b-hyve Reviews

by Jrblaster

Here’s an interesting dichotomy of a product. The timer and it’s features, ROCK. Well made, reliable and mostly easy to use. Until you need to need uninstall the main unit. It doesn’t matter for what reason... there’s no “uninstall” unit (insert Mac here). When I look up the problem, the only reference I see is to have someone at Orbit remove it from my account. NO. That’s not how it works, and it’s stupid. It shouldn’t matter if I changed to another brand, replaced the unit or sold my house... It’s my account, and that is so short sighted on Orbit’s part. It’s like selling a fire extinguisher... with no handles or nozzle. Oh, AND when I try to log into my account, I go straight to the device information and my settings, zone etc... cool. However, I cannot sign into the main Orbit website to even ASK for someone to remove the device from my account. Guys... get it together, you have WONDERFUL products... get your applications and customer service together, which includes your API from desktop to mobile applications straight. C’mon, I love you but... I cannot rate this any higher than a one. Customer service will make or break you. You have people that know this. You fix these shortcomings and I will change to a Five Star ALL DAY LONG. (Whispers) Fix it, please.

by Wimtar

This is an app that controls real physical utilities - so it is pretty important that it turns on and off when you need it to. If I run a test on one of my sprinkler zones it may run correctly for the first test but all tests after that for several hours sometimes are not registered and get put in some sort of back order. The only error I am given is that there is a server connection error. I know it is not my local Internet or wireless. I reset the server connection through bhyve which sometimes appears to update the last server connection timestamp and sometimes it does not. Regardless, it does not seem to fix the problem. Several hours later I will get a notification on my phone saying that it has completed a watering program. This has me worried that some of the nicer dynamic watering/smart watering features will not always work if it doesn’t have a good server connection. And possibly as a worst-case scenario – maybe it won’t be able to turn off a watering… I have developed a mobile app myself and did the dev ops work. My guess is that they need to get this on AWS and have much better server uptime and clean up the codebase. Of course, I could be wrong, but my app frequently had similar issues about reaching the main server when we had backend problems. It’s unfortunate that we need to communicate with the back and in order to run a local test. Please fix!

by Swchampi

I use bhyve on the Orbit B-Hyve XR and it works as it should for daily watering but the interval watering does not work. I set the unit up to water my trees every two weeks and when the time to water comes, nothing happens. I contacted Ortbit customer service and they said I needed to set the “interval start date.” Well in bhyve that I have, there is no interval start date. There is a “program start date” but apparently that’s not the same thing. So then they directed me to my online account where I could set the interval start date. The online account is not easy to navigate and I feel turned off at this point anyway because this should be in bhyve , but I digress. Once I set the start date and go back to bhyve to finish setup and try to set enter start time, bhyve crashes (every time). So I think maybe I can put the start time in the online account, makes sense right? Well there is no place in the online account to enter the start time. At this point, I am ready to pull my hair out. I have 32 trees in my yard and because I can’t do interval watering, this unit is useless to me. The customer service person said they would submit a bug report but how long is that going to take to fix? Unless I can do interval watering I am going to have to return this unit. App developers, please fix this problem!!

by Crystal_Guy

This is a pretty darn good product for the money. I have a unique situation where I needed to increase the moisture in my warehouse and this little baby allowed me to do just that. I have it set up with 100 foot of LDPE pipe and 10 fogger nozzles. I am using two zones (4x start times each) to effectively fog my area for 12 seconds every three hours. This allows me to introduce moisture into the atmosphere over time, but not so much as to wet the floor, or the equipment in the immediate area.

I did have one issue when I was originally setting the system up, in that I did not have my full system laid out and so my initial test did not reflect what the total systems pressure rating needed to be and because it took me a while to get back to the set up, I lost connectivity with the device. You need to make sure that if you cannot connect back to the device that you hit the on button five times rapidly so it will go back into Bluetooth mode. Once I reread all of the directions it became obvious what I missed.

