@franz worked some magic and updated some long-awaited features with Amazon Alexa!
United Kingdom, Canada, & Australia REJOICE!
We heard you! And we’re excited to announce that we are now certified to be used in Australia, the UK, and Canada! You all should automatically see Rachio in your list of available integrations.
Tell Alexa To Do All of the Things
Some new commands have been added to our Alexa integration to make it even more powerful. The following functionality was added:
• water all zones for {duration}
• water all zones
• pause run for {pauseDuration}
• pause
• pause schedule for {pauseDuration}
• pause zone for {pauseDuration}
• pause for {pauseDuration}
• continue schedule
• resume schedule
• resume zone
• continue watering
• resume watering
Thank you. Happy to know it is here in Canada. A bit late for this year. Water already blow out. I can only try to turn it on and off (disable and enable Standby mode). It seems to work well. Look forward to try other command next year.!!
@laura.bauman@franz
I am not sure what the point is in releasing Amazon Alexa support in the UK and Australia when the Rachio product still fails to meet European and Australian wireless standards and hence at least in Europe is technically illegal to use.
If this is a first step to addressing the wireless illegality then it is of course worthwhile and welcome.
Nothing illegal about this in Australia re wireless… not sure what you are referring and i have been using 2.nd ver. More than a year in Sydney and work like a charm…
Only issue was PS which i use a transformer…
@siri
I did not say it was illegal in Australia but the Rachio product as it currently stands is illegal to use in Europe. It uses a frequency that is not allowed.
It will work but if the authorities detect you are using it then you can be prosecuted. Different countries use different frequencies for different purposes. It can either conflict with other uses e.g. mobile phones or be reserved for military use. This has been discussed in several threads. In fact I believe that the frequency Rachio use conflicts with mobile phone signals in Australia according to another thread in this forum.
For similar reasons there are restrictions and differences on Z-Wave and WiFi products with different frequencies used in US, Europe and Australia.
Rachio are aware of this but have so far not done anything about this. Hence my comment about it being a waste of time releasing an Alexa skill for use in Europe.
If you look at the bands that use for global wifi area, almost they are same and very few bands for some countries that are different… Having said that almost all the wifi routers , user can change the band and some instances the country as well. Since all of these bands are on public freq area, issue is not that critical for interference area.
I do know Z wave specs that are assigned to each country and if you look at the free spread for global they have very little difference and almost overlap. Good Z wave hub will give the user to change the band anyway.
I have not seen Australian mobile band that is near the mobile or LTE area… LTE use so many band spectrum and goes all the way to 60-70 GHZ .
I believe what @jelockwood is mentioning is the Gen 3 with the 900 MHz transmitter/receiver for the wireless flow meter. The Gen 1 and 2 devices don’t have that and just use WiFi.
There is a post where Rachio stated they are researching options for non-US/Canada products.
Yes, V3 use ISM band, which is on 902-928. which is ITU region 2. Australia Z wave is 919.8 MHz, 921.4 MHz and Zigbee is 915 Mhz for Australia and US.
We can use 915-928 MHz band in australia for IOT.
GSM used 900 MHz band in australia and with lte, 900 is clear.
@siri
I was merely using WiFi and Z-Wave as examples, these are not the problems with the Rachio 3 product.
Z-Wave uses 908.42MHz in the US, 868.42MHz in Europe and 921.42MHz in Australia.
The Rachio 3 uses the 902-928MHz band and hence conflicts with Australian frequencies for Z-Wave and some mobile networks.
Apparently the Rachio 2 does not have the same transmitter and would be ok in Australia.
I have not seen any Z-Wave product allow changing the frequency, they are sold in different versions for different countries. Some WiFi base-stations do support changing the frequencies (and signal strength) within limits, for example the Apple AirPort Extreme but even that did not support changing between US and Europe only within Europe - e.g. between UK and French frequencies.
Only the Rachio 3 and Wireless Flow Meter are restricted outside the United States and Canada. The Generation 1 and Generation 2 controllers do not have any radio restrictions, but do need a secondary power supply in other countries. Both will work just fine with Amazon Alexa.
While we do not actively sell in those countries, the radio frequencies are standard Wi-Fi and should not be a problem.
It only took you ten months to delevope the skill for Canada!
Now that summer is over… thanks for nothing.
I called you hundreds of times asking for the skill. My wife is not tech savvy at all. So a simple voice command is all she needs. I guess it was too much to ask for.
I’m so sorry that it took awhile to get the skill developed, certified, and ready to release! While we’re excited that it’s ready, we do wish that it would have been available before the end of the season.
You can trust that we heard you and were absolutely on board with getting Amazon Alexa to our Canadian customers. We hope that come next season, the feature will be incredibly helpful to you and your family!
Lo