I downgraded to 615 and have had no issues with HK for over a week now. So the quick fix of downgrading works!
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Good afternoon everyone. This is the Homekit update for August 7th, 2020.
We met with our contractors today for our weekly update meeting that we will have moving forward on Friday’s. Their team made good progress they understand the issue, the codebase, and are coming up to speed well. They have a couple of items they need from us and we will have those items to them next week to help facilitate testing their ADK (Apple Development Kit) fix.
As a reminder, this first phase of the project is to go directly against the Apple Development Kit for all of our Homekit functionality. That is still on track for a mid-September delivery.
That is this weeks update, thank you all for being Rachio customers, and we wish you a very wonderful weekend.
Michael
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Thank you @Michael_I for all these weekly updates. I come here every Friday to read it, and I really appreciate you keeping us informed on the progress. These kind of actions are the ones that restore faith in your products and loyalty to your brand.
Best wishes.
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Good morning everyone. This is the Homekit update for August 14th, 2020.
We just got off of the weekly status call with our contractor. We have made solid progress this week. There was a critical point on Tuesday where we needed to get them a programmable board to our contractor team ASAP or it was going to block their progress. Our team quickly rallied around the problem and overnighted a programmable board. During our status update today, they have a direct to ADK implementation on the board and are currently debugging through the code. This is a solid milestone for this project. It’s still early and the ADK implementation is not stable, but the code is written and we are debugging through the issues.
We are still on track for phase 1 testing in mid to late September.
A sincere thank you to you all for being Rachio customers and have a wonderful weekend.
Michael
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From a former IT guy (now retired), sounds like a fun project to be working on. Thanks for the updates. 
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I haven’t been posting here but I’ve been checking regularly for updates. I really appreciate the constant updates!
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Thanks for the weekly updates, please add me to the list of those interested in testing.
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Good afternoon everyone! This is the Homekit update for August 21st, 2020.
We met with our contractor team this week and they have recommended updating our WiFi firmware AND the ADK changes at the same time. If you remember, we had planned to do these updates in a phased approach. They are concerned that is could create an unstable state on the board and invalidate the ADK testing we plan to do at the end of phase 1 if we stagger their implementation. Our contractor team would also like to meet with our WiFi chip vendor to validate their methodologies moving forward.
They have an ADK implementation in place as well as the WiFi firmware update, both in the early stages. They are working to debug some of the behaviors they are seeing and want to consult with our chip vendor to make sure we are on the right path.
Right now, our phase 1 delivery is still on track for mid to late September delivery.
That is our update this week, thank you all for being Rachio customers, and we wish you a fantastic weekend.
Michael
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Please roll back my controller to version 615 also.
Good afternoon all, I hope you have had a wonderful week. This is the Homekit update for August 28th, 2020.
This week, we were able to get our WiFi chip manufacturer and our contracting agency together so we can verify our approach to updating our firmware. It was a good meeting and our contractor was excited about their approach and believe it was validated by the call. They are going to huddle up and there is a meeting early next week to meet with us to make sure their approach is sound before they get to far down an implementation. One wrinkle is that our WiFi chip vendor announced they are releasing a new firmware version. We have to evaluate if we need to go with that version or stick with our existing plan. We will make this decision as soon as we can to keep the project moving forward.
Another update for you all, Franz will be taking over this project which includes the weekly update to allow me to focus on other aspects of the team.
It’s been great to hear from you all, have a wonderful weekend, and thank you for being Rachio customers.
Michael
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Thanks Michael. I am grateful for the focus on this problem. I do hope the weekly updates will continue. Even if there’s not much week to week it’s reassuring that you are constantly keeping us informed.
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Hi Michael, thanks so much for the continuous updates.
As an IT professional, I can tell you that you involvement has been a model of customer engagement.
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First time checking in a while.
As I’ve had to add the Rachio multiple times this week every time my power goes off in our seasonal storms including just now really hoping for a fix soon as it’s now been over a year of a promised fix.
