@franz and I will use this thread to post weekly updates on the HomeKit project status. It was decided in the “Rachio 3 Not Responding in Homekit (Again)” thread that we would post weekly updates on Fridays regardless of the status of the project, meaning we will post an update whether there is news to share or not.
This thread will be “closed” for community comments but discussion can still take place in the original thread. Closed does not mean that we’re done talking about it, it’s just seemingly the only way to prevent replies at this time. Will update when the thread is officially closed.
4/16/2021 Update
Current status: code is just about ready to be deployed to support the new firmware and Wi-Fi update issue
Upcoming: Beta testers - keep an eye out for more testing opportunities early next week!!!
We have determined the new WICED hardware vendor SDK and Apple’s own HomeKit ADK (from Cypress’ HomeKit SDK) did not solve the issue (as recommended by our hardware vendor)
Our hardware vendor (Cypress) is trying to reproduce the error setting up similar network environments (access points our customers use)
In parallel with Cypress, our engineering team is trying to replicate the issue and find where in the vendor’s SDK the issue is. At that point our hope is they can provide a patch or we patch ourselves.
I’m sorry that I do not have new updates. Our Engineering leads (Franz and Michael) working with Cypress are out of office until Monday, May 17th. As such, I will not have a technical update to share this Friday, May 14th, but will provide an update the following Monday (the 17th).
Our Wifi vendor Cypress has started research on the issue but no progress. They are asking for ADK logs on devices to help troubleshoot the disconnect. Our Homekit firmware consulting team will have dedicated expert resources starting in about two weeks to modify firmware to capture these logs. Once that has been rolled out hopefully they will be able to make further progress.
Following up on Franz update last week. We are still waiting for our dedicated HomeKit consulting team to be fully re-engaged with this project. The expert resources will be available immediately after Memorial Day. We’ll continue to update this thread.
We are still in a holding pattern as we wait for our resource to start immediately after Memorial Day. There will be more information posted here in the coming weeks.
Our HomeKit engineering team has added deep logging into the Rachio firmware to try and capture where in the networking code HomeKit is erroring out. This code will be deployed out to Beta customers so we can gather more information regarding this issue and work on next-steps.
We’ve rolled out the Beta of our new HomeKit firmware. We’re gathering controller log data in relation to HomeKit to track down the root cause. We have not identified it yet
We met with the Apple team and will be incorporating their Rachio controllers to help with our beta program, they are also helping us follow up with Cypress (WiFi chip vendor) to see if they have made progress on any known networking issues with the chipset.
The Apple team has incorporated the beta into their controllers this week to collect data. They are working with Cypress (WiFi chip vendor) but have not identified any networking issues. We will continue to update as we learn more from our partners.
