William Gallagher
Rachio has announced that its Rachio 3 smart sprinkler controller will no longer support HomeKit after engineers are unable to resolve issues, and is offering refunds to users.
The Rachio 3 sprinkler controller added HomeKit support back in 2018. Recently users have been reporting "no response" errors.
Since April 2022, Rachio has been detailing the work its engineers have done "working with Apple's dev team" to resolve the problem, but have concluded that they cannot.
"We've put a considerable amount of effort into determining the root cause and possible solutions for the 'No Response' error that some Rachio users report when using HomeKit," wrote Rachio manager Dane Berry, in a forum post and an email to consumers seen by AppleInsider. "We're sorry we have some disappointing news. We are suspending this work indefinitely."
"We did not make this decision lightly," Berry continues. "Although it seems like we have come closer to determining the root cause, our recent findings have led to more unknowns than answers."
"We understand the disappointment and frustration this will cause some users and we want to make this right for you," he says. "For any user who is unable to use HomeKit with their Rachio and would rather use a competitor's product we will reimburse you the cost of the Rachio controller after receiving your controller."
Details on how to return the Rachio 3 for a refund are included in the forum post.
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9 Comments
This is an unfortunate scenario but hopefully an isolated one.
In my opinion the future success of HomeKit hinges on how well Apple and other vendors support the Matter standard. To improve HomeKit adoption Apple really needs to go all-in on Matter even if it means they are doing some of the heavy lifting that could be delegated to others and are being careful not to impose too much proprietary influence over smaller adopters. Ideally the primary technical challenges for HomeKit adopters should be delegated to Matter experts rather than to Apple.
Part of this heavy lifting should include forming and at least partially funding alliances with academic institutions to promote Matter within that community, both on the technology side as well as the conformance side. These types of investments can occur across the academic spectrum, from trade schools and vocational programs up through college and graduate levels. Again the goal is to form a broad knowledge base around the Matter standard rather than just HomeKit. Apple will still retain total control over HomeKit and offer significant third part opportunities, but the technical basis for connectivity and integration should be around Matter. This is really no different than how Apple handles the relationship between Swift, which is an open standard, and Apple’s app and platform level integration and ecosystem. Third parties shouldn’t need to be knocking on Apple’s lab doors to deal with Swift issues. App Store issues, sure.
Another area that can jump start adoption of new standards like Matter is the development of toolkits that include reference and sample implementations of the most common functional implementations for both client and server side, testing guidance, protocol sniffers, tracing/logging tools, verification tools, conformance requirements, etc. Again, this should all come from the Matter community, but Apple can certainly help fund some of it.
I'm still torn on whether or not to return mine. I have two problems here:
b) Everything other than HK integration works really well, and frankly, when it did work, I didn't use it often.
I will say that there was one time when Rachio's servers were down and I needed to test a zone (manually turn it on), it was really nice to be able to do it via HK. But I cannot remember more than 2 times that Rachio's servers were down - and both were brief.
It really is a good product. My parents don't use HK, so honestly, there's no reason for me to even think about recommending they return theirs...
So yeah, I'm torn on this. I just don't know if HK integration is really worth the hassle of returning and finding something else (Yardian?)
Nice that they're offering refunds. I can think of a few companies that would just say "hey, it still works with this other platform" and claim that's good enough.
Something in iOS 16 is negatively effecting HomeKit. All my Thread devices stopped working (No Response; ReadWrite Fail Error). Did delete/factory reset on Eve and Nano thread devices but could not add them back into HK. Yet older non-thread devices stored away were easily added back into HK and working fine. But my three HomePod minis have disappeared from my HK App even so they still trigger devices when asking Siri or using remote commands. Also, several online posts over past few days reveals users having trouble with timer activations. Am wondering if Apple's roll-out of Matter is causing issues with Thread.