Direct Amazon Echo Integration instead of your current Alexa Skill

Hello,

I bought this up about a year ago. Would you please provide direct Alexa integration. I want to say “Alexa, turn on Zone 1 for 10 minutes” instead of the silly, “Alexa, ask Rachio to turn on zone 1 for 10 minutes”.

No one is using the skill where you have to say extra stuff. Put it this way, if the next smart sprinkler system out there that provides this direct integration with Alexa, I am dumping Rachio for it. This is huge since how much I love the Rachio, but I am willing to buy something else so that I don’t have to use the “STUPID” skill.

Please do not copy and paste your usual text to say “We are looking into it”. Please actually do it and release it already. Please make “Irrigation Great again”. :slight_smile:

Thank you. I love Rachio but hate your silly skill.

Three little words, ‘ask Rachio to’ worry you to the point of calling it silly, STUPID, and willing to throw away a great product over it?

Three words…

Take a chill pill and get some perspective, because three little words uttered a couple of times now and then cannot be screwing up your life that bad…

1 Like

I took a chill pill as suggested and still hate the 3 more words I must say.

Happy New Year to you too.

Good conversation! Here to mediate :wink: and let everyone know that we understand there are improvements we can make to this integration. We are rebuilding our core platform to enable many more integrations as well as allow us to quickly enhance our current ones. We also have a list of other Alexa enhancements we are going to make.

Thanks for your patience and understanding that the entire Rachio team is building (rebuilding) the most intelligent, flexible irrigation platform, which takes time.

Hapoy new year everyone.

:cheers:

2 Likes

Thank you Franz for responding. I did not mean to sound harsh with my original post that seems to get the other guy boiling.

As a software developer myself, I know you guys can do direct integration since others are doing just fine.

3 words are not a lot to say one time, but as you may know, keep having to say “Alexa ask Rachio to turn on zone 1 etc” gets old fast. At least for me.

I took the chill pill but it didn’t seem to help.

Again, thank you for your response and I hope to see it soon. I think you have an awesome product.

2 Likes

We actually built the integration before there were any other options than what we have now. The Alexa SDK/API has matured considerably since we rolled out. It has been our most popular by far.

To move forward, sometimes you must take a step back and realize your platform vision which is the main reason we have had to pause our integration efforts until we are ready to build out more.

:cheers:

2 Likes

@hln98 @edllorca

Wanted to close the loop on this.

The current Alexa API does not support “Alex, turn on zone 1 for 10 minutes”.

In order to do that you would need to use the Alexa Smart Home Skills API.

Plus, your customers don’t need to remember your skill name or a specific invocation phrase.

Unfortunately, the Alexa Smart Home Skills API at this time only supports lights and thermostats :cry:

The Smart Home Skill API currently supports lights, switches, smart plugs and thermostats, including turning devices on and off, dimming lights and thermostat controls.

I’m going to reach out to the Alexa team and see if they have plans on creating an irrigation profile which would help enable this.

We are looking at other ways to incorporate Alexa technology, so stay tuned!

:cheers:

3 Likes