Again system works like a champ or an application it was never designed for.

by MitchKlein

It’s been about a year now since we installed our b-hyve water timer. It sure does beat having to be at the box to change programs, test drip lines and heads, and just keep up with the changing weather here in Phoenix, AZ.
BUT, the interface is a bit awkward, and it’s more difficult to use than it should be. Too many screens, and too few bells and whistles. So, even though I can be in East Kishnev when I want to turn a zone on or off, make changes to the programs for each zone, or just turn it all off because a storm just soaked the whole state.
I’d like to see drip heads that have an individual soil monitor, so that each drip head could be individually programmed. The one that’s under the shade tree should be turned on, say, half the times that the full sun bushes are watered. Or, the newly planted small flowers or bushes should be watered twice as often but only half as long as the established plants are. Or, bush A gets four times as much rain water as bush B. Program for that!!
Anyway, I can’t really complain too much, because my city rebated the full price of my b-hyve when I submitted my receipt and paperwork. Free for nothing! What a deal.

by SoCal Rob OC

When I look at each of my zones under ‘Watering Events’ the ‘Last Watering’ is correct but the ‘Next Watering’ always indicates ‘Not Scheduled’

This doesn’t make me confident as we head into summer where irrigation is critically important in my desert climate to prevent plant loss. The ‘Next Watering’ used to work properly and losing this undermines my trust of bhyve in general. I have 2 accounts (1 personal and 1 for an HOA) for two different types of B Hyve controllers and I use bhyve on two different devices (iPad Air 2 and iPhone 11 Pro Max) both running current iOS. Both controllers say they can’t be updated because they are already on the current firmware so all is well from a hardware standpoint. bhyve only displays ‘Not Scheduled’ no matter what combination of account and device I use so it seems to be an app problem.

Please fix bhyve so I can trust it and give a higher rating. Thank you for working on this.

by Sprkygrg

I have found bhyve to be very easy to use and unlike some, it seems to weather the storms of iOS updates. I like being able to update it or suspend while I’m out of town. I also like being able to test a zone to adjust head patterns after a repair. Saves walking back and forth like I used to do. One feature I would like to see would be the ability to trigger a program one time. On my old timer it was called “semi-automatic”. For example, if I want to run program A one time now I have to set the start time a minute or two from current time, then remember to change the start time back later. A run once now function seems fairly simple to implement. One other detail is that there are two save buttons active when you are changing a program but only one of them actually saves your changes. You have to back out of changes in the right order. Only show the save that is the next step. This is a very reliable app and I use it almost weekly.

by Savagetyler

I installed two beehives one in front (3 zones) and one in the backyard (4 zones). Installation was super easier especially if not replacing with previous sprinkler system. Connecting to my phone the first unit was flawless the second unit and I had to attempt it a couple times before it finally joined. I don’t recommend the SMART set up mine began watering the backyard three days in a row for 15mins each zone in the middle of winter twice a day. I would try just deleting certain events but they would just add them to the next day. The other issue I have is the rain delay. Now in manual it still self delays rain, my backyard was on rain delay since it is raining but my front yard sprinklers turned on. They don’t communicate with each other and even though one is set for delay does not mean the other will be even though front and back yard are all in the open. However the ability to set your own schedule and manually control the sprinklers from your phone even if you are offsite is well worth it.

by Megatran Jax

I installed two Orbit 3 valve manifolds together and wired it to the 6 zone WiFi sprinkler timer. It was a very simple process! However, the double union to connect the two manifolds had to be special ordered since my local Home Depot did not have it in-store. Orbit’s customer service rep was very personable and able to locate the exact parts with serial numbers that I needed for my DIY custom irrigation system. I’ve never done anything like this and was very hesitant.

I’ve been running the system for 6 weeks now and absolutely love it! I’ll never have to spend hours watering my 12 fruit trees and vegetable garden again. I also bought the adapter fittings for drip irrigation. Orbit’s design is simple, effective, and less expensive than Rain Bird’s.

