Our new firmware engineer is wandering the neighborhood looking for inspiration.
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Two weeks and no update. But it’s Easter now and then Memorial Day and then summer. Maybe they will get to it by fall.
I submitted feedback to Apple to address this. Feel free to do the same.
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Our firmware engineer is at Costo buying things in bulk.
In case you didn’t see there is a new thread so they don’t have to do weekly updates
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@dane locked the thread after someone called him out and spoke the truth. Instead of issuing a comment about it, he locks the thread, lol
https://community.rachio.com/t/official-homekit-update-thread-part-2/33551/4?u=kidcapri
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Noticed that, lame!
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I just submitted feedback to Apple as well munpip214.
We all need to do this and make Apple aware that this vendor is falsely advertising HomeKit compatibility. It’s bad for the whole community.
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FYI, I also sent them a link to this thread and the newer thread Rachio decided to close because they got butt hurt by the truth.
By the look of this 1,555 post all on ONE SINGLE PAGE (at least on my iPhone), I’m already discouraged from thinking my brand new Rachio 3 will ever connect to my HomeKit. Hey Rachio, page breaks are a good thing on forums. Even better than that? Advertising that something will work with HomeKit and being sure it actually works!
I have honestly been surprised how they have let this one go, so generally I think they have been good about letting us vent and not closing out the discussion. Most companies would have pulled the plug on this post years ago.
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I agree (as the OP). I do not give Rachio a pass on HomeKit compatibility (and really have to wonder if the current hardware is up to the task). BUT as a irrigation controller - I have the greenest and most lush grass in the neighborhood! I really like the Rachio3.
I like homekit for secure home automation and it controls everything else in my house with more devices coming. I can’t wait till I can get my hands on the - Schlage Electronic Encode Plus Smart Wifi Deadbolt (with HomeKit / thread)
One last thing. I am STILL happy to report that My Rachio3 DOES NOT work perfectly 
**It works with a long press on iOS iPhone about 87.5% of the time (and I still never use it). NEVER on iPad or on my Macs… MIA on AppleWatch…
**I reserve the book rights to this thread
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They locked the last one too so that it stayed as an update thread only and not turn into another 1500 comment thread like this one. Someone managed to word vomit before it got locked. They could have deleted the comment, but people would have complained about that too…
I does seem a bit odd to me that, after all this time, neither Rachio nor (allegedly) Apple, has had any success at even identifying the problem(s), much less fixing them.
I had zero problems with our Rachio 3 staying connected to Apple HomeKit on our network over the several months it was connected. Even with occasional power failures. (I subsequently removed our Rachio 3 and everything else from HomeKit, and stopped using HomeKit, for reasons entirely unrelated to the Rachio 3. [I don’t miss it.])
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I attribute our success to a well-designed and exceedingly stable LAN/WLAN. Being a retired I.T. guy, with over twenty-five years on the job before retirement, I’ve a pretty good handle on what works and what not so much. Our network is designed and installed just as I did at work.
(I had internal customers at work tell me my network was the fastest, most reliable network of any employer’s at which they’d ever worked. Yes, this is something of a point of pride for me. Mea culpa.)
I think I’ve mentioned this before: I suspect Rachio 3’s network support isn’t terribly robust. It will work fine as long as the network to which it’s connected is very stable. But, when presented with less-than-ideal network conditions: It falls over. Badly.
I experienced this earlier this week. I’d upgraded the firmware on all three WiFi devices: House AP, dedicated 5GHz backhaul bridge out in the µBarn, and the AP in the µBarn. Wouldn’t you know it: The upgrade for the AP in the house did not go well. Everything got knocked off the WLAN for an extended time.
Once I got that straightened-out, nearly everything came back on its own, except the Rachio 3. Even power-cycling it wouldn’t bring it back. I surmise that, once it tries for some time to connect, and fails, it just gives up. Permanently.
Yes: This is a bug, IMO. Particularly in a control device.
IMO it’s not unreasonable to suspect it behaves the same way wrt HomeKit connectivity.
