It’s been over another three weeks. Still connected to HK, @zhazell? Any other connectivity issues, other than that one time it went off-line following a power glitch?
Our R3 hasn’t gone off-line once, other than that time I was getting a second AP going. It’s remained connected to HK ever since I added it back nearly two months ago–during which time I forced the R3 off one AP, onto another, then back again.
Try to scroll down. Mine looks like that, but when I scroll down I see all the settings, including Zones.
@jonbrawn i have this also and here are the three behaviors I see.
Tap - most devices show an empty panel, my iPhone and one other Mac show the on/off slider.
Long press - if above happens. A long press to open the HomeKit tile will make the on/off slider show up. If it shows up with a regular touch, the long press will toggle the effects of a functioning device in option 1.
No combination of buttons makes the on/off slider show up.
It’s baffling and my HomeKit integration with rachio is relatively stable other that this. If it do go “no response” typically running a quick run from the app triggers it to show back up in HomeKit.
I use the r3 to fill a pool up by controlling a sprinkler valve on the water line so I only have 1 zone. Not sure if multiple zones drives different behavior.
That’s weird.
I’ve had one R3 HK failure in the nearly two months since I added it. I force-quite the HK app, re-started it, and all was well. That suggested, to me, it was a HK snafu, rather than the R3?
In fact: I think I checked another of my Apple devices (my iPad) and it had been there? I really no longer recall. It was at least a month ago? I think I reported on it at the time?
So will we be able to get a firmware update that resolves the issue? Going on multiple years here now.
There are supposed to be controls, so you can turn each zone off and on manually. Or, at least, that used to be the case.
Jon.
My guess is that this is an iOS issue. The Home app on macOS does not exhibit this problem:
I filed a bug report with Apple in Feedback Assistant.
…except my screen capture WAS from macOS!
This is the problem I’m still having. The Rachio app works fine, but I just can’t get it to appear in HomeKit. The whole reason I chose this.
Tell us about your WiFi network, please?
Me?
Hardware: Google fiber to the study wall, older model eero (but not oldest model) plugged into the wall fiber jack, switch plugged into the other eero port, and eero mesh around the house with all eero’s having gigabit backhaul to the study switch. Rachio in the garage, along with a HomeKit garage door opener. HomePods and HomePod Minis scattered all over the building, Lutron bridge to their light switches, dimmers, fan controllers; a variety of smart plugs; TVs, BlueRay player, Apple TV blob, and a PC hardwired. Laptops, some of which are hardwired sometimes, but mostly on the WiFi. Nothing particularly special I don’t think.
Protocols: Both 2.4GHz and 5GHz share the same SSID. Rachio is always visible on their app. Don’t bother telling me to turn off 5GHz or have a separate 2.4GHz network just to fix the Rachio, my personal opinion is that’s a load of old tosh, as Home can see the Rachio usually, just not the controls.
Observations: My Rachio would never join HomeKit, then I got rid of about 70 Leviton HK WiFi light switches and replaced them with the Lutron switches and the corresponding bridge, since when my Rachio has mostly been visible in the Home app, and has usually re-joined the HK world after power cycling if it had dropped off HK. At some stage after replacing the light switches this business with no controls being visible happened.
Suggestion: As an experiment, disable as many of the HK-aware items as you possibly can in your house, to reduce the MDNS network traffic as much as possible, and see if that makes your Rachio more reliable for an hour or so. Won’t cost you anything (other than time) and it might give some extra data points. Of course, that doesn’t do anything about Home not showing the controls, which may well be an Apple issue, not a Rachio issue (because, you know, Apple doesn’t really care about HK much either).
The Rachio is doing a good job of keeping the lawn alive, well, most of the lawn, so I just let it get on with it now. I don’t have enough energy to care really - we’ve all been swindled to a greater or lesser extent by these scoundrels, and I suspect they have neither the engineering ability nor the management will to fix it. For my part, I can usually use voice commands to turn a zone on or off, so I’m happy enough, for others, I can totally appreciate their frustration.
Jon.
Nope. @Magdog.
I was going to just let the following go, because I see no sense in arguing with somebody whose mind is made up, but, for the benefit of others: There’s a point or three to be made.
That may be your personal opinion, but my experienced opinion is shared SSIDs between 5GHz and 2.4GHz, band-steering, and fast roaming/BSS transition are all known to cause problems with many WiFi client devices–and not just the Rachio 3.
In hardware and software design, and in I.T., we’ve a saying in trouble-shooting: “Get the crap off the bus.” (Refers here to “data bus.”) That means that, when something’s not working right, get rid of everything that isn’t necessary to the thing working. Simplify.
Heck, we taught that principle all the way back when I was an instructor for the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
Fixed WiFi clients don’t need any of those features. An aspect of good design, any design, really, not just tech stuff, is KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Make a thing only as complicated as it need be, and no more.
Another aspect is one of practicality. Whether anybody believes any of the suggestions I make should be necessary, or not: If they mitigate the problem and they cost you nothing: Why not try them? Hopefully, someday, Rachio will figure out what are the problems and fix them, obviating the need for all this. But, in the meantime: Isn’t the goal to get your stuff to work the way you’d like? I don’t see the sense in sacrificing usability for the sake of standing on principles or beliefs.
Lastly: Users experiencing connectivity problems and discovering work-arounds add data, potentially helping lead toward an understanding of why the problems exist in the first place, thus possibly helping lead to a fix.
All that being said: In @jonbrawn’s case, I’m not certain any of this matters, because many of these consumer-grade mesh products don’t allow fine-tuning, like this, anyway. (One of the several reasons I’m not fond of mesh WiFi solutions.)
I’ve been a user since first Rachio and was excited to see HomeKit integration. Got my Rachio 3 installed today to be severely disappointed and even more horrified after finding this thread.
I’m running eero pro 6 mesh network. Had a bit difficultly connecting when adding to HomeKit. Then found the blank screen of HomeKit Rachio saga invading my already busy schedule.
I found that the long press is just a coincidence. What works better is quick open, quick close, and quick open. This works more than 90% of the time. My guess is that there is a “ping” frequency between devices. Rachio and HomeKit talk to each other every few seconds maybe? If you click fast you will increase the chances of “catching” the two systems connected.
Also, if you catch the systems connected with controls showing, you can minimize and maximize the home app, without closing the Rachio controls, and it will keep working.
Voice commands with Siri appear to always work for me, even if controls don’t show up. So this might be more of a UI problem.
Thank you @PaulM that actually works. Of course we shouldn’t have to do this, but thank you for the information.
I appreciate the people here trying to chime in as to what we can do on our end to fix the issue when Rachio themselves has already acknowledged that THIS IS A PROBLEM WITH RACHIO. Furthermore, this thread dates back several years, and if you take the time reading thorugh it, you will see that just about everything has already been suggested mutiple times and None of those things have fixed the problem. Yes, there are a few people have had success with their Rachio, but most of us have not. As a farily technical person that has been using HomeKit for a few years, and has over 120+ WORKING homekit devices, I can assure you all that there is little to nothing that we can do to fix this. Rachio needs to solve the problem and release a new firmware, period! End of Rant 
The firmware engineer has been seen at a local bar drinking heavily. Some overheard comments include…“just use a hose and water your grass…”
Ours remains connected to HomeKit, with all zones present and accounted-for.
I’m curious, how many HomePods and or Apple TV’s do you have in your setup?
