Orbit 21006 B-hyve Wi-Fi Hub, Gray

These hubs are a bit confusing to program, especially if you are far away from tour wifi. The older valves, which is what i have, require one hub each, a fact i had nit realized until recently. The confusing part is that the setup asks whether you want to use a wifi hub or control the valve directly. Note that controlling directly means that you are asking to only use bluetooth.

I have spent hundreds of dollars on beautiful plants, but never kept it growing for more than a month. When it was time to tear up my construction grade flower bed, I was anxious. But adding this to my home made it easy to manage. It has a timer to set off the sprinklers when I want to, from wherever I am! This piece gives the other piece the capability to be controlled from the app (WHICH IS AWESOME). It always detect weather; so when it rains - it doesn’t waste your water bill and skips the watering automatically!

I've had B-hyve automation products for a couple years and they had been very dependable for a long time( excess of 1 year). I finally had a hub that failed (lost connection to my wifi). Troubleshot with assistance from Orbit and confirmed failure and was sent a replacement. The replacement did not function long at all (maybe a month or 2) and then failed in the same manner. Orbit was out of stock so I ordered from Amazon and also purchased an Assurion warranty noticing a short life span on my previous purchase. That unit failed in just a few weeks and I was directed back to B-hyve during the initial warranty period. Their customer service used to be good but now is TERRIBLE. Much is automated and if you request a callback don't expect that to happen, ever. I've purchased more on Amazon and many ship and do not work out of the box. I suspect Orbit/B-hyve knew they had a failing product and that is why they created a gen 2 hub. Sadly the devices I own 4 timers all require a gen 1 (completely unreliable) hub.

PROs :1). The device itself seems solid from a manufacturing point of view.2). Relatively easy to get connected to with a fairly intuitive guided setup for which defaults can be accepted.3). "Smart Watering", that by itself is easily the best feature of the WiFi hub.4). App driven functionality capable, i.e. the device is only limited by the functions and features provided be the app.5). One can get up and running in minutes accepting all defaults, which one can then tweak as one learns more about the hub.CONs :1). App driven functionality capable, i.e. the device is only limited by the functions and features provided be the app it pairs with. The issue in this case is that the functionality provided by the current app is pretty limited. The primary limitation is that it is not possible to control more than one faucet end timer at the same time which means that whatever program is active, the single active faucet end timer will operate and to operate a different timer, one has to manually do so in the app. But, the potential is there.Were it to reach its potential, it will become a 5-star review.2). It would be nice to be able to download and print a text based step-by-steps for the various processes one may need to go through to perform or use a given function or configuration. Much of the help system being in video takes forever to figure out what one can do and what doing so affects the watering. Not only is a reliance on video content a problem from a time perspective, having to watch 5 minutes of content that one could have scanned in seconds but also, having to switch between video and the app or doing so while having to scan for just that ONE spot where you think you maybe might possible perhaps seen mention of something similar yet not totally unlike what one might need to do whatever it is one is trying to do.

… and is needed if your B-hyve timer is Model: 21005. If you try to use a GEN2 hub with the earlier model timer, you will not be able to connect to your Wi-Fi connection; only a bluetooth connection will function.

I bought this item in Spring of 2020. I used it to water my garden and it worked great the entire growing season. I went to reuse this year, 2021 and kept losing communication with device. I bought a new one in Spring of 2021 thinking the old one broke. New one is having similar issues. Is it a firmware issue?

I bought this unit after I bought the timers. Getting it all the timers paired with this hub is very easy. It took me a few tries but I think it was me and not the units. Wish the instructions were more complete. Since I already had the timers I had to add the hub to devices then what I did was add the timers to the group of the hub. I did had to reboot my routers also. Just pressing the buttons on the units 5 times didn't seem to do it for me. Like I said, I added the timers to the hub's group then they were all paired and using WIFI. Now hopefully I can control from another state since that is the main reason I bought this hub.

I had to buy this because BlueTooth Faucet Hose Timer did not operate with BT as advertised. I think there was a package deal available if I had known the BT function wouldn't work or be sufficient.I "THINK" it works, but I have to be in the same room with the device in order to control it from my iPhone.Instructions are not that clear and the interface is not as simple as one would like.

verygood

The product is extremely hard to set up and completely unreliable. The range of the wifi is poor. When eventually set up after awhile they stop working and so are totally unreliable to operate remotely. They will not support faulty items bought from Amazon,

Quick delivery and a great item