B-hyve Hose Faucet Timer

This device works great. I use it to control filling my swimming pool. I’m a Florida snowbird. I monitor my pool using cameras during the summer when I’m back home and can turn on the water for whatever time I need to in order to fill up the pool after evaporation. I look at the water line on the pool tile or check to see if the fountain isn’t working, indicating the water level is too low. It also enables programming for regular water fills. Great device!!

You have three options when you start adding new plants to a yard: you can water manually all the time, you can do a ton of digging to add zones to your sprinkler system, or you can do one of these. I moved into the B-hyve ecosystem a few years ago when my old Rainmachine died and it was obvious that the company wasn't coming back. I've very glad that I did. - Easy to set up. Attach to your faucet, attach your hose, turn on the water, and use the app to set and forget. - The Bluetooth-WiFi bridge is a must if you don't yet have one. Otherwise it can only be programmed and monitored when your phone is in range. It also means no persistent data access. - When the instructions say "don't leave this outside in freezing weather", it's serious. I had one valve crack because of this. When you have a freeze warning, turn off the faucet and disconnect it to prevent damage. - A pair of AA batteries lasts the entire season. It's nice to not burn through a ton of them. - The application has improved with time. It used to be a lot less intiutive. Even so, the software has some learning curve if you need to make manual adjustments. It's also frustrating that each device is managed completely separately rather than from a unified console. The web interface has been quite broken for some time and is basically unusable, but the mobile app is good enough that this is an annoyance rather than a barrier to use. If you're looking for an alternative to the major smart sprinkler vendors in a way that gives you more control, this is the best option on the market right now.

Update 4/30/18 - I want to start off with, Orbit did reach out and sent me another unit (thank you!!). I attempted to connect it again was unable to initially. I emailed Orbit tech support and they told me to push the button on each of the units 6 times to reset it to connect via bluetooth - I guessed it would have been more of a push an hold type but it did reset it. The hub connected easy enough to wifi but the hose connector didn't connect to hub initially. I spent about an hour fiddling with it so it could connect via bluetooth to the wireless hub (I don't understand that)? It eventually connected to the hub and I thought I was all good. I hooked it up to my hose, setup the watering program and gave it a try. When trying to manually run it for 10 minutes - it would run but no where in the app does it say how to shut it off? I would have liked a simple on and off/green light/red light type of interface in the app. Last night, I was eager to see the unit go off at the time I set it up. It didn't go off at the time I set. I waited about 5 minutes after the time it was supposed to go off and it still didn't work. All the app said is that it would water tomorrow per the program I setup. Umm... why didn't it go off, smart watering wasn't enabled, just no information. As a person who is in IT and have setup a variety of smart home devices both simple and a bit more complex this product is still not ready. I would advise Orbit to look at products like the Belkin Wemo, Smartthings, Nest, Ring etc... They are not perfect products but they have a relatively simple setup and they are easy to manage. This faucet timer's app is confusing and not intuitive - I would encourage a UI designer to take a look and work to simplify basic functions and make setup easier. I was looking for an easy on and off, set a schedule and perhaps have it ask me if it needs to water if it is raining - something easy like that type of UI experience. This app was hard to manually turn on and off the water via the app. I have decided to use the old school yet highly rated Orbit Single Outlet Programmable Hose Faucet Timer (https://www.amazon.com/Orbit-Single-Programmable-Standard-Packaging/dp/B004INGS8S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1525107301&sr=8-1&keywords=orbit+hose+timer&dpID=41xO3KV2tEL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch) it was a breeze to setup and seems to work well with my drip system and garden boxes. Orbit, if you need some input on the product or to rework it I would be happy to help. I was very excited about this product and hope it becomes a well baked solution soon. I love the idea of automating my drip system, saving water etc... Was very excited to receive this product after its announcement at CES. We recently installed our garden boxes and a Rainbird drip system. The final piece was installing this cool smart watering faucet timer. For the record - I installed the app on my iPhone 8, running the latest version of IOS. I also have a wireless mesh network with ample Wi-Fi available outside. I followed the quick start guide and tried to install both the Wi-Fi hub and timer with the help of the app. When I got done the timer would only connect via Bluetooth. Uh... I need it connected to the internet for all the fancy weather stuff to work. I started over to see if I had made a mistake. After trying to start over, resetting the whole system, trying the install from scratch and even trying it with a new account, the whole thing just wouldnt work. I find the app to be pretty bad. You are asked to select what you want to install. Then it uses Bluetooth to connect - the first time it sort of worked but then you have to do the install twice to get the timer to work - then only the Bluetooth worked on the timer. Really confusing.... my impression is this product is not well baked yet. Was hoping for a simple install like many smart home devices I have. This just doesn’t work. :/ I’m returning it for a manual watering timer unfortunately.

Before I begin, let me preface this by saying that I bought this device used from Amazon, which may be part of the issue that I am having now. I bought this because I have been really wanting a device like this to remotely control my water faucets for many reasons. Very convenient! But "b-hyve", rather, Orbit irrigation...seems to be a very poorly run company. I got this device shipped a day later than guaranteed through Amazon. No matter, finally opening it on Saturday evening and went through the setup process. First it asked me to plug in the "WiFi Hub" and register it with my account. Told me to check the MAC address and make sure it matches to what's shown on the app. It does. Then it said, "The device appears to have connected to the B-hyve server, but we are unable to register the device with your account. This device may be associated with another account. Please contact...for additional help." Alright, seems the former owner who returned this never took it off their account or did and B-hyve doesn't register it properly. So I call the number. Oh fabulous. They're closed for the weekend and only have Mountain Time standard hours of when they're available. But I figure maybe I can go on their website and get help through the forum. The forum is extremely poorly run. It uses a different login than your B-hyve account will use (that's such a wonderfully irrational system!) and it's not properly configured since its e-mails come from "Wordpress". Once I finally got signed up with the forum (a really confusing interface that didn't make it clear how to register for the forum), I am now told that I can't post anything! Awesome. But wait! There's an option on their website for online chat with a representative! How cool. So I give them all this information, my name, e-mail, phone number (???), and "part number". And then I write something as long as this review to describe my problem. Hit Send and...and...AND.... "7/20/2019 9:47:37 p.m. Thank you for choosing Orbit! 9:47:39 p.m. We are currently closed for the day. Please try again during normal business hours. 9:47:39 p.m. You have been disconnected from the chat" Wonderful. Couldn't have stated that beforehand. Couldn't have said they're closed. Couldn't have made the link grayed out after hours... But wait! Orbit's own website has a big, blue banner at the top that says "☆ ☆ ☆ Get 24/7 Email & Text Support ☆ ☆ ☆ Email us here or Text Orbit: [number] & B-hyve: [number]" So what happens when I just texted them? "Thanks for contacting Orbit Irrigation Products Inc.. No agents are available to assist you right now, but your request has been queued." But...it says 24/7 support?? Well...I guess it is, it was just very poorly worded because a few minutes later, someone did reply and got my MAC addresses for both devices, cleared them and that was that. Now they're on my B-hyve account successfully. I suppose the takeaway is that if someone steals this, at least you know they'll have a bit of a headache getting it on their account after the fact. After all of that, they connected without any issues. The rest of the process was pretty straightforward but it did want some information that I wasn't so sure about, but eventually figured out after Googling. About 15 minutes after getting the account setup and the devices attached to my account and then I was able to install the devices to my water hose faucet. It seems I am having some issues related to the piping at our house unrelated to this smart water faucet as my faucet is leaking a bit of water when turned on and having this device connected to it. To use this smart faucet, you have to turn on the water valve and upon doing so, I am having a leak that wasn't there before. Most likely due to the pressure because of this artificial device holding it all in the valve area, so I may need to replace that or tighten it. But I can't fault B-hyve for that. I suppose if you are thinking of buying this, you should check your system to ensure it can hold this water pressure that will be stored behind the B-hyve device. But beyond that, it works as it should. It sets up a schedule for you automatically but you can disable that which is what I did. Manual works well but it doesn't seem to have an actual manual function as far as I can tell. Seems you set it to be on for 10 or so minutes and then it turns itself off. No manual setting to just let the water run until you want to turn it off. The lowest possible setting is 15 seconds, so no real manual function which is a slight bummer. Getting B-hyve to be recognized by Alexa was a bit of a challenge as well. No documentation that came with the product to tell me how to connect nor any documentation within the app. The way to do it is to add a new Skill to Alexa in the app on your smartphone. After doing that, I guess she just automatically connects once you enable the skill and that's that. I had to figure this out on my own and while it's an easy process, there seems to be no mention of this by Orbit/B-hyve. As far as everything is concerned, it seems to meet my expectations in terms of use. I am not happy with the way they seem to manage their support system and that worries me should I run into an issue in the future. But it looks to be a pretty well built device and system and I don't see it having any issues at the moment. I will definitely come back after some time of using it and update this review accordingly. As it stands, I'm deducting 1 star for the awful customer service support. Not in terms of the customer service representative himself/herself, but the overall management of the system. I may deduct more stars later depending on the functionality of the device and will edit this to reflect any changes/updates.

I've been waiting for a wifi controlled sprinkler timer for years. This is the first that sells at a reasonable price and from a very trusted company (i've used orbit timers for a very long time), so I finally pulled the trigger on this. I have a self installed rainbird DIY underground sprinkler system (which I also highly recommend) which hooks up to the hose connection. My system is split between two zones, so I have two b-hyve timers hooked up to a splitter at the hose connection. Long-story made short, this whole set-up works just as well as I need it to, and all in all for a couple hundred bucks (sprinkler system plus these timers), I have a system that is much more intelligent than the systems my neighbors spent thousands of dollars on. Pairing the hub to your phone and the timers to the hub is very straight-forward...anyone who's capable enough to pair their own bluetooth devices should be able to set this up. Once everything is paired, it's really up to you how deep into the customization/automation you want to go. If you want static schedules, then you can very easily set those via the app. If you want to add automatic weather delays based on rain forecasts, you can set the parameter in which a delay should be added, and you're good to go. If you want to use the full-on smart watering which decides when and how long to water based on weather forecasts, water-flow rate, soil type, etc then you'll have to feed the app a bit more information. The jury is still out for me in terms of how accurate the smart watering feature is...particularly since I'm running a two zone sprinkler system with a total of 6 heads that overlap in terms of coverage. You do have the ability to make adjustments to the smart watering decisions made by the software (i.e. decrease the duration of watering sessions), and can manually start watering as needed if you're not getting as much rain as forecasted. Either way its nice to have a system that automatically accounts for the weather so you're not over-watering...or in the case of the brutal summers in the south...ensuring that you're watering enough when the temps get high. All in all, I'm impressed with the system. I suspect that the automation will not be perfect and some tweaking will be needed, but even having the ability to trigger my sprinklers on and off without having to step outside is enough reason for me to pick these up.

We bought a new house and the backyard sprinkler system was broken beyond repair. Even with professional help, I was unable to locate the sprinkler valves for the back yard. So instead I set out to research and install my own drip irrigation to automate the watering process, mostly because I am way too lazy to water my backyard every other day. I chose the rainbird family of products because of the positive reviews and the plethora of options. I chose drip emitters for the trees and shrubs in my yard. I chose 1/2 in tubing for the systems backbone. Then 1/4 in tubing to run out to the individual plants, flowers, trees, shrubs... There are two ways you can install them. You can install them straight into the 1/2 in tubing, like I did. The other way is to install a 1/4 in coupler into the 1/2 in tubing, then run a 1/4 tube to the plant. Then connect the drip emitter at that end. I chose this configuration because some people complain about the water pressure pushing the emitter off the end of the tubing. I bought this times to control the overall system and I love that its WiFi enabled and Alexa enabled as well. I wanted to be able to automate the watering and this device allowed me to do that. + I love that its Wifi and Alexa enabled. + Was pretty easy to setup and configure. Setting up the automated watering wasn't very intuitive, but a rock like me got it done. + Good price. + Very happy with the performance so far. + Alerts me when the watering begins and ends. + Gives me the flow rate and how many gallons were used in the watering. Information I probably don't "need" but I geek out on having. + The device and the app look good. - The user interface is lacking. I see reviews complaining that the App is terrible. I think they must have updated the app since then because I didn't feel it was very bad. - The smart watering feature isn't very good. I also feel like there is a ton of irrelevant stuff in the app. I am very happy with the performance of this timer so far. Ill update this review as necessary. *** Update 7/3/20: I have noticed that there has been a couple times that the device has become unresponsive... i had to go remove the battery pack tray to reset the device. It turns out that these errors were solved by putting in fresh batteries. Hope that helps someone.

