Was looking on amazon yesterday to purchase a Rachio and noticed that Amazon lists the next generation Rachio on sale starting February 2 of 2016, pictures of the new unit are included.
Why is there a lack of info about the new unit on Rachio’s homepage?
It looks like the only advantage is manual override/control on the unit itself. This will be of help to those who need their lawn maintenance person to run the system without an smartphone… outside of that I don’t see any obvious incentives…
If it has Homekit I’m in if not I think its a different path for me as it will be several yrs most likely before a new hardware release (Gen 3), but fingers crossed Gen 2 has HomeKit hardware and firmware capability at release, time will tell.
Last night I was looking at the Amazon photos of the new hardware. I zoomed in on the picture with the barcode. I noticed that above the barcode, it said Homekit so I took a snapshot. Today I went to look again and the photo has been edited.
Here is a comparison.
If anyone from Rachio is reading this, I would love to be a tester for you guys. I already have a Rachio, plus I have a a ton of other homekit stuff (Philips Hue, Insteon Lights, First Alert Smoke Detector, Schlage Sense lock, Ecobee). Plus last month, New York magazine did an article on our installation.
We will have an 8 zone unit this Spring, but can’t provide any other details at this time.
We will make a more formal update when we have more details. In the mean time, you can get both the Gen 1 8 zone/16 zone at a discounted price at select retailers (Amazon).
Well, I guess I’ll be the first here to wonder what my options are. I just bought a Rachio Gen 1 this week and installed it. While setting it up, the App asked if I was adding a Gen 1 or a Gen 2 device, which led me here. I’m an Apple user and am rolling out HomeKit devices. What should I do here? I’d like to be homekit compatible. Should I just return it and wait for the Gen2?
I was a little shocked today to see a more rectangular version of Rachio device at Home Depot today (Brighton, Colorado) for $249 and first thing I did was come here to see if there was something new that I’ve missed. Then I come here and I’m more confused. Not available on Amazon, doesn’t seem it’s been released here? Am I missing something? Did I miss out on some secret push of a lone gen. 2 device sitting on a shelf? Is this like a “golden ticket” and i’ve missed my shot to get into the chocolate factory?
Anyway, I agree, seems there is no news about this device being released but there is definitely a Rachio sitting at home depot that is not the version I own. Makes me wish I would have looked a little closer to what it was.
Looks like there was a good reason for the 16-zone Amazon fire sale last week eh? Unfortunately/fortunately, I can’t resist being on the bleeding edge, so I’m returning the one I got from Amazon and picking up the Gen 2. If I was a smart man(I’m not sometimes, most of the time), I’d wait for the 8 zone version, since 16 zones is grossly overkill for my 3 zones. Maybe I’ll figure out whether it would make sense to break my watering out into more zones, but that sounds complex and pretty destructive to my yard. In any case, looking forward to “future platform integrations”! coughcoughhomekitcoughcough…