Google Assistant for Android, Rachio voice control from your phone!

Noticed this morning that voice control now works on Google Assistant Android without owning a Google Home, very cool!

A physical Google Home is not needed to have Rachio voice command from your phone.

I have a Galaxy S7, Android 7.0 and to access Google Assistant you just hold the home button down.

Other versions of Android might be different.

Then say “Talk to Rachio” and tap on the “Link Rachio to Google” image. You will then be re-directed to our webapp for authentication.

Next, issue commands and see magic happen!

Some examples are…

“Ask Rachio stop watering”

“Ask Rachio water zone 1”

“Ask Rachio water backyard”

Here is more information on the commands we support.

http://support.rachio.com/article/602-google-assistant#commands

:cheers:

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this is sweet! Set up and can’t wait to use it!

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Use shortcuts to make the commands in more natural language. :+1:

@franz - I forget, were there ever plans to include a time aspect to the commands, or was that too difficult? Would be nice to have the option to ask “turn the shrubs on for half an hour,” etc.

Why is the Google Assistant commands: http://support.rachio.com/article/602-google-assistant#commands

not have everything the Echo has: http://support.rachio.com/article/483-how-do-i-use-alexa#commands

There do not seem to be any runtimeDuration commands? Like:
run zone {zoneNumber} for {runtimeDuration}
But I do really like that with Google you can use zoneName’s, but if you can’t say a duration, it’s not very useful.

my .02 this isn’t great. all the intro text is too long and google sucks at understanding rachio. I setup a google assistant shortcut so when I say sprinklers It hear “talks to rachio”

There were some technical limitations to the Google Assistant we couldn’t overcome in regards to including the zone name and duration in the same sentence.

So for now, you can say “Ask Rachio to water zone 3”. It will then ask you for how many minutes.

Hope this helps.

:cheers:

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Thanks for the info. Hopefully that can be resolved in the future, but for now your suggestion sounds good.

@franz anyway to tone down the long intro, don’t need to hear my name and all that…just want to get to work telling it what to do

If you start with, “Hey Google, Ask Rachio [water zone 1]” you can bypass the intro part.

:cheers:

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really helpful! thank you

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Using Google Assistant on my Samsung S6 unable to water just 1 zone, it tells me it does not understand. Only thing it does understand is to water all zones. Will it ever be able to water individual zones?

Here’s my experience:

  • “hey google, talk to rachio”

  • intro text

  • “water zone 7”

  • I do not understand the action

  • “hey google, talk to rachio”

  • intro text

  • "water flowers"
    I do not understand the action

  • “hey google, ask rachio to water the flowers”

  • “how many minutes would you like to water flowers”

  • 30
    profit.

So I’d recommend updating the support article and tell it to use the “ask” actions… or fix the “talk to rachio” flow.

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Thanks ctash using the ask action worked, I can now water individual Zones

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