When does "Rachio Offline" event fire in IFTTT?

Also see this thread. Same problem.

I have a Nest Security Camera, an internet based security panel and an internet based phone system with 911 support. When my internet goes down I get reliable cell alerts from all three. Rachio has chosen to use IFTTT. If it cannot provide reliable alerts via IFTTT perhaps they should integrate the function. It’s not rocket science.

Just FYI, my biggest problem with my Rachio going down is not my Internet service but my groundfault.

You mean your irrigation floods itself and shorts out? That sounds bad.

No. Normally a lightning storm kicks it.

Ouch. Point taken that it’s not necessarily your internet service going down. But in either case the back end Rachio servers should be able to notice loss of contact and reliably raise an alert. My other gadgets can do that.

When mine went out last month, it wasn’t internet for me, the GFI that it’s plugged into tripped.

Point taken. But offline is offline. The back end Rachio servers should notice the loss of contact and raise an alert. My other devices all do that.

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If the IFTTT applet relies on the actual offline notification (i.e the email that says your Rachio unit is offline) that Rachio sends, that would be 24 hours. If the IFTTT applet is supposed to trigger whenever the Rachio goes offline immediately, that’s a whole different can of worms.

I made my own applet to test this out. Unplugged my Rachio at 12:12 PM today. Will let you know what transpires.

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Kpontis, any updates on your 24-hr offline experiment?

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He’s still waiting for the IFTTT trigger to alert him for his unit that’s been offline for 2 days now :laughing:

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Talked to Kyle last night, he said the applet failed but IFTTT said it was on the texting side of the equation. Last night he created two applets based off the offline notification and unlpugged his controller, so hopefully he reports back soon!

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Hey guys. @mckynzee is correct, I messed up the applet. I had it set up to text my phone with an offline notification, but I guess I missed the part where I had to enter in a PIN code to confirm my phone number. My bad! I fixed it up and made a second applet as well where the IFTTT app itself is supposed to notify me when the Rachio goes offline. I unplugged my gen 1 (gen 2 will be next) yesterday around 10:30, I will let you know if when I get the notification and text!

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No luck getting any sort of notification for the device going online with any of my applets. I am gonna have to reach out to IFTTT and see what they can do on their end.

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@kpontis, I posted a couple of my error messages from IFTTT. They made it look like it was a Rachio service problem. Mine were for an email notification. See this post for the screen prints.

Question Rachio and IFTTT email when internet down

I notice that Rachio “reaches out” to IFTTT when an interface function fails.

I wonder why Rachio support does not “reach out” to Rachio programming?

Also see this thread:
http://community.rachio.com/t/new-ifttt-event-trigger-coming-soon/1467

Reading it all the way through reveals that the Rachio IFTTT integration has never been reliable and that any engineering work on it was put on hold until after V3.

This dog won’t hunt.

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Thanks, @piperspace - I read down through the link and found this:

I can live with this. I’d love the integration myself, but getting correct watering straightened out for all the folks that have severe, weird, and odd watering restrictions should definitely take priority. After all, really the most important thing with this device is to have it water my yard corrrectly.

Unfortunately, we all seem to get an inch and want a mile!!!

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Another piece of “evidence”:

I have my own applet set up in IFTTT using the Rachio service and the Event Registered trigger. It’s supposed to log a row to a google spreadsheet any time the Rain Sensor Activated event fires.

This applet has never run. (I set it up a couple of weeks ago.)

Today I observed an alert on the Rachio app on my phone at 2:46pm “Rain Sensor Activated.” I waited til 3:30, and my spreadsheet still didn’t have any new events logged. I went to IFTTT and ran the applet manually, and it immediately logged Rain Sensor Activated to my google sheet.

I don’t have tools to diagnose this…

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I set up a date time IFTTT applet to fire once per hour and send a cell phone alert. After 12 hours and 12 alerts I turned it off.

I set up a Rachio alert to fire once every time a schedule ended. After 12 hours and 5 schedules I got zero alerts.

I changed the above to fire every time a schedule starts. After 3 schedules I got 2 alerts.

Conclusion - IFTTT is reliable at delivering alerts to users. Rachio back end servers do not reliably deliver alerts to IFTTT. There is nothing further users or Rachio support can do about this.