Hi
I’m sorry to jump into this particular thread real late – and no I didn’t read all 1386 replies to this thread, so please tell me if what I’m saying or asking has been asked/solved/not solved.
I purchased Rachio in 2019 and yes I was amazed the Homekit integration was half-baked and broken. I believe I spoke to somebody in customer support back then and they confirmed HomeKit wasn’t really working and for me to wait – but they said it was going to “be awhile”. I kind of gave up on the entire idea and am kind of amazed its now Sept 2021 and the issue still isn’t exactly solved. I guess the suggestion “It’s going to be awhile” is still true.
I recently for a different project setup Home Assistant within an xcp-ng hypervisor as a VM for a different camera setup. I’m still really new to working with this Home Automation software so I can’t give firm recommendations or setup advice. Because it’s a Home Automation program, if offers various plugins and tries to seemlessly recognize other home automation devices on the LAN. On my LAN – among others I have an Apple TV stand-alone box and a Rachio – both devices were identified right away and I was able to add them within Home Assistant. Home Assistant also provided an option to install a HomeKit wireless bridge integration.
The setup looks like below:
Once I set this up and registered with homekit, I found all the rachio zones and schedules to show up within Apple Home Kit
Honestly I’m not sure the status of Rachio and Homekit - it appears they are really working on it (maybe). I was really surprised however that a free program such as Home Assistant was able to offer this level of functionality and discovery. I’m just passing this information along to users requiring homekit integration at current time. HomeKit can be installed as a VM, or stand-alone program, or docker image. I’m aware some users may not have the home network to set something up like this, however just figured I’d pass it on as a way for those users familiar with setting up other projects.