
It also allows users to receive important notifications such as freezing temperature warnings, watering completion, and low battery alert. This faucet timer features a smart watering system allowing homeowners to control when to water and how much water to use for the lawn or garden. Should You Buy It? Yes, the Orbit B-hyve Smart Hose Faucet Timer is a great alternative if you don't have an in-ground sprinkler system.Introducing one of Orbit’s unique innovations, the 21004 smart hose faucet timer. It’s not a major issue, but the current setup is by no means intuitive, which could be challenging for the tech-inept among us. However, the fastest and easiest route would have been to turn off the faucet.
HOSE BIB SMART TIMER MANUAL
My phone wasn’t handy at the time, so I sprinted outside to shut the timer off manually and ultimately found it easier to turn off the faucet than to use the device’s manual controls, something I also experienced during my initial tinkering with the device.Īfter a little trial and error, I was able to shut the water off from the timer. I’d set it to water in 12-hour increments for 10 minutes at a time-and my sprinkler started pