Orbit 21044 B-hyve Smart Hose Watering Timer 4-Pack with Wi-Fi Hub and Hose Manifold, Gray

very complicated app, nit userfriendky. leaks.

We have several of these timers already set up. We use them every year. We live in a rural area and our property is on a private well. These work pretty well for us. Not as perfect as having an inground sprinkler system, but I no longer have to move sprinklers throughout the day. I like that I can adjust the different zones for different start/stop times and length of watering. Yes, these heads can be expensive and the software can be a hassle, but once you get it set up you will wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

Firmware update on Gen 1 hub (this one with grey, vs black/with gold 'b' which is gen 2), but it hangs at 0% for hours and seems to take the hub offline even though the green status light stays lit. The manual offers support via email [email protected] but sending a request there got back "You’ve reached an email address that is no longer working" and points to the pretty much useless online documents for help. I don't really have time to sit on the phone waiting for someone to pickup to help but that may be the only option.I got one timer to work, but every time I add the next timer, the first one stops working and the new one works until I add another one.The Q/A here says the timers work on orbit's own mesh network, but if that is true why does it offer a setup option at configuration of a timer to use my wifi for connectivity?The only thing that really works is physically turning them on/off at each timer block by pressing the on/off button a couple times for on and once for off.Also the flow setup on all four timers indicated that the flow was too low to measure although I was running the hose unstoppered into a bucket.Will remove all, remove power from all, and retry again. But I note when I do this the timer is still set up and the app doesn't provide the necessary instructions to click the on/off button on the timer 5 times in rapid succession to reset (flash red led) and put it back into pairing mode (blinking blue). Done this start to finish twice so far and still not working. The powered hub is within 10' of the hose where the timers are. The wifi access point is within 15' of both the hub and timers (plus by phone, laptop and other wireless devices are not having trouble connecting to wifi at either the hub or hose/timer locations).It appears to be a poorly designed app compounded by poorly written firmware. There is likely a path of through the app setup and with specific firmware installed that work by choosing specific responses along the way through the menus but I haven't discovered the correct ones to make these work together properly.

UPDATE:The latest beta version of the b-hyve app fixes my main problem I had. It's now possible to change watering start times for each station, while also using the "smart watering" feature.ORIGINAL:I bought two of those sets, so I went through the trouble of setting up eight watering timers, in hopes I could simplify programming by letting the app take care of the watering schedule using b-hyve's "smart watering" feature. (btw that was a very slow, buggy and tedious process).The smart watering feature comes with a pretty impressive questionnaire about sprinkler, soil and foliage types for the watered zone, and comes up with some reasonable estimates and schedules for the needed watering time, that also takes local weather forecasts into account.The problem? It only works well for just one of the timers. If you try to enable smart watering for all of the timers, then you'll notice that all zones are scheduled to run at the exact same time. That's not going to work for me, since there's not enough water pressure for allowing all zones to run efficiently at the same time.The b-hyve app is unable to come up with non-overlapping schedules that take the other devices into account.I was initially confused about that, and believed I made some configuration mistake with the app. So I reached out to Orbit's customer support yesterday. They basically confirmed my observation, and told me to use manual programming instead, if I want to use different start times.For a "smart watering" system for that price, that's a pretty unacceptable oversight to me. It's definitely just an "app problem" and not a hardware problem, that could be easily resolved by Orbit.Their system sees each device in isolation. That also reflects in the really awkward way how the zones are managed in the app. You cannot view an overview of all registered zones and devices, even though there is a "Zones" (plural) main menu entry. Instead, you have to select one of the timers, and then you get to see all data for it separate from all other data.Which is really a shame. There are really useful water usage statistics and also a schedule calendar which could be so much richer if it would take all the devices at once into account.Now I have to come up with my own programming for start times and durations, which is an annoying and tedious process I wanted to avoid. I could have just purchased traditional "dumb timers" instead of spending $350 on those two sets. At least I have the comfort of configuring everything from an app now.

I had been eyeballing these and other timers for quite a while before finally going with these ones. One of the main reasons for choosing these was the ability to integrate with my Home Assistant which worked pretty well in my first summer of usage.The setup of these controllers was very intuitive however I did get a bit confused when it came to zones and schedules. The app seems to be designed for an irrigation system not 4 individual "systems" so switching between devices is cumbersome and took some trial and error. I was able to overcome this annoyance eventually by integrating the system with Home Assistant where I set up a dashboard to control them at the push of a button and turn schedules on and off all on one screen. This really took these from nice to awesome.For my setup I have 2 faucets one on either side of the house. I used different splitters that allowed for more water flow as the included manifold seemed to restrict flow too much. On each side I have 2 controllers with the wifi/bluetooth bridge inside the house between the two faucets . This allowed me to control all 4 very well.With these I was able to setup 4 sprinklers the night before and schedule 1 on each faucet to run their 2 hour schedule and then the other 2 would run their schedule giving me 4 hours of watering before I left for work. I was also able to move the first two and schedule a second 2 hour window so in one morning I could hit 6 zones with 2 hours of watering. This was WAY BETTER than previously watering at night for hours and then waking up sometimes at 4am to turn on sprinklers in the morning and sometimes forgetting and letting them run too long.Overall I'd say the hardware is great but the app needs work for these devices to be more user friendly.

I just received my 4-pack yesterday and installed them. The first issue, as mentioned in the questions/answers section, regarding the 4-port manifold thread size still exists. The timers do not thread onto the manifold properly and the manifold does not thread onto the faucet at all. I spent 1.5 hours on the Orbit online chat and after some ridiculous back-and-forth, I pasted the question/answer section about the threads into the chat and the service agent then offered to send me a new manifold. Apparently, the one sold separately has the correct thread size.The second issue is that the 4-pack uses the gen1 hub, which is not compatible with most of the other, newer devices. I already had a B-hyve 1-port XD timer which I was using via bluetooth. I thought that now that I have an Orbit hub, I'd be able to connect the XD timer via wifi. WRONG! the XD timer only works with the gen2 hub.Finally, the setup process is a bit wonky as you add all four timers to the same Zone. However, you can set individual programs/zones for each timer once configured.