering if all of us who have issues are using selected days instead of every day. I was using selected days for my AI schedule due to watering restrictions in Texas
I’m gonna chime in with my experience. I’ve purchased 2 Sprinkler Controllers. The first one a couple of years ago and had it scheduled to water flower beds twice a day - once early in the morning and the other in the late afternoon. The schedule has performed flawlessly up until we sold the house in July.
I purchased the other unit and installed it at the new house a couple of weeks ago and set up a schedule to water daily. It has not worked consistently since. I can manually start a “Quick Run” and all zones will run in sequence.
The irony is that I’ll be standing in the yard just before the scheduled start time and the app will read “Start Today 8:00pm” Then at 8:00pm nothing happens and the app reads "Start (tomorrows date) 8:00pm. But, very randomly, it will start as scheduled.
It’s perplexing.
I am ready to discard my controller and go with a different brand. I have been waiting over a year for a fix. It seems Wyze is in no hurry to fix this issue. After waiting 13 months, again, I opened a support case with Wyze, in hopes of getting a refund, or a replacement controller. After several back and forth emails, I was told my unit was out of warranty, and there is nothing else they could do. I clearly explained the known problem started well within the warranty period. I provided multiple support ticket numbers from July 2022, proving this, from when I first started this entire mess. I sent links to reference this forum thread / posts. Their final resolution was a $20 gift card from Wyze for a future purchase. So, by being a loyal customer and waiting for a fix, I lose in this situation. I have been a Wyze customer since November 2018, with the original Pan Cam. I currently have 27 Wyze devices in my home. I am happy with all of them, except this sprinkler controller. My guess is Wyze is not willing to invest the time or resources to fix this. I think I am going to purchase a Rachio 3 - 8 Zone controller.
I finally went ahead and purchased the Rachio 3. I installed it yesterday. I had a successful smart scheduled watering this morning. The Wyze controller is sitting on the floor of my garage, waiting for recycling. I figured 14 months of waiting for Wyze to fix this issue was long enough. Again, I am a huge Wyze customer, and have many different products in use in my house. But, I would never recommend the Wyze Sprinkler Controller to anyone.