The only complaint I have so far is that it took a few tries to connect the WiFi. Also, for some unknown reason it did not water a scheduled session, but the following week it did. The upside is that the system keeps a watering history so that you can manually set it to run using your smartphone.

by Embers_Glow

My previous controller stopped providing free remote access in favor of a $2 per month charge. Then the power supply failed so I made the switch to the B-Hyve 6 station. Despite what some reviewers have stated I found the set up using bhyve on my phone to be simple. The program walks you through the process which only takes a few minutes. Adding the photographs for each zone is a nice touch. Smart watering is very effective based on local weather and evapotranspiration. I wasn’t clear on how to manual water, but the FAQ had it all spelled out. There are collection cups that can be purchased and added to the system to enhance water management, but I haven’t put any on my system. The transformer for the power cord is in the control box which is a nice touch, but there is only one place to hang the box from, a center screw slot. The weight of the transformer makes the controller tilt on the wall unless you add the second crew (provided) to the lower right inside the box (this is not pre-punched out I used a 1/4” drill bit through the plastic). I would have appreciated a bubble level in the box and a full set of paper instructions, as opposed to the quick start/mounting leaflet provided. Otherwise, this unit is awesome for the price! Great job Orbit.

by WyattE2012

I’m actually using both a 6 station timer and two single hose timers for bhyve. They all work flawlessly. I kick myself for not converting earlier, but the wait paid off. First, my water company had a rebate for all three devices that covered 65% of my total cost. That was an incredible surprise, but not the reason why I bought it.
Very easy to setup, program or tweak. I have pictures for each zone, which is a neat feature. I have multiple schedules setup for summer and winter, along with easy seasonal percentage adjustments. I can quickly select a rain delay or have a quick manual water, all without incident and most importantly, from wherever I am with a cellular signal.
I’ve had it installed for almost a year now. I’ve never had issues with dropping or connecting to my wifi during this time. I can’t say enough good things about it.

by Jmaunster

I’ve had the B-hyve 12 Station controller for the past two years using it in Smart mode. Last year was pretty good with a few challenges during the heat of the season and also with weather misses based on my location verses where the actual weather feed was located. This season with some nice improvements on bhyve , I can now locate and add my nearest and best weather feed location and I now have the ability to adjust Smart watering by increasing or decreasing the duration % for each station. I have also adjusted the interval on a few stations as well. This new feature is just what the doctor ordered to enable me to adjust Smart watering to fit my landscape needs! Home run for B-hyve for sure! Well done! Oh, and did I mention how nice it is to use in the manual mode to check and clean my heads throughout the season. This feature alone makes it worth the purchase! Highly recommend this irrigation controller!

by Concierge2000

bhyve is well designed, logical and easy to quickly set up. I was able to understand the basic as well as the advanced features right away. I like the ability to manually set watering or use the Smart feature. I like being able to adjust using bhyve as well as outside, directly at the station using the buttons on the box.
You can keep it simple and let the system automatically make adjustments based on weather and lawn features or you can easily get into the many advanced features available for people who like to be able to adjust the multitude of advanced in-depth watering features.
Great to be able to turn on stations to test standing in the yard using the phone App and not have to run back and forth to box.
*In the “Zone Smart Watering Details” -> WATERING SCHEDULE ADJUSTMENTS. I Would like to see - the exact Days and Times it will Water and Duration - AFTER I ADJUST sliders like “runtime adjustment” and “Interval Adjustments” to get a user friendly view of what the automated system is doing. When I turn on Smart Water I’m not confident as I can’t “see” the actual Schedule (Date/RunTime)

by Kswl

My irrigation guy set us up with an Orbit timer / controller because his supplier was out of our size rainbird. I had never heard of this brand and with good reason—-it’s definitely the C class of irrigation equipment. Initial setup looked okay except that the “smart” watering (ironic misnomer) enables for All zones only scheduled two of them to run multiple times each day instead of all zones running according to county restrictions programmed in. Basically the Orbit decided it was “smart” to water two zones multiple times each day for a total of an hour each zone and ignore the rest. And despite entering a single start time of 6 am the smart watering had the same two zones starting at 6, 7, 8 etc. This product is useless and bhyve is a joke. We are replacing it with a Rainbird, which doesn’t have the greatest app but at least it functions.

