I’m not sure if people are having this problem, but I’m finding it to be very flakey using voice integration. What usually happens, I’ll say hey google, tell rachio to water zone 1… And rachio comes on and asks me for how long. I’ll say 5 minutes. It says I don’t understand, and it closes communication. Start again, same thing happens, third or fourth try, it works.
I’ve also noticed your support page says you should be able to tell rachio to go into standby mode… Mine doesn’t understand that function.
Thirdly, I reset my phone a few months ago… Last year, Rachio used to call me by name. Now when I talk to rachio, it always says “Hello Username”, how do I get it to say my name again.
I’ve tried clearing the link from google home. And relinking. Didn’t fix the name or recognization issues. Also running the latest google home and latest rachio app.
Help!
EDIT : To save future questions. I’m running a GEN 2 8 zone rachio IRO
Thanks Franz. I love my google speakers and I’d think it would be a truly excellent feature to just speak in my house and have rachio do what I say, every time.
Did some testing and you were right starting zones wasn’t working (at all?). I believe Google released a V2 of Google Assistant (I don’t exactly know when) and by doing some research it seems like it broke some of our functionality. I actually had to read some of their source code to fix our issue(s). Please try again, I had a 100% success rate this go round.
I am trying to find a list of valid commands for Google Home on the Help with no luck…
have installed my new Rachio controller and have successfully integrated it with my Google Home device.
What I am frustrated with is proper syntax for Google Home/Assistant commands… commands that are syntactically correct. For instance,
“Ask Rachio to water zone 3”. Won’t work
“Ask Rachio water zone 3”. Will work
So, it would be wonderful to have a web page built that has all the successful (fully tested) and typical commands people would use to start or turn off sprinklers. But I believe you have to start with
“Ask Rachio...”
“Tell Rachio...”
Someone new to Google Home and new to your device would not know this.
What was thinking is a list of examples with combined “Ask Rachio ‘water zone 3’ “. Thereby combing the expression “Ask Rachio” or “Tell Rahio” and then the remaining commands. With Google Home, it doesn’t like the word “to” between the commands (I think). It breaks it. I also think, but not sure, that you can substitute “zone #” when it doesn’t recognize “front lawn”. I think zone # is more successful, but again, not sure. It takes a lot of playing around to get Google Home to understand you. I believe the word “Ask…” or Tell” are the only words you can start with in phrases. I know there must be a lot of users out there extremely happy with their Rachio but frustrated with learning Google Home syntactics. IMHO
Also, your help says you must start Google Home with “Talk to Rachio” first to make a connection to the device, then follow that with your expression. My experience has been that “Ask Rachio Water Zone 3” works just fine.
My issue is my google home app says that my Rachio is not responding and/or online but yet when I open the Rachio app it working just fine. My google WiFi shows it has full WiFi and I can turn on via my phone. Am I missing a step with the google home?
