Tzterri “I wish the rachio had an Ethernet plug.” - seconded.
However, there’s no guarantee that having a hardwired connection to the LAN would fix anything - my Rachio doesn’t fall off of the WiFi at all, that’s rock-solid, but there’s no way I can get HomeKit to ever see the Rachio.
Yesterday mine fell off of HomeKit and wifi. Took many tries and much wasted time to first get it back on wifi and then on HomeKit.
Power went out here today for a few hours after a car crash. All my homekit devices reconnected once power came back on except the rachio.
You should see the horrible reviews on Amazon about the rachio and rachio support.
Rachio has definitely had a hard time with apples homekit. There is no disputing or denying that fact, However, their support is exemplary when it comes to irrigation control. The ratings on Amazon are almost 5 stars with over 5000 reviews for the Rachio3. I wouldn’t trade it for another controller even if the other controller was free. That is just my opinion (and the opinion of 5000 other reviewer‘s on Amazon).
If HomeKit worked perfectly would you be happy with the controller?
As someone that has been very vocal about my feelings toward Rachio and the HomeKit fiasco I agree 100%. From an irrigation standpoint it’s the best IMHO, I have owned every Rachio model since the v1.
Yes!
I would love this controller worked correctly but it doesn’t and the one feature that I bought it for has never worked reliable in the years I’ve owned it.
This would be like buying a really nice car but once a week you first have to fix its flat tires that keep on going flat for no reason.
It wouldn’t be so bad if all you had to do was to cycle its power but often it involves an hour or more of wasted frustration trying to get it working again.
It’s not just reviews on Amazon that one star it for HomeKit issues it’s anyplace with reviews for it.
It’s now on the do not recommend at our HOA.
It is definitely not a security issue nor a wifi issue. I have around 80 HomeKit devices from homepods, light bulbs, switches, plugs, sensors, fans, blinds, garage door opener, etc all connected to my wifi and NONE of them drop off. Once in a while, some of the devices will give the all too common “not responding” HomeKit error, but after about 30 seconds, they reconnect by themselves. We also have a wifi mesh system that gives full coverage about half a block around our house, in fact, one of the Wifi pucks is less than 12 inches away from my Rachio 3 and when connected to it, I get speeds of 200 Mb/s consistently. This is 100% a Rachio issue that needs to be fixed. I’m actually quite surprised that Apple certified this as a HomeKit device when it doesn’t work with HomeKit.
The last Rachio tech had me download a tracing app and run it while my iphone was sitting next to the controller to see if I was having any wifi issues and I’m not. The closest wifi is about five feet away and there is another one about 8 feet away. So it is not a wifi issue.
Sorry for the late update. We found an issue in the WICED 6.6 SDK that is not allowing us to update WiFi through the iOS app.
Hi Franz,Good news, I’m pretty sure I’ve tracked down the cause of this issue. In WICED 6.6, the SDK now uses a different MAC address when the device is acting as an access point than it does when acting as a client (which is why it appeared correct to the router, but wrong when iOS was looking for unconfigured accessories). Specifically, it sets the “locally administered” bit in the MAC address, indicating that it is not using a universally administered MAC address. I think this is likely to be the correct behavior, but it definitely causes some issues for us because we aren’t expecting it.I think there are two options here.
- We can modify the SDK to no longer set this bit which would match the old behavior. I think this is the less correct option, but it is pretty unlikely to cause problems (it hasn’t caused major issues yet).
- Alternatively, we can update the iOS app to look for MAC addresses with this bit set. This is the more correct option, but the updated firmware would lose compatibility with older versions of the app.Let me know how you want to proceed and I will push updates as needed.
We are hoping to get the iOS app out soon for testing. We also still have some backend engineering to finish on a firmware update issue. Once these two items are resolved we can continue testing.
Thanks again for your patience with these updates.
Why possible good comes from setting the locally administered bit? The base MAC block B8:D7:AF is an OUI registered to Murata and if the addresses are properly assigned, they are globally unique.
Can anyone come up with a scenario where changing the address enables something to work that would otherwise fail?
IMO option 1 is the only reasonable choice.
Wotcha Stewart!
[disclaimer: thoughts from my sofa, not researched facts. It’s been over 20 years since I was last writing TCP/IP stacks, so I’m a bit out of date]
I could see a situation in a product where the MAC is software programmed during configuration where you might have to invent a MAC address to get the initial configuration going, in which case you’d want to set this bit, but you’d have to have an “interesting” design for that to be the case.
Specifically it’d have to come out of the first power-on straight into access point mode before doing anything with the domestic WiFi. When you’re MAC is hard coded (well, firm-coded I guess these days) this wouldn’t be necessary.
Jon.
I vote for whichever and whatever fixes this.
I don’t see a problem with leaving old iOS out as apps do this all the time.
Apple leaves old iPhone snd iPad plus their other hardware out from running newer software.