by Jfjdkxk

Purchased the this app 3 years ago because of bhyve flexibility and it works like a charm. When I have an issue with fixing a drip or sprinkler I don’t have to go all the way to the timer to turn on and off. Pick up my phone and do the testing. Also, when it’s hot or cloudy, etc., I can quickly adjust my watering. bhyve works amazingly. I’ve never had an issue and it’s very flexible. bhyve has saved me LOTS of water. Great app, great timer, they work together like things should. Great job and I never give 5 stars, ever.

Update a year after first 5 star review: bhyve and product continues to be the BEST app and BEST product I’ve ever purchased, timer wise for watering. It beats all other products as well. Works like a complete charm. When you think it can’t work any better, they upgrade bhyve and bam! It works even better!!! Thanks you! I would rate this product 100 stars out of 5!!!

by Quinnr311

bhyve has been so great to have with just being able to walk around the yard and turn on and off the sprinklers without having to go back and forth. I like getting the notifications and the rain and wind delays are really nice. There are some glitchy issues though. For example, It says my next watering will be at 6am tomorrow, but it will water at midnight instead. Then the cycle will go from midnight to 2am. But in some areas of bhyve it says it watered between 6am-8am. It’s just very inconsistent on the watering times. At one point it said it’s next watering would be at 6am the next day but then it watered that day at 3pm which was the hottest part of the day. So I put a block for watering during the day, which worked, but I don’t think it was supposed to do that. My biggest question is when is my yard actually getting watered because I’m getting mixed readings. Other than that, it’s been awesome. But please fix those issues.

by ContentedGranny

We had just installed a sprinkler system that included the this app timer when my husbands work sent him to Italy for 3 months, 2 weeks after it was installed. June-Aug. I was terrified that we would return to a half acre of dead lawn and landscaping. Our lawn company would email us and tell us what zone was looking dry or which one was getting too much water. When the rain stopped and the heat rose we programmed, from Southeast Italy, changes in our watering schedule and zones. We added programs and tweaked zone times depending on the information we were given and then crossed our fingers (and lit candles in one of he many Catholic Churches) hoping we did it right and that the changes would register. We came home last week to a green lawn and healthy trees and shrubs. We check the physical timer at the house and it was exactly what we programmed from
Italy. Some people may gripe about this or that but in the end you want to make sure your lawn is watered and your plants are happy. I couldn’t be happier or more relieved.

by Bunkermeat

This water timer is awesome!! I mounted the it and hooked up all the wiring and landed the power wires and plugged in. I setup the bhyve on my phone and setup each zone and was able name each zone. You can take a picture and attach it to that zone as well which is pretty cool!! After you can really fine tune each zone down to the water output from each head, soil type, sun exposure and the amount of slope and soil moisture %.
I am letting the B-hyve do it’s smart watering feature on all my zones with a every other day schedule. bhyve and interface setup was flawless and I tested each zone and it logs every time the zone starts and ends and I believe if you go through and figure out the the total output for each zone it will give you a water amount total based on the time the zone was running.
The cool thing is having bhyve right on your phone and being able to adjust it on the fly instead of going through and messing with the cumbersome timers. Game changer!!

