Rachio 3 Not Responding in Homekit (Again)

Indeed. Very disappointing. I’ve had this controller for over a year now and have had no luck using it with HomeKit. By the looks of it, hundreds if not thousands of others are having the same issue. I am surprised it is still being advertised as HomeKit compatible.

I just gave up, been using the Homebridge solution and its been working fine. If Rachio ever gets it fixed I will be back. Based on the updates from Rachio I am not terribly optimistic, they have been rather vague and useless IMHO.

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I have to completely agree with you…

I just can’t understand why mine works so perfectly. Completely freaks me out. What is different about mine? And if anybody asks what mine is I’m not going to answer because I’ve done that a million times before… It just works. And I don’t even use it. Ever… very strange but whatever makes this work evidently is the secret sauce and it’s somewhere in my network if somebody wants to try to find it :joy::joy:

I personally believe it is because I use a Synology Router. I just updated to the newest Wi-Fi six Synology router and that one works with Rachio3 perfectly too… Go figure

The true test will be when I buy another Rachio and along with my previous router install both at my office irrigation. I will bet $1000 that it will work in a completely different environment too

This ^^^^^^ is me, precisely. In fact I was just thinking, this morning, of removing our R3 from HomeKit and moving the app back off to a corner, somewhere, because we don’t use HK for anything anymore.

I only brought HK out of storage and re-added our R3 to test connectivity. Well, it’s been nearly three months (I re-added our R3 to HK on May 17) and… <checks…> it’s still there. It’s been there, and been working, every time I checked. This is through multiple brief power failures, forcing the R3 off one AP onto another and back again, and forcing the HK server to switch. Just started-up a zone that has an area freshly-seeded two weeks back. It’s running and the zone is updating the remaining time in HK.

I guess I’ll leave it for the entire three months and then remove it and re-retire HK.

Today, I watered my dog using my Apple Watch. Sometime it just works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Jon.

Nice to see they are getting somewhere. Hopefully they can resolve the issues without new hardware

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8/25 update says " This will, unfortunately, require considerable regression testing once task heap sizes are adjusted"

In terms we can understand, this issue won’t be fixed for the 2023 season :thinking:

And it sounds like if they can’t allocate enough memory for this either they will have to defeature something to get homekit to work or to release a new product.

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Mine has been rock solid since I put everything on static IPs and also turned off IPv6 in my gateway.

My network is a bunch of old Apple Airports all hard-wired to the gateway. I’m actually adding a 5th one in one spot that has weak WiFi as soon as it arrives from eBay.
Screen Shot 2022-08-28 at 5.00.05 PM

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Well, it’s been over three months and our R3 remains connected to HK.

Even after yesterday, when the power got all kinds of wonky as storms came through, going on and off several times. I later noticed the R3 was off-line. I pulled the plug, counted to twenty, plugged it back in, and it was back on-line. I just checked HK now. The R3 is there and working through HK.

Experiment completed. I’ll now re-retire HK, as we don’t use it for anything.

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The same holds true for me. I just wish it did for everyone…

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Oddly mine reconnected after a power cycle after I made a lot of changes to my network.

On one side of my house, the wifi was weak so I added another Airport Base station and also moved another base station to my garage. Had to run ethernet cables to both these rooms and accidentally drilled through the main ethernet cable that connects the two sides of my house.

Not wanting to have to pull a new ethernet cable I instead put a new end of the cut cable and added another hub to connect the cut cable to new cables.

So after making major changes to everything the rachio went offline but power cycling it put it back online. I’m amazed that I didn’t have to re-add it manually.

No idea why mine works so well now as it didn’t for a long time.

I have everything on static IPs and have separated the 2.4 and 5 ghz into two separate Wifis plus turned off IPv6.

And now for the 1701st post to this thread… As the OP I am finding that since downloading iOS 16, HomeKit is totally fixed and working perfectly.

How about everyone else?



I think this is your 1,701 post saying the same thing. We get it bro, Tim personally sent an army of Apple engineers to your home and configured everything for you - including your Rachio!

I am joking, I have also found iOS 16 feels more stable overall with HomeKit but for me HomeKit overall works well with a few exceptions, Rachio being one of them. I am looking forward to the new architecture expected with 16.1.

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Here to also report that iOS 16 does seem more stable. My Rachio hasn’t connected in weeks and I upgraded my phone earlier this week, but didn’t think to check Rachio status in the home app. Checked and it shows the status and allows me to control the valves. Nice! See if it stays lol

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Same, working correctly and perfectly under iOS16.

But mine was already working well other than not displaying the controls unless I did a long press.

My iPad and Mac are not updated yet so still have the old interface.

On a side note, the Rachio connected after a power cycle after replacing my Gateway/Router and has been even more stable since replacing the Gateway/Router after my old one died.

Hahahaha! I was having lots of problems back when I started the post 25 years ago… I think we should have a group get together whenever this problem is fixed and I shut down this thread!!!

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I guess I have missed a step here.
Since installing I can’t even get my Rachio 3 to appear in HomeKit.
Can someone explain to me like a third grader, what I need to do to restart so I can attempt to Connect Rachio 3 to my Home App again?
I have limped through using the Rachio app itself, but the whole reason I yanked out the working control head and replaced with this in the first place was to use it with HomeKit.

This is for iOS 16 and assuming your controller is on your Wifi network (pref 2.4 GHZ):

  1. go to your R3 controller
  2. open Rachio app and open your controller
  3. touch “more” at the bottom
  4. go to “controller settings”
  5. go to “HomeKit”
  6. make note of “HomeKit code” (used later)
  7. touch “Add HomeKit Accessory” - this opens the Apple “Home app”
  8. touch the “+” button to add accessory
  9. touch “more options”
  10. touch My Accessory Isn’t Shown Here
  11. touch “Enter Code”
  12. ENTER CODE (from step 6)

Let us know how that works for you…

Good Luck!

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Thanks! I will!