We are running into some technical difficulties with GA- it works with “talk to Rachio (command)” but it is having issues with “tell Rachio (command)” or “ask Rachio (command)." Our dev team is working with Google to resolve this issue- I will keep everyone in the loop!
Sorry for the inconvenience and confusion, we are working to get this resolved ASAP!
McKynzee 
@pdawg17, as @mckynzee mentioned, the integration is currently only supporting the command “talk to Rachio”
@JPedrego, the functioning actions (commands) have been updated on this support article.
If anyone else encounters any issues, please let us know!
Still can’t seem to get my commands to work. I’ve only tried to check my watering status. I used the three command listed in the support article and each time it respond it didn’t understand my command. Just to confirm I’m doing this correctly, I asked home to talk to Rachio, after the Rachio greeting I said “watering status”, “what’s up”, and “how is it going”. Neither worked.
@JPedrego – Try the following… “Hey Google, talk to Rachio” – following the greeting, state the action as “Hey Google, [action]”.
Ok, I’ll give this a try when I get home.
So I finally figured out I had to remove the “to” in my phrase to get it to work.
“Hey Google, ask Rachio water front yard” instead of “Hey Google, ask Rachio to water front yard”. GH thought I was trying to send a message with the latter.
Can Rachio please remove the “…ask Rachio”, “…tell Rachio” words from the command phrase? I only have one Rachio and sprinkler system. I’ve had IFTTT working with Rachio and GH to where I can just say “Hey Google, water front yard”. I’ve used the “ask/tell” phrase for other GH services and it gets annoying real fast with those additional keywords.
@steve.franks, thanks for sharing. I was able to replicate this by doing the following:
Is this the same flow you used?
I don’t believe so as this is required by Google.
Interesting to know – we’ll share that feedback with Google and see if we can replicate.
I can say the following single line phrase to GH.
Me: "Hey Google, ask Rachio water front yard"
GH: "Sure, here is Rachio"
Different voice: "How many minutes do you want to water"
Me: "Two"
A two minute timer starts for the front yard zone.
If I start with "Hey Google, ask Rachio to water front yard"
GH: “I don’t know how to send messages yet”
I don’t think the “ask…” or “tell…” is a must for integration. I have Belkin Wemo outlets integrated with GH. All I have to say is “Hey Google, turn off living room lamp”. I don’t have to say, “Hey Google, ask Wemo turn off living room lamp”.
The IFTTT integration requires some specific applets to be built which is pretty easy to do. That is why I can just say, “Hey Google, water front yard”. The slight downside is each applet is configured for a fixed run time (e.g. 5 minutes). I would have to build separate hot phrase applets to do other run times. The new Rachio integration at least prompts me for a verbal run time.
Anyway not trying to fault Rachio here. It has been working very well for me. I was showing off recently using Google Assistant verbal commands on my phone for my sprinkler system guy when he came out to make a repair. The whole home assistant ecosystem is still in its infancy and other GH integrated devices (even Google branded devices) are not exactly 100% there.
I tested voice control of my 6 zones and your Home integration app does not recognize two of my zones by name. It does recognize those zones by number.
The “ask/tell” distinguishes a service from a direct interaction. Google has the two stratified so that some products are favored over others as far as the set list of reserved commands, while others provide more of a conversation. Smartthings, Wemo, hue, and now wink are “direct action.” Rachio, harmony, and Uber for example are services, taking advantage of “conversation actions,” requiring the “ask/tell” to interact with them. Google is limiting (at least in part financially) who is allowed to use direct actions.
See here for more: https://developers.google.com/actions/develop/conversation
https://developers.google.com/actions/develop/direct
Thanks njhaley for the explanation and link. I figured there were different “tiers” of integration but didn’t know why. I’m wondering if Rachio applied for the direct actions and was turned down.
@njhaley, I believe Google builds the direct actions. We have the same issue Amazon/Alexa. Once there is demand to justify the time to build said action/integration, we could do more interesting and tightly coupled interactions. For now, I think both platforms really only support lights and other platforms on the IoT side of things.
A great value-added!! Thanks!
GarFather
Will Apple HomeKit be included soon?
@stevemost Apple HomeKit is a common request, and is definitely a feature we are looking into for the future.
Hello, I am not able to connect Rachio to my ST system. After entering user name and password I am stuck at “Synchronizing data…”. Any ideas?
I also tried to activate the Rachio channel for IFTTT and had the sme issue, so I’m thinking the issue lies within Rachio, not ST.
Any help appreciated - thank you!
Can you please reach out to support@rachio.com? This almost feels like a browser issue, but they will be able to resolve this for you. Thanks and have a great day!
@xcampax, sounds like you were not getting to step 3?
After reviewing your support ticket, it sounds like the root cause of the issue you experienced was that the Rachio you were trying to link was shared to you. We’ll clarify this scenario in our documentation to avoid any confusion from others attempting to do the same thing.
Correct. Using the credentials of the Rachio master account did the trick and I was able to connect with ST.
I’ve got Google Assistant on my phone (running Nougat). Any way to use Assistant to control Rachio without having to buy a Google Home device. I think having an external google device is redundant as I already carry my phone everywhere.
Mike