Apple also does this all the time. I just upgraded my Mac to a M1 Mac as my old Mac couldn’t run newer software.
Like my thermostat
Yes, but in the case of your thermostat, none of this even matters, because ecobee has a good web portal. It can be viewed fine on iOS 4+, Android 4+ and any Windows/Mac/Linux computer that can run an HTML5 browser.
My thermostats happen to be Honeywell, but the UI is very similar. Here’s how one looks in Chrome on my phone:
It works fine.
As a result of your post, I found that Honeywell also has mobile apps. Why would I possibly care? An app:
Now, I understand the realities of the tech marketplace require that manufacturers provide apps. Some users, especially millennials, believe that apps are ‘cool’ and won’t buy a device that doesn’t come with one. However, most developers realize that many users prefer a robust website, or at least that a website provides a good workaround for most app problems. Ecobee and Honeywell devices, for example, can be configured, registered and controlled from any device with Wi-Fi and an HTML5 web browser.
Unfortunately, Rachio chose to require a mobile app to set up the system, and compounded the situation with frail Wi-Fi implementations that have been incompatible with multiple devices. Controllers still on store shelves cannot be provisioned with recent phones from both Apple and Samsung. These bugs have since been fixed, but the solution for many unhappy customers has been to get replacement units with corrected firmware. I hope that future releases present (in AP mode) a trivial web form where one enters serial, SSID, password and presses Submit, connecting the controller to Wi-Fi.
I only use the ecobee inside of homekit. I used their app to set it up but that was it. Zero issues with the ecobee. It’s part of an action that when I leave home it turns off my AC along with a bunch of other things including putting my alarm on.
Checking in again every 2 weeks. Still no beta and fix for HomeKit yet.
I know many believe HomeKit support isn’t a big deal but many of us “UPGRADED” from v2 to v3 purely for the HomeKit feature.
Still waiting… waiting for fix or another manufacturer with HomeKit support.
It was the only reason I bought this controller.
Didn’t realize I was actually buying two plus years of aggravation while being stringed along with a promise of a fix.
I have a few accessories that will run into not-responding and stay this way until power cycled. My guess is it all comes down to internal Wi-Fi hardware. This is likely the same issue @franz has been experiencing, however at least they’re looking to attempt to resolve it.
The others have just let it be and on they go. I’m around the 100 mark for HomeKit accessories.
Same. I am very disappointed with this. If they fix this then I will have no hesitation recommending them and buying another when I eventually will need to. If they continue this drawn out saga of talking but not fixing, I will not be buying anything from this brand ever again.
Very annoying.
I am very disappointed by the behavior of the community in this thread, because I believe that there is probably an easy workaround, but it hasn’t been discovered.
There are quite a few credible posts by users who experience no problems with HomeKit integration. And there is clearly some selection bias – most users without HomeKit issues will not have posted in or even visited this thread. Let’s say (for example) that half the HomeKit users have trouble with frequent disconnects and half don’t. If we find out what the difference is, we can change the failing systems so they work reliably.
IMO, it’s very unlikely that the ‘bad’ units have a hardware defect. It could be a firmware version difference, back-end data issue, etc., but I believe that the most likely cause is controller firmware that is intolerant of certain Wi-Fi AP or router/firewall behavior. With luck, most users will be able to fix this with a settings change. If their APs have a quirk that can’t be configured away, maybe adding the right $25 AP will work. Or, perhaps you wanted to upgrade your Wi-Fi anyhow; choose new APs that are compatible with the present firmware.
I don’t understand why you’re upset with the community. If this were an open source project or community driven, I’d agree with you, but this is supposed to be an off the shelf, ready to go product. So while I’m happy to provide data about my WiFi setup to assist in diagnosis, I firmly believe it is their responsibility to resolve it, not the community’s. I bought this controller because it was supposed to work with HomeKit out of the box; it does not because of some issue with the WiFi module:
Frankly, I shouldn’t have to tune my wireless infrastructure purchases, to “what happens to work with my sprinkler controller for who knows why”. No one should really have to worry about matching anything more than what they advertise; which as far as I can find is just “Strong WiFi”.
As anecdotal evidence, I have upgraded my WiFi to a full Ubiquiti system (unrelated to this Rachio issue), from an Asus RT-AC68U, and it did not do anything. My Rachio still connects just fine to WiFi itself (as evidenced by the Rachio App working) but it still refuses to respond in HomeKit. It worked briefly when I first got it, and again when I had Franz manually push the 615 downgrade to my device almost a year ago, but stopped again about 6 months ago when firmware 632 was re-pushed to my unit.
My biggest frustration right now is not that it hasn’t been fixed yet, as I understand engineering does take time (speaking as a software engineer), but that actually fixing the issue with the WiFi module and associated SDK seems to have been largely sidelined, in favor of “new features”
