Rachio 3 doesn’t stay connected

Problem Description

I bought a new Rachio 3 from Costco. It’s installed at the side of the house where WiFi is a bit weak so I had to add an extender (a tp-link ac1200). Now the WiFi in that area seems very strong and stable. But every time I try to access the device it appears disconnected and I have to go through the tedious WiFi setup process again. The process itself takes like 15 minutes, and usually gives some error at some point, but if I wait a few minutes it does connect at the end.

This is super annoying to the extent that I’m considering ditching it altogether. My guess is that after some time the device loses connectivity for some reason, and is then just too dumb and is unable to recover, even though the WiFi is there and works perfectly on my phone…

Any ideas what to try before I give up?

Responses

Post by shaimo on Feb 15, 2025

I’ve had that issue myself and have suspected that the unit was trying to switch between 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Since my normal WiFi had both bands enabled, I enabled my router’s guest network capability with a different WiFi SSID and set that one to 2.4GHz only. Now there’s no band confusion and it seems to be the solution. By the way, even though not as fast as 5GHz, 2.4GHz has slightly longer range, so it’s exactly what you want your low-bandwidth Rachio to connect to.

Post by nirvana91 on Feb 16, 2025

I had this same problem and it was driving me nuts. I couldn’t figure out why Rachio 3 kept disconnecting. Just like SkidawayRick, my Rachio was bouncing between my 2.4g and 5g networks. Once I forced it to connect to the 2.4g network only, it has stayed connected consistently.

Post by shaimo on Feb 16, 2025

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Disabling the 5GHz didn’t work for me as the Rachio completely stopped connecting when I did it. But disabling the 2.4GHz and leaving only the 5GHz on my extender did the trick…

Post by SkidawayRick on Feb 17, 2025

Glad to hear it worked - seems to confirm that hunting for the best band when they both have the same WiFi ID can cause the issues. Seems to me this could be a software fix that doesn’t change bands until something is really wrong.

Post by krroller on Feb 18, 2025

It seems like this solved, but I had a similar problem with both of my Rachio devices for the first 9 months I had them and was extremely frustrated. For various reasons I completely replaced my Router and WiFi access points with the Google Nest Wifi (creating a mesh network) and my Rachio has been stable ever since which is now 3+ years. I have since upgraded my WiFi system to the latest generation Google Nest Wifi (with 5 points including the router) and I have over 110 devices connected to my network covering the entire house and an acre of property. My Rachio devices remain solidly connected with no issues.

Post by LAC on May 10, 2025

I have no idea how to disable either the 2.4 or 5GHz. My extender only connects to the 5 and then Rachio told me it has to be on a WPA2. I am not that tech-savvy and my service provider isn’t much help.