by ArmandWelsh

I have a Rachio from my backyard and I installed this one for my front yard. The b-hyve is less than half the price has more fine-grained control over the watering once it’s tuned up it’s more effective than the Rachio and it’s every bit as good from the Software side. About six months after upgrading to this unit Iro updated the Rachio software to make it more like this one. With the latest updates on the version to Rachio controller I still have better calibration option in this system. Setting up the Wi-Fi is a little hokey considering there is no way to discern between the 2.4 GHz band and the 5 GHz band on a dual band Wi-Fi network. I did notice that every time you scan the come back in the same order, so I picked one and intermittent connectivity issues reset the Wi-Fi , Take the other Wi-Fi bad, and everything has been flawless sense. I highly recommend this family of smart irrigation controllers to anyone looking. With their low price, they come in well under almost all smart irrigation controller rebate program limits.

by Lawn Bob

Works as promised. Setup was super easy. I read older app reviews and viewed You Tube videos and found all of the complaints have now been corrected. It now shows more information about past watering confirmations and when it is going to water next. Hard-wired rain sensor works well. I have one zone on “smart watering” to try it out. So far so good. It now has the EPA “water sense” rating so I will be getting a rebate from the water company. I picked Orbit over the others primarily because it can run three different ways. It can be programed manually at the unit itself then run on auto; programed manually with a smart phone; or set on smart watering after entering some info about the zones. It can be connected to with Wifi AND by Bluetooth. Testing is is very easy and simple because I don’t have to run back and forth to start the timer. I replaced a basic digital Toro (15 years old) and I hope this one lasts as long.

by Cold Blood1

bhyve itself is great. Everything seems to be pretty seamless for the most part. Really love the concept of the whole system but one thing. Obviously Orbit has a flaw that is so common that they have a option in bhyve to try and correct it but never seems to work. The WiFi signal is lost about 1-3 times a month for me for some reason and I have to go unplug the unit and plug it back in. Whamo it starts working again without any further issues (until a week or so later when I must repeat the action again. Yes the WiFi signal is strong at the location of the timer before you ask the obvious question. No I don’t have an old system, for have the latest greatest best money can buy WiFi. No I don’t lose signal from supplier. It’s fine and I can deal with the occasional visit to my timer until you take a vacation during a drought then it’s a problem. If ORBIT fixes this annoying problem they will have a 5 or 10 on my scale.

by Themonsons

Works great and setup went flawlessly. Had an Orbit brand installed on this house when I bought it, but something went wrong and it needed replacing. Went to Lowe’s to pick up a new one and saw this WiFi version. Since my home is rather “connected”, i.e. we bugged ourselves with Alexa, smart plugs, smart lights, etc, I thought it appropriate to make my irrigation system smart too. Very glad I did. Once we had it wired correctly (5 zones), setup of the timer to our home network (via WiFi) was super-simple and programming the 5 zones was a breeze. Took less than 5 minutes to connect it to my network, test the zones, and program 5 zones. If you’re used to using apps, the common app interface makes it super-simple to navigate and use - way easier than programming an irrigation timer using the LCD screen and buttons on the timer itself. Plus you can do a rain delay right in bhyve (not necessary if you have a rain sensor...I do not). There are 4 “Programs”, so you can program the same zones on multiple programs and toggle them on/off with a slider. Useful if your zones are treated differently for different seasons, for example. The only thing that’s not 100% clear during setup is any Alexa compatibility. I’m going to research that now. So far, the timer works great and I love the easy app interface, setup, and programming. Great job, Orbit!

by Pbro123

bhyve is awesome. Its super intuitive and easy to make program adjustments or water ad hoc when needed.
Especially when I reseed bare spots in my lawn. To grow new grass seed you obviously need to consistently keep the soil a bit moist for 10-14 days. That was impossible for me before with work and limited programs on any timer, which I didn’t want to change for just 10 days. Now I can turn on a single station for 30 seconds or so throughout the day when at work so the new grass grows in flawlessly. Also the automatic rain delay saves me stress. I used to wake up at 5am to the sound of my sprinklers that I forgot to turn off during rainy days and would sprint out to my detached garage to turn it off before judging neighbors noticed. Then I would forget to turn my program back on and grass would die... Now bhyve alerts me when it is delaying watering because of rain and also excessive wind.