🌿 Smart watering, smarter living—your garden’s new best friend!
The Orbit21004 B-hyve Smart Hose Watering Timer with Wi-Fi Hub is a WaterSense certified device that automates garden watering with precise timing and remote app control, ensuring efficient water use and healthy plants even when you're away.
A**G
Instructions for getting through a poorly designed app and getting a pretty cool product
I love having these faucet timers for my yard. I have 3 now (one purchased with this hub and 2 additional 21005 units). The majority of the negative reviews are due to frustrations working with the poorly designed app from Orbit. The documentation is not very clear either, so hopefully the following explains how it works.The Orbit B-hyve smart device app is used to control multiple devices. You can purchase this item which includes a WiFi hub, the model without that is Bluetooth only (but which can be upgraded to use WiFi with this included hub), another timer that will control other Orbit B-hyve products, etc. While using the same app for multiple devices in theory shouldn't be an issue, in this case it can be confusing because some options are not relevant for the product you may have purchased, but are still visible even if you don't want to or can't use the feature.Things to note:Each device is separate from the other. You control and schedule them separately.Programs - This is where you "program" the faucet timers. You can create multiple sets of schedules for each device. You can have a device come on each day of the week (you can select the days individually), at an interval (every 1, 2, 3 etc days), even or odd days. You can specify multiple start times throughout the day (come on at 8am, 12pm, 3pm). You will pick the default zone and select for how long the faucet will remain open for the days/times you picked. You can also specify a watering budget (which admittedly i have no clue what that does because i couldn't find documentation on it, it may not even be relevant to this device...so i left it alone at 100%)Zones - Although completely irrelevant and not meaningful for these devices, a Zone is the area that the device will water. They each only control 1 zone, but despite that possibly obvious fact, you still have to select that 1 zone when setting up the schedule. You will see prompts and warnings that you haven't configured a schedule for the zones on the device. From reading others complaints, I think a lot of the struggles would be eliminated if they just defaulted to the only zone available, but once you realize that they sell other devices that control 6 or 12 zones and they happen to use the same interface for our single zone devices, it makes a little more sense.So how do you actually program these timers?1. Once you download the app on your phone/tablet, you will need to create a Orbit B-hyve account.2. The app will attempt to enable Bluetooth on your phone for the initial pairing of the devices.3. You should then plugin the hub (choose an inside wall that is closet to where your faucet timers will be installed and where you have a WiFi signal). This device will connect on a 2.4GHz signal only. The signal doesn't need to be very strong from my experience (mine is pretty far from my WiFi router).4. You will then add the hub to your account via the app (it should default to pairing mode).5. Next you install 2 double A batteries in the faucet timer (you will hear it click twice as it opens and shuts the valve to confirm it is functioning correctly).6. You will add a new device in the app and you should see the icon that looks like the timer with the MAC of device. You will need to tell it the location (which is annoying because you do it for each device you add...or it seems like you do. It remembers what you previously provided, but seems to keep prompted on each new device. I assume this is for people who will use the same account to control devices in multiple zip codes, but why that would be on for most people i can't understand).7. You should get prompted to update the device (one of the 3 I installed did not prompt me at first so i went into Settings - Devices - select the device - scroll down to Update Firmware). This took about 2 to 3 minutes for me.8. Here is where the fun / confusion / frustration begins..9. You should be prompted to program a schedule for the new device now. You have the option of using their smart watering or to do a manual schedule. Regardless of which you want to do, it tells you that it wants to test the water flow. For me i wanted to do the manual schedule so that honestly threw me off because I was doing this on my couch and I also didn't want to use the smart watering option so I didn't know if I needed to do that to proceed...you don't need to by the way :)10. If you go through the wizard and do manual setup it will walk you through the options I listed above regarding the "programming"11. Once you save it, you are all set. Hook it up to your faucet and click the icon that looks like a remote and test it out.Once you have it programmed it seems reasonably straight forward to use. Providing the zip code means that if it rains, it will / can automatically set a rain delay on (it happened to be raining when i was setting it up and it applied a rain delay automatically). But of course, you can always clear that or adjust it as you see fit which I think is pretty cool.There are more features and options but this should be enough to get someone started. The app does suck, but the product is totally worth it form what i can tell so far.
K**E
Works Like a Charm – Smart, Reliable, and Easy to Use
I’ve been using the B-hyve Smart Hose Timer for a while now, and it’s been a great experience. It works like a charm! The app gives you three customizable time slots each day, with all the flexibility you need to water your lawn, garden, or plants just the way you want.The Wi-Fi connection has been spot on for me, even with the transmitter set up about 35 feet from the hub. I also love that it can automatically skip watering if there’s rain or a freeze warning in the forecast—super convenient and helps save water.If I ever need another one, I’ll definitely be getting the same model again. Highly recommend it to anyone looking for a smart and dependable watering solution!
A**N
slick concept crippled by 67% total failure rate, frequent unreported errors and high maintenance including short battery life
its pretty confusing to work thru the setup process. As others have reported, the app is trial by error to get what you want (click the b-hyve word at the top to switch between devices for example). One of the units I purchased connected initially, I hooked up the tubing and drippers, then lost connection like so many reviewers experienced, so that one went back. Based on what sounds like a lot of connection problems in the reviews, I placed a separate controller hub on the wall directly inside where each faucet timer is located, meaning about 4 feet and 1 wall to traverse. That might not be necessary but was working okay after the first failure.I like the history of irrigation running available in the app. The “watering complete” message is nice, but would be even better paired with “watering started” as well (in case it starts and doesn’t stop). It does read local weather station forecasts and can adjust watering if you want to enable that.One unit ran properly for 32 days and I received a notification that the mode was now off. Not sure what that meant... the app had no info, battery shows in the app as 100%. I was unable to configure in the app to resume automatic watering. Outside there was a red light, so I replaced the batteries and now working again... Unfortunate that it couldn’t just say “battery low, turning unit off”. One month is also a pretty short life and of course return period has just elapsed. Update- I’m consistently getting 3 -5 weeks on a set of batteries now. App still always thinks the batteries are 100%. I’m going to start replacing batteries preemptively before tripsThe fact that the unit turns itself off and shuts watering down with a low battery- that’s good. But why it reported a good battery, could not explain why it was off and why it can’t be turned back on, and had such a short life- not so good.If you really need these unique features- remote control away from the house, confirmation the unit ran, option for weather forecast adjustments, and you have a high tolerance for not quite ready for prime time products/apps that are not cheap, and can live with potentially high battery replacement cycles, this may work for you. Otherwise I’d observe that you can buy several hose end timers for the price of one orbit setup and it would be more reliable and less fuss.Update: when it works, great. But on both units I experience some kind of a problem every few weeks. Water found its way into 1 timer box despite being somewhat sheltered and properly closed. I dried it out and added plastic wrap to the outside. It was also angled with the compartment opening up- so I laid it down flat.One unit has stopped responding even though it shows green. It claims to be connected and watering, but doesn’t water. Tried to remove and add again, reset and confirmed connection, no water comes out.Pretty expensive waste of money for 3 months life, plus all the headaches and frequent need to put hands on to get it working again (or not). The value of a connected device is that if it fails/stops you at least know it... no longer true for this. When the battery dies there’s no indication, and now one unit is claiming to be watering when not watering, so I can’t trust the history.Theres a pretty strong pattern of negative reviews, Never a good sign when there are multiple 1 star vine reviews. I really regret not returning both at the first sign of trouble.
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2 weeks ago
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