Rachio, maker of a popular smart sprinkler controller, has announced that it will no longer support HomeKit going forward. This decision comes after the company faced a number of challenges with its HomeKit integration, prompting complaints from users and a multi-month investigation.
Rachio made the announcement last week with a post on its community forums. The company had been investigating long-running complaints of the Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller showing the “no response” error in the Apple Home application.
According to Rachio manager Dane Berry, the company put a “considerable amount of effort” into finding the root cause of the “No Response” error as well as possible solutions. Despite these efforts, it has been unable to find the solution and is “suspending this work indefinitely.” This means that HomeKit will no longer be supported or maintained for the Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller:
This will be the final HomeKit post for a while. 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.
We’re sorry we have some disappointing news. We are suspending this work indefinitely.
We did not make this decision lightly. Although it seems like we have come closer to determining the root cause, our recent findings have led to more unknowns than answers. We are going to focus our efforts on improving our users’ core experience and building out our product offerings in software and hardware. We are excited for what the future holds as we expand our product line and features over the coming months. We hope you’ll stick around for that.
Rachio says that it will reimburse any users who view the lack of HomeKit support as a dealbreaker. They’ll just need to follow the instructions here and ship their controller back to Rachio, then they’ll receive a refund for the amount originally paid for the product.
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