Now we have to pay for remote access? Disappointing if true
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Not to defend RainMachine here, but I work for a hardware development firm, myself. The reason why they are not available for purchase anywhere is because virtually no microcontroller manufacturer is currently able to provide parts to ANYONE except the biggest companies (read: Apple) with lead times of less than 1-2 YEARS. Yes, it is maddening. It has virtually halted my company's entire business, along with many others. This is the same reason why car manufacturers have had to halt production.
Because of this, companies such as Rainmachine cannot make any money at all on new sales of devices (being they cannot manufacture them). You are going to see MOST of the smaller companies halting production of devices once they run out of stock of parts, and most of the "free" cloud-based IOT devices starting to have to charge a fee (someone has to pay the cloud companies for their services), when nobody can sell new physical products.
It is a sad state of affairs, yes. But this is the way the world works now. Pretty much every company that relies on electronic parts is in the same position, to one level or another, with the smaller ones being affected the most. For instance, for my firm, STMicroelectronics (whom I deal with) cannot even get my company on the schedule for ANY parts shipments until at LEAST 2023 (and the date keeps slipping). Not sure what chips Rainmachine uses, but all chip manufacturers are doing the same thing.
RainMachine should have done a better and more honest press release explaining this issue, yes. But they may have various restrictions as to what they can say legally, as well.
Sadly, everyone's gonna have to get used to it. If you want to place blame, place it on the chip manufactures and semiconductor foundaries.
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Years ago, we purchased RainMachine device that included remote access. Now, if they want to change their advertising and sell it without those features to new customers that is their decision to make, but we feel you have no right to do it to existing customers whose device purchases included those features.
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Yeah, there is no company and there hasn't been for a couple of years now. They closed shop and tried a cash grab with this subscription stuff on their way out the door. Don't for a second think that they are still around somewhere listening to you. There's no employees and no company left to respond to you.
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I'm a charter customer, and I did miss the remote access for s short while once I discovered a workaround. Since the design of the controller itself is not cloud dependent, I expect that it will work for some time. I can even live without the weather app if that winds up going the way of the dodo.
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I am also looking at upgrading to Rachio 3 too.
I had purchased RainMachine years ago, primarily due to no monthly fees and now discovered this company no longer honors their prior commitments to their customers. It’s Very sad for Rain Machine and appears it’s time for all their legacy customers to switch to Rachio! -
James Macy:
this company no longer honors their prior commitmentsThis company no longer exists, they went out of business, simple as that. Not sure what you expect a non-existent company to honor at this point. I'm surprised this forum still works.
I bought the RainMachine knowing very well this could happen (and unfortunately it did), but the attraction was access to the hardware and no cloud requirement. The hardware runs OpenWRT, you can ssh in, the software is written in Python and for those with skills you can make some changes. But the day will come when the weather updates stop working or the hardware just dies. It is already the case that you can no longer get notifications in the Android app (not sure about iOS). Also just a matter of time before the mobile apps no longer install on newer Android and iOS versions that will require newer SDK versions than what the current apps are built with.
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I'll be using my RM until it dies, or no longer functions as I need it to. All I need is to be able to access the unit from my home network (for remote, I use remote desktop) so I can adjust schedules/times as needed. I don't even need the weather app on the unit. I bought this 10+ years ago solely so I didn't have to sit out at the controller to adjust things like zone durations when the season change. It still does that (and more) so RIP RainMachine parent company.
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