Also would like to be able to turn Wifi on with my Apple Watch.but doing so causes the Rachio to go offline if I leave my house as it’s my only device that I can’t put on my second 5 ghz network.
Is it just me or did we not get an update for last week? These have been very helpful and I have been checking weekly for some time. Hope these updates continue.
No update that I saw.
Hey team - stepping in here real quick. I believe the updates are slated to continue but Franz is out of office this week so there’s a chance we won’t see an update until next week. I will keep everyone posted if a) I get news on my end or b) anything changes.
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Hi, I’ve upgraded from a rachio 2 to rachio 3 for the homekit feature. I’ve read through MOST of this thread as I’m having problems with homekit. When I first configured homekit it added the sprinkler controller to my apple home just fine. Then it stopped responding, so I deleted it. Now I cannot get it to add back. It simply is not present after I put in the code to select a device. I’ve tried holding the stop button for 10 seconds and readding it to wifi, power cycling both the rachio and my wifi routers along with my primary apple home hub. Any other idea? It looks like rolling back to an old firmware fixed the issue but then it looks like this newest firmware also should work. TIA for any help!
I started this thread in April 2019. Rachio is aware of the Homekit problem and they are working on a fix… Frantz is on it, he is a owner of Rachio.
Having said that, mine has been working great across my iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch… All Homekit does is allow you to use the Rachio controller in a VERY limited way to turn stations on and off Thing is, I never use it to do that because the controller is so darn good I don’t touch it.
People really want this to work and so did I… Just letting you know. It was fun to turn on the system if my grandkids were in the yard (or just to mess with my wife) but…
As far as my Rachio / Homekit goes, It never drops out and I haven’t had issues for months… Even if I reboot my network multiple times. I know this doesn’t help you (other then don’t give up). I would say be patient and know that a fix is coming… Rolling back to firmware 615 (I think it was) may help but mine is the most current at 4.1.16 and has remained stable since v.632.
I think this problem depends on router types. I attribute my success on my Synology mesh routers…
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Yeah I’ve followed your comments close! Thanks for starting this thread and I agree the use is limited but for my non-tech savvy wife to be able to turn on the sprinklers in the home app or with Siri for the kids will be a plus.
Because rachio 2 only used 2.4ghz I used an airport extreme (newest version) and created a separate network for my IoT devices because my google nest wifi can’t split out or assign devices to connect on a certain band.
@Macsterguy you had a theory there were issues with the wifi band the rachio 3 is on or jumping to. I tend to agree with you and I think my mistake was that I didn’t connect it to the 2.4ghz IoT wifi the first time I tried adding it to my apple home. I’ve since connected the rachio 3 to the same 2.4ghz network that my rachio 2 was on. That said, once I removed the not responding sprinkler device from my apple home, I can’t see the device to re-add it. I’ve tried all combinations of reset and wifi networks but no go.
Wondering if I’m missing those flags in the database that was talked about early on? or if there is something the support team can help with.
If I recall, I have seen Rachio among my 5ghz devices in the past but most, if not nearly all of the time it connects to the 2.4ghz network. Rachio states that it works with both networks (or at least it did when I bought mine… I know that these are the areas that they are working on and I have always believed that Rachio doesn’t play well with 5ghz.
In my case, as an experiment (months ago) I assigned the Rachio to the 5ghz network and it worked. Currently, I use the Synology “Smart Connect” to manage my (over 40 devices in my home) and most of the iOT devices are assigned to 2.4ghz but not all… Some Leviton switches are on 5ghz while others are on 2.4ghz… Again, most incl: Rachio, smart lights, switches, garage door, thermostats are on 2.4ghz… The Synology just does it’s thing…
I really have to say I love this router. I chose it both at home and in my business (35-Macs plus other devices) to replace my much loved apple routers (I am still mad at apple) but this router is actually better if not more geeky (more configurable) with better range.
I just hope that when this finally gets fixed mine doesn’t break - Hahaha