Just bought Rachio 3 because of the HomeKit support. I have over 120 HomeKit devices from various companies including Homebridge accessories / KNX Thinka etc etc and the only devices which is not working correctly is this Rachio Gen 3.
Like others, it stopped responding, so I had no choice but removing it from Home App, and now I can’t add it anymore. Will try the 10s stop push and switching to 2.4Gz only with a dedicated AP and see but I have to say this is a bad customer experience. Rachio team, please fix that mess.
Ok, thanks to you guys, I was able to add this device to Home App again. Thank you. So, I dedicated an AP in the 2.4Ghz band only for this device, at few feet. Let’s see if it works better or not.
I forbid my Rachio 3 to connect to my 5Ghz AP and it’s working smoothly since the last 3 days. I will keep you updated but the dual band theory may be correct.
When I tried to get our rachio controller set up with HomeKit and couldn’t do it I spoke to them. They acted surprised. They asked if I had the latest firmware (I did).
After reading this thread my jaw is on my keyboard. This has been an open problem for nearly a year?
Over and over, rachio employees say, “I hear we will have a fix soon!” alternating with, “this is all Apple’s fault”.
After a ton of time and research, we’ve determined that the HomeKit integration can have difficulty connecting to mesh routers depending the physical configuration of your home’s network. We ask that you continue to reach out to our support team to troubleshoot all HomeKit connection issues. The team has had success getting most integrations reconnected. We apologize for the incredible headache this has been and appreciate all the work everyone has done to work with us to learn and troubleshoot to get to this conclusion.
Yes I have. They even sent me a replacement controller to see if that fixed it. It did not.
I actually know what causes it to go offline. If any of my mobile devices are on the 2.4 ghz network and I leave my home often it will go offline requirerung me to add it back in.
So I keep all my mobile devices on my 5 ghz network but my cello Apple Watch can not use a 5 ghz network so I just leave Wifi off on it. But last night there was an update and it turned Wifi back on my watch and sure enough the first time I left home it knocked the controller offline.
I have wasted hours today trying to get it to reconnect to HomeKit. Out of frustration I removed it from HomeKit. Now it will show up when I try to add it back in but I keep on getting unable to add it in.
It has no problem staying connected to WiFi as when it goes offline in homekit it can still be reached with the rachio app.
I do not have a mesh network so that is not the issue,
What is the issue is if any of my mobile devices are connected to the same network as the controller leaving home will often knock it offline requiring it to be added back in. Often this is a time consuming ordeal requiring multiple tries.
The problem is its Homekit software that needs to be fixed.
We were promised an update months ago and still nothing.
This is still really aggravating. I did contact Rachio’s support, and while kind and helpful, the steps provided were too time-consuming or too frustrating for something that just used to work without any problems.
I don’t know if this is a mesh network problem, an Apple problem, or a Rachio problem, but having folks contact support instead of explicitly stating why the issue is occurring and the steps to solve here in this thread it makes it feel like this isn’t actually resolved, or worse - that you guys maybe haven’t even pinned down the issue.
Could you please explain “the HomeKit integration can have difficulty connecting to mesh routers depending the physical configuration of your home’s network” a bit more? I’ve had a mesh network since before I had my Rachio. I installed my Rachio last summer and didn’t have any HomeKit problems for the whole watering season. I had no issues at all until I tried to use Rachio via HomeKit at the beginning of this year’s watering season. I’m not having any issues in HomeKit with any other devices. I have not made any changes to my network setup over this time.
As mentioned by someone above, all of this is particularly frustrating since this concern has possibly been outstanding for almost a year. However, the most discouraging part of all of this is that you have now marked this issue as resolved when many of us are continuing to have issues.
I do really appreciate your help and the fact that you keep returning to this thread to give us updates. I know it’s hard to provide good customer service in a public setting while not always having the answers. I just wish the updates were more open or more substantial, and I feel like a year is a good amount of time for Rachio to figure this out - even for a low priority issue.
Yes, 651 worked (for some of us). 631 broke it for all of us… I’m not sure if they pulled it and I don’t know a way of going back to 615. They just need to fix this
I’m still having problems and about to throw my device away. How is this not fixed yet? I have 50+ hk products and this is the only one that gives me non-stop and daily problems. I don’t care hk doesn’t provide much functionality, I am just tired of the constant no response. In my garage I have a new ATV, HomePod and a velope node. There is no rational reason I should have problems w this device. Time to get this fixed
I feel like many use cases for HomeKit could work as Siri Shortcuts. I’d love to create Shortcuts for Rachio - and could ask Siri to run them. And that wouldn’t require any special hardware. Just app changes.
Actually, shortcuts are coming with the Rachio 4…but connecting to HomeKit so you can use those shortcuts is currently slated for Rachio 6…coming fall of 2027.
In the meantime, get used to “No Response” on your home app for Rachio.
