Rachio 3 Not Responding in Homekit (Again)

Thanks for the feedback, we will continue to investigate these stability issues.

:cheers:

It worked! Recycled and reapplied HomeKit, Yeah…

1 Like

@franz I’m still at 615 and everything has worked fine since installation last summer. My question is … will the changes you’re discussing (setting feature flags, patching upgrade process, etc.) also address the WFM disconnect issue that’s been discussed, or only the HomeKit problem? Like I said, I’m Ok now but don’t want to update firmware to 632+ and risk losing HomeKit and/or WFM support in the coming weeks. Thanks.

I’d leave the firmware unless you plan on re-provisioning the controller with an iPhone Pro 11 or Samsung S30. At some point we might upgrade all the WFM controllers, will contact folks before hand if that happens.

:cheers:

2 Likes

@franz May I please get 615 on mine? I’ve asked but you’ve not been checking your PM…

OK, so I was reverted back to 615 a few days ago and Homekit was working again. Today after seeing that there was a fix for the newer firmware I went ahead and upgraded the firmware to 632. After the Upgrade, I power cycled the system. Once the system was back online, HomeKit showed “No Response” once again. I then removed the controller from the Home App and tried to add it back. When trying to add it back, the device is never found by the Home app after inputting the Homekit code. I have since performed a factory reset of the Rachio 3 and still no luck.

Can you try another power cycle? I had the engineering team review your controller and it was missing those feature flags. The team is still working on a patch when users upgrade firmware through the mobile app.

:cheers:

Will try again now and report back once done. Thanks for the quick response

I was now able to add it to the home app immediately. Thank You again.

1 Like

Wow! I had been following this thread the last 2 weeks or so, after googling around, after I could not get Rachio 3 to show up in HomeKit and connectivity with the Flow Meter had been lost, while taking it out of Standby for the start of the season.

The FM had been working fine all through last season. I also had the R3 added to HK at some point in the past, but had not been using it from within HK, so I can’t speak to the original issue this thread appears to deal with. (Other than running my phone and R3 on a dedicated 2.4G AP and their own VLAN did not revive HK on 632.)

However, I was pretty sure that the upgrade to 632, which I had done first, manually, 2 weeks ago, killed HK completely. Just read about the server side DB flags and can confirm that after one simple power cycle, the R3 could be added to HK right away, and the FM shows as connected.

3 Likes

I can confirm I am on 632. I did not have to reboot the controller and it is in HomeKit. We’ll see how it goes.

1 Like

This fix has worked for me. This morning I attempted to add my controller with firmware 632 to HomeKit and it worked. Thank you for this fix.

1 Like

Glad it worked
Got a message in with @franz (waiting for pm reply) and tech support
Still unable to re-add controller to HK with 632. Beyond frustrating

I’ve restarted my controller multiple times on multiple days to see if that affects the process. My device still is never visible in the HK onboarding process after entering its 8 digit code. I should have pushed this issue long ago, I’m getting extremely frustrated that this feature isn’t working at a time of the year when I could really be using its functionality.

2 Likes

Mine was broken for months too, but after @franz pushed a downgrade back to version 615 I was able to get it working in HomeKit - with the usual old issue of the Rachio becoming unavailable in HomeKit and having to reboot it every couple of days to get it back. I added a HomeKit power outlet to allow for remote resets.

Now that it is “Mostly working” I am scared to upgrade it to version 632 - I don’t want to go back to having no HomeKit because I have a large yard and it is super useful to be able to ask Siri from my watch to start and stop a zone while I am working on the sprinklers.

What do you think…? Am I safe to upgrade to 632? or should I just live with having to reboot and wait for a future release?

There are several credible posts of successful HK operation with 632, so you should be pretty safe.

In case of a problem, you could always ask to be downgraded again.

And, it’s pretty easy to set up Google Assistant and add Rachio to it. You’ll be able to operate zones hands free “Hey Google, start watering [zone name]. Hey Google, stop watering.” Unfortunately, you cannot specify a duration, though that is unimportant if you’re just adjusting and cleaning heads.

1 Like

No luck for me. I rebooted a couple of times and cannot add the controller to HomeKit on my iPhone 11 Pro.

I called support today because no one was getting back to my emails.
I am up and running now. Instead of pulling the power, he had me hit the square (up) on the controller and hold it to do a soft reset. I guess that did the trick (as unplugging it never worked with getting HK working).
I then re-added my wifi network (via my mac computer) and HomeKit code now works. hope this helps

Hi,

@franz, you downgraded my controller to 615 last week and it worked fine in Homekit. After upgrading it (now at 632), I can not re-add it to Homekit. Thanks for all the efforts so far.

Dan