Orbit 21004 B-hyve Smart Hose Watering Timer with Wi-Fi HubWaterSense

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.

It was easy to set up for me and does exactly what I need. As the picture shows I just had a bucket hanging from the top of my deck. I have four or 5 gallon buckets with different vegetables growing.Even with the drip system turned on continuously, I could be gone for about 2 weeks. But I didn't want things to get moldy. With this system, I just went in and configured it to turn on for 4 hours whenever it felt like it needs water. Preferably around 1:00 a.m. I love it. It can tell that it's going to rain in my zip code and so currently it's not scheduled to turn on any water for 9 days. This is becausethe program can see we're going to get rain for 5 days in a row and it's going to let it dry out a little bit before it adds water.I'm tempted to buy a moisture sensor to stick in one of the buckets as well. That way it knows exactly when to add water. But do my beans REALLY need that? Or am I just having too much fun playing with things. Ha!I did have to factory reset the timer valve twice. But the first time was because I interrupted the software update by accidentally by closing down the app in the middle of it. To fix this, I had press the on off button five times fast (to reset). Then go back in set up, delete the device, and start set up again. Done!

I first will say I own their B-Hyve 6 zone timer and love it. It waters my yard and I have no problems (other than when they broke it with software updates but have since been resolved).After thoroughly enjoying the multi zone timer, I was looking to water other parts of my house (plants in pots, separate planter beds, etc.) by utilizing my hose spigots around my house. When I found these timers I was super happy. That's the last bit of happiness I had is when I purchased them. When I say nothing but problems, I literally mean it. Not one has just worked without an enormous amount of work on my part. I'm an IT/Smart Home Installer, this is my job playing with smart devices. I can tell you head others people's warnings in the 1 star reviews, these are horrible. Yeah, you'll get it setup eventually, it's not going to last. You'll notice plants are starting to get dry, you'll check the battery level, hmm 40% and you just put fresh batteries in that's odd. They will lose connection with the hub constantly, you'll have to reset device connection in the app. Did that fix it great, wait, hold on it's only showing a bluetooth connection now. I hope you get the idea, when they stay connected, which is rare, it'll work. You'll manually start them and the app which is total hot garbage because their programmers keep adding cool features like shop because who doesn't want to shop for more devices while they're watering their grass am I right? Back to the point, you'll manually start watering and it will tell you it timed out after 30 secs but wait, it's watering currently. You'll have to force close the app and go back in, go to the device, "start" a manual watering cycle and hey, it's now showing you how much you have left on the watering cycle even though it told you it failed to connect.I've done this too many times to count, reset, set it up again, yeah it works, and then it doesn't.I have 3 hubs on my property to try to alleviate the issues, one literally 1.5' inside a window from where I had 3 of these timers. All 3 wouldn't work, not a one. I swapped hubs, updated networks, etc, nothing stayed working longer than a day or two, sometimes moments after you set it up did it just not work. So I gave up and tried another brand Rain Point. I'm impressed, not only did they set up immediately but guess what? 3 weeks and counting and I can use each and every one of them without issue. Installed exactly where the 3 of these timers were installed and their hub is sitting exactly in the same outlet and still working.It's been a massive waste of money with these and I'm sorry I ever found them because their integration into the B-Hyve App is horrendous vs. the multi-zone systems. I manage 4 households that utilize the multi-zone systems and zero problems. I don't update the app anymore as their programmers are horrible. I've emailed them and they're useless, I even offered to beta test the software for them as it kept getting worse by the update.Stay away from these and go with another brand. Read the reviews, don't pick the glowing ones because I can tell you from real world experience, someone is lying and it isn't those of us that have the same issues repeatedly. Go look at the b-hyve app reviews and you'll see these issues also brought up.