Orbit has done lot of work on their app and addressed many problems. My system is now working fine. I have a large yard and low water pressure so I have 15 hose end timers on two hubs. They were all stable last summer and worked as they should. Also, they all made it through the last power outage and reconnected to the wifi as soon as the power was turned back on. Hose End Faucet Timer using WiFi Update - May 15, 2022 It has now been close to six weeks since my review and things are going from bad to worse. The App is buggy and with each update (many in the last 6 weeks) things get worse. Last night I "turned off" a timed program using the "On/Off" button in the App and sure enough the water came on this morning. Had to run out and turn off the faucet since the App indicated it was not scheduled to run. So many updates in the past 6 weeks with little to no progress. They somehow managed to change the colors of the buttons!, but that does little when the settings are ignored by their server. I have already done a complete reset of one timer and now I will try that with this second errant timer. They need new coders but more importantly they need real time field testing to see what actually happens. And I think part of the problem is trying to run two totally different systems within one App. There is the "sprinkler" system timer that waters zones in your yard, and the individual faucet timer, each of which is a separate zone. The two do not play well together. And still no response from Orbit. Original Review - April 6, 2022 I have used the B-hyve Smart Hose Timer (15 in total) since 2020 and found it to be a reliable product until the company started doing software "updates" a few months ago. I can only say it is a mess. The first hint was when "Notifications" stopped coming. Unless I go through the entire list, one by one I can't tell if the watering was done. And even going through the list I found some devices that while they did water, were not recorded has having watered. I am now having to visually inspect my whole yard to make sure the plants are watered - the Smart Hose Timer has now turned "DUMB". I tried to provide feedback to Orbit, but even that is difficult. Definitely not recommended at this time

I really want to like this product. I've been extremely patient with it. I have forgiven shortcomings. But I think Orbit really needs to do some investment here. I own two of these now and have been using them for a full irrigation season. One for general lawn irrigation and one for our drip irrigation. Each application has it's strengths, but I think the drip irrigation is really where this product shines but there may be a reason for that which I'll get into below. The lawn irrigation is... frustrating. The Good: --I really like the app. It's fairly well-designed. There are a few clunky things about it, but all are forgivable. It's easy to move around and see how much watering has been done, when it's going to water, and a bunch of other great info. --The intelligence behind it is pretty good once you get it dialed in. (See The Bad, below.) The grass and plants where I've used it are very happy. Again, once I got it dialed in. --It can be fed into Home Assistant. It's not super useful as an integration, yet. BUt I've been building additional sensors to help track total water usage, application rate, etc. Once I have these built out and tested, I'm going to try to migrate this from the bad backend (see below) to be controlled locally. --Via Home Assistant, I added this to HomeKit. It lets me just tap a button and turn on the system for a programmed amount of time. This is super handy for when you're watering in the back yard and just need a couple more minutes. --The drip irrigation system works great, but I suspect that's also because of the watering day pattern. It waters them on the odd days for a relatively short amount of time. So it isn't relying on the algorithm too heavily. It has skipped days with rain and lower temps when they don't need watering and the plants look great. But again, I suspect this is because of the frequency, not the smarts. --I have had zero hardware faults or errors beyond that initial firmware issue. Very solid. The Bad: --Like almost all of these types of products, it causes a _really_ bad water hammer when it closes. I've installed a couple hammer arrestors and you need to do this as well (regardless of whether you use this product, another smart hose timer, or simple hose timer). I struggled to find a hammer arrestor that worked with how I have this hooked up to the hydrant on the side of the house. --Battery life is ok. A pair of Duracell AAs lasted from ~May to mid-September. But what I didn't know is that the entire time disables itself at 30%. What. I dug into it, Orbit says it's because it wants to ensure there is enough charge to close the valve. What. How is this not a simple energize-to-open solenoid? I thought all of these were fail-close valves. Guess I'm wrong. I don't like that this could fail open at all. --Weather tracking is extremely hit or miss. Might as well roll the dice. I setup a weather station in my yard that tracks rainfall, temp, etc. I fed the information to Personal Weather Stations (Aeris) per the instructions from Orbit and Aeris. I confirmed that my PWS was functional, sending good data, and that the API from PWS & Aeris was sending good data. But for whatever reason, Orbit does NOT accept that data. It just doesn't. It makes up the rainfall number based on what seems like averages from the area. Which is incredibly useless for someone who has a weather station in their yard. When I got 0.32" of rain, it said I had 0.14". Another day I had 0.4" and B-hyve said I had 0.18". Another I had 0.14" and b-hyve said 0.12". Another day still and I didn't get any rain and B-hyve said 0.1". What's the point? --For turf lawns, the watering takes a lot of tuning to get right. I ended up just manually dialing in the application rate. The catch cups did not integrate well and resulted in very bizarre timing. I don't think it calculated the averages correctly. There have been at least two times this summer where I had to run the system manually because the lawn was simply not getting the water it needed, even in dormancy. --There have been times that the system has watered my lawn but doesn't register in the app. Sometimes it shows up in the database on their backend, other times it doesn't. Just bizarre. --When I first purchased this, updating the firmware caused the system to go completely unresponsive and required several factory resets. Took them a week to figure it out and reissue firmware. Others mentioned they had bricked units and Orbit had to replace them. Haven't seen a firmware update since. The Ugly: --Customer support. As mentioned by others, it's pretty bad. I contacted customer support to work through the PWS issue I mentioned above and they told me how to select a PWS. I told them I did and they said they can't guarantee it would be compatible. I explained that it is compatible, it's uploading data, and the APIs are working, and it shows up in their app. They didn't respond for 30 minutes and then said "If there isn't anything you need help with thanks for contacting us" and then closed the chat. World-class awful support. Never seen anything like this. Other things to note: --This shows up as espressif on my wifi. Which leads me to believe I could flash it if I ever get to the point I'm going to stop using them. --If I can get this migrated to totally local control, it will be a fine purchase. Bottom line: Orbit is really close to having a good product. But two things stand out: Customer service and PWS integration. If Orbit customer service took my PWS issues seriously and tried to find a fix, I'd have probably been a lot happier. The entire reason I bought this product was for more intelligent watering as we move into a more water-scarce world. So if we can't get that for the lawn, it's hard to recommend it. We're working on converting most of our lawn from grass to landscaped, so I think the drip applications will work fine with these. I have a couple more zones I'd like to add but I think i'm going to look elsewhere for these zones. I'd recommend this only for a very specific set of circumstances over others.

The connection to the hub is unstable and drops off from time to rime. It can only be reset in person. Hopeless for a holiday house. Had to do a 6 hour round trip to reset during a drought.

Very simple to setup it works perfectly

Juillet 2024: Plus de 4h pour le brancher et le configurer. Comme le disent les autres commentaires: - conçu pour fuir, plusieurs problèmes différents à plusieurs endroits variés qui causent des fuites; faut se casser la tête pour avoir un truc correcte. - chargeur en prise US, donc, j'ai utilisé un autre chargeur en stock perso - ENORMES difficultés pour détecter, connecter, synchroniser, mettre à jour, reconnecter les deux appareils. Après plus de 4h de guerre, ça fait semblant de marcher. Reste à voir la fiabilité dans le temps. Au final, j'ai enfin réussi: - branchement sans fuite d'eau - alimentation du hub - implantation à des endroits ou ça capte - calibrage du débit - configuration des zones - configuration des programmes - configuration des calendriers Quand vous n'arrivez pas à connecter au début, n'hésitez pas à faire un réset usine, ou, power cycle. Après la mise à jour firmware, il faut aussi faire un power cycle. Le programme SMART fait l'arrosage à 6AM, ce que je trouve étrange, car les plantes préfèrent un arrosage le soir que le matin. C'est la nuit que les plantes pompent dans le sol et grandissent. C'est la nuit que les plantes vivent. Quand tout fonctionne en wifi, et que vous n'êtes pas chez vous, l'appli se plaindra que le bluetooth ne fonctionne pas; faites annuler le message, et ça marchera par internet. Et la grosse inconnue: est-ce qu'il sera capable de se couper quand il détecte une fuite, ou casse de tuyau ??? il est censé le faire d'après le site du constructeur. J'aurais aimé une sonde qui mesure la sécheresse du sol, à plusieurs profondeur (tous les 5 cm sur 30 de profond). Un machin qui se rentre dans le sol à 30cm, sur piles ... c'était pas compliqué à concevoir. Avec une mesure 4 ou 6 fois par jour, la consommation serait microscopique, les piles pourraient durer des années. Nombreux bugs et erreurs de traduction dans l'application. Aout 2025: finalement, je baisse la note, j'en ai marre: - indicateur de niveau batterie non fiable - nombreuses erreurs de traductions - de nombreux écrans ne sont pas clairs, mal traduits, sans unité, ou mal pensé, avec des informations incomplètes - interface globalement complexe - mais surtout, j'ai eu deux fuites (tuyau cassé), et je truc ne m'a pas averti de la fuite. C'est pourtant une promesse du produit, de pouvoir au moins avertir qu'il y a un problème, ou idéalement couper l'eau quand il y a un problème. J'ai bien trouvé une option pour fournir un message quand il détecte un problème, mais rien pour configurer la détection de problème. Donc, jamais de mesage d'erreur relatif à l'arrosage, ni quand le débit est trop faible, ni quand il est trop fort. Donc, quand mon tuyau casse, et que ça arrose 270L au lieu de 56 sur une cession, RAS. Quand le tuyau s'use, et passe sous 20L par cession au lieu de 56 ... RAS. Donc, j'ai eu des fuites, avec des innondations sans que ça arrose mes plantes, et sans message. Et avec l'usure du tuyau , mes plantes ont eu soif sans aucun message non plus. - impossible de raccorder une sonde de mesure d'humidité du sol du jardin. Je n'ai pas trouvé l'accessoire. Bref, considérez ce truc comme une vulgaire minuterie. C'est pareil qu'une électro vanne branchée sur une minuterie basique. Le seul avantage, c'est que c'est pilotable par internet. Mais y a aucun retour, aucun feedback, aucune intelligence. C'est une minuterie avec internet, comme on en trouve à 15€ chez Aldi, ou moins chère sur Ali.

I purchased this to replace the Orbit 58911 Complete Yard Watering Kits I was using at the time. I was going on an extended vacation and wanted to reduce the workload for my house sitter and control and monitor watering remotely. I started out with one unit for testing and quickly realized this was an ideal solution. Make sure you update all your devices to the most current software version. The hub which connects your Bluetooth valves to your wifi needs to be in relative proximity on the inside of your house to the exterior location of your valves. Signal connection between the two had no issues even through 2’ stone walls. The valves communicate with each other creating a mesh which increases stability. Figure out where your valves will be to calculate how many hubs you need for larger systems. I needed 8 more valves and 2 more hubs so I purchased 2 Orbit 21044 b-hyve Smart Hose Watering Timer 4-Packs each included a hub and a 4 way Hose Manifold. There are different b-hyve packages on Amazon so figure out the most economical way to get what you need. Although the b-hyve software isn’t great, (at times it can be downright frustrating) setup is easy. Download the app, add your hubs and valves (this part is a little frustrating as there are redundancies that could be avoided even with having an auto fill option). Regardless setup process is worth it, as this system gives you great flexibility and functionality with your watering schedules. I set up multiple watering schedules for each zone each day in order to supply water to each plant when they need it most while maintaining water pressure to the house for high usage times. You can setup your own watering schedules or use the WeatherSense® feature for watering based on live weather feeds through wifi connection. I was hesitant to try the smart watering feature while I was away but upon my return I found it was very useful and reliable. Overview I like being able to easily change schedules remotely especially useful when you are figuring out the water requirements for new situations. The app lets you attach a photo of the actual zone for easy reference of each zone. Smart watering saves water, as well as adjusting watering to specific soil and seasonal weather conditions preventing overwatering and allowing you to fine tune each zone to its specific needs. Overall this is by far the best system I have used.

Best tap timer on the market - cheers guys!