Rain Bird - Failed to Connect

Third party integrations
1

I am unable to connect a Rain Bird RC2 via the Rain Bird integration.

It starts with adding the integration. When I add the Rain Bird integration, the 1st screen pops up to configure it (Configure Rain Bird), where you add the Host IP (which I already reserved via DHCP for the RC2 and confirmed the IP and MAC with a IP scanner) and the Password (The pin that you specified when you add the RC2 to you cell Rain Bird app).
Once you submit the details, everything gets cleared and you get a massage stating “Failed to connect”.

Birdsht
Birdsht536Ă—466 15.5 KB

The only option you have is submit, which fails, or to close the “Configure Rain Bird” window which then does not add the Integration. I wont be able to enable debug logging for an integration that wont add.

Hopefully someone here still has it added to enable debugging.
It seems this issue also appeared with existing integrations with the RC2 after a recent forced firmware update on the controller.
See discussion https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/162671#issuecomment-3897604834

2

Is this your first time trying to connect your Rainbird RC2 controller with integration?

3

Did you type in the actual IP address on the configuration screen first?

Does the Rainbird supplied app on your phone still work?

Is everything up to date, on your HomeAssistant, HACS, Rainbird integration, as well as firmware?

Are there any related entries in your system log? DNS log?

Do you have any VM’s, VLANs, firewalls, or other complicated networking customisations?

4

I too have the rainbird RC2 and it’s been working great with the integration for the last 1.5 years until 4 days ago, the firmware updated automatically to 4.98 and seems like rainbird has blocked local access, hope I’m wrong and it can be fixed, on the integration github page there seems to be multiple people with the same issue since this latest firmware update, is there anything else we can try?

5

Yes, crapification on the rise. :put_litter_in_its_place:

Let’s see who is next… Maybe another “local” Z-Wave Hub or some matter device? :thinking:

Also probably just a matter of time till a “works with home assistant” labeled device stops working with HA :clown_face:

In today’s world we have ownership or we don’t. And ⅔ of ownership does equal to actually don’t have ownership at all :person_shrugging:

1 Like
6

This is annoying. Has anyone inspected the traffic to see how the Rainbird is connecting to the cloud? You’d need to connect the Rainbird via your laptop acting as a hotspot or if you have a router that can inspect the traffic this would also do the trick.

Maybe we can look at mimicing the interface

7

If they use proper encryption on their(:warning:) devices you can’t do much :person_shrugging:

8

Vote with your wallet?

9

Hard to do that when you’ve already purchased two of them :frowning:

10

Reality is, it can happen with any device which you don’t own completely (full control over hard- and software). Even “local” ZigBee/z-wave/matter-ready hubs from futurehome (a z-wave alliance member like ha?) were bricked remotely and ransom (subscription) request by the real owners :person_shrugging:

So how can we put our trust in matter/z-wave/… if all these devices are actually totally locked down (secure boot/flash encryption/…) and don’t allow real ownership. Sustainability is not given if vendors can change the terms after selling and change to subscription (only) models after formerly sellling the devices as one-time-payment? :thinking:

The shituation with matter looks even worse and most products out there don’t even allow full control/configuration locally via matter but often still depend on vendor cloud/app/accounts which seems like a serious step backwards in terms of ownership, privacy and sustainable :person_facepalming:

All this was already true years ago but recentnly enshittification seems to speed up :racing_car: :dash: