I’m delighted that Rachio has an API! It’s a breath of fresh air compared to other locked-down smart home platforms.
One small issue to report: when I fetch the imageUrl for a zone, I get the URL for the full-resolution, 30 MB(!!) original image that I took when creating the zone.
Yes! Yes! Yes!.. when I built my own web UI and used the imageUrl to load into my pages I was quite surprised to see the images trickling in at modem-like speeds. I thought their servers were just that slow. But your message explains it. I think I’ll end up doing the same. Download, resize, and then serve them locally. If they’re that big, I have no idea why they would want to waste the space and subsequent bandwidth every time pages get loaded. I suppose caching helps somewhat but the first load is really quite excruciating!
I’m new to Rachio, but not to graphics dev & processing.
After installing the Rachio app on android, I used my phone to take the photos via the phone’s app. Having experience with image processing, I knew I had to be aware of optimum sizing (file size, image size, resolution), so I contacted Rachio support. They were very FAST in responding, and provided the following:
“When uploading images to the zones tab, we need to make sure the image is compatible with size/format requirements. The image needs to be a compatible format like .jpeg, .jpg, .png. Any incompatible images will need to be converted. This is usually the case for apple products that tend to use.HEIC formatting. The image size must not exceed 434px X 640px or 8 MB. Images that exceed this size can be cropped or compressed.”
I took the images from my phone to my workstation and used a photo editor to enhanced them, then change them to fall within the requirements support provided. I then exported them to one of the formats they required; for me, I use png. I then uploaded them to my phone, and assigned them in the Rachio app. This saved A LOT OF TIME, in having to do re-dos, provide quick loading, and looking good.
It might sound like a bit of a job, but I think it is well worth it in the end. Most of the work should be able to be done with the apps built into your OS on your workstation.