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So what are our options? Law suit? Bombard Social Media with the truth that it may or may not work with HomeKit? I’m really frustrated, I did use Siri at times to turn on a zone here and there, plus I like to get what I paid for……
Well an update only every two weeks supposed to be easier? I guess not…
I understand the frustration expressed in this thread, and I would like to address @VillageIdiot as well as @KidCapri the best that I can.
I locked the thread because it was supposed to be locked like the previous “Official Update” thread. While not having the time to properly respond, I left it for visibility so that your candid feedback would be exposed on a pinned topic. I want you to know that I am not trying to hide feedback or silence anybody. I am going to delete the comment after I post the latest update tonight. I will post the original below in this comment, which is a highly visible topic for feedback and user details on network/HomeKit topology, troubleshooting, and other discoveries made by users.
I’m sorry to say that we cannot provide a deadline at this point. But we have made progress and I am confident that we will be able to share more details. To be clear, most Rachio HomeKit users do not encounter “No Response” and the behavior does not reproduce in most network/HomeKit configurations.
We’ve been working with contracting partners who we work very closely with and they have provided us with valuable work. We determined that we needed an internal resource. We needed time to find the right candidate, which is what we have done here.
I’m also sorry to see that mentioning our partners has been perceived as placing blame on them. It is definitely not our intent. When we mention a partner by name in an update, it is not an attempt to shift responsibility, but because we are working with the partner directly to troubleshoot the issues and it is therefore relevant to the update. We take this feedback seriously. Going forward, we will only refer to “our partners” when mentioning them in updates. We want you to know that we are not doing this alone, but we are actively engaging with our relevant partners and earnestly working toward a solution.
The original post, which I will delete from the “Official Updates” thread after I post tonights update.
Your process on fixing these years-old HomeKit issues is in slow-motion, completely unserious, and obviously incompetent. This is very disappointing. You apparently sent Apple a sample device in September and, as soon as you dragged Apple’s name in, you started blaming them week after week, giving reports that you’re sitting on your thumbs “waiting for Apple.” You milked the “waiting for Apple” until well into this year. You should have onboarded this so-called “expert” long, long ago—at least once these problems started emerging years ago—and the reason we have these problems is obviously because you never had such an expert going back into product development. Forget why you didn’t have this expert to begin with, why didn’t you hire him during the nearly half-year that you spent blaming “waiting for Apple?” Not only are you throwing Apple under the proverbial bus, we now hear you throwing Cypress into the mix as well. Why are you name-dropping all these other companies except to create some sense of blame on them, a false sense that all these companies are responsible to us to fix this mess, and blaming them for your slowness? You have our money, you are responsible and no one else. Please stop with the BS. Cypress has its chips inside of Apple’s highly sophisticated HomePods that are the backbone of HomeKit. CNET says Cypress chips are part of “the brain of Siri,” so stop implying they don’t know what they’re doing. Stop shifting our attention and the blame. You need to stop worrying about Apple and Cypress and worry about yourself because it’s clear that you don’t know what YOU are doing.
The first thing professionals do when tackling a problem is establishing a deadline. Your deadline should have been the beginning of the watering season, but you were too incompetent to set any deadline at all. And now you’re telling us your meaningless updates will be fortnightly, so that we stop expecting even what little we were already getting. We never got a working product, nor a solution, all we got from you was the weekly meaningless screed, and now we aren’t even getting that anymore because you are unserious. Since you think some of the outraged comments have died down, you now have the nerve to update us “fortnighly” instead of weekly. The outrage has NOT died down. It’s multiplied. No one imagined in Spring of 2022 we would still be hearing the exact same gibberish from you people. Stop name-dropping all these other companies, accept responsibility for your own mess, and fix it with a hard deadline.
Now it’s the watering season and your device is still defective, and you’ve decided to prioritize this less by making “fortnightly” your meaningless updates that are absolutely devoid of any concrete information. So what is your deadline? What is the deadline? What is the deadline? What is the deadline? That’s effing Step #1, to establish a deadline. Do you get it now? Tell us what is the deadline.
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As you can see on the below screenshot from my Home app, it’s currently in No Response mode on HomeKit as it has been for over a year.
As a LAN guy myself, I also a highly organized Home topology. I’ve also tried to keep to all-Apple or Apple-approved devices, and don’t have Homebridge or anything like that mucking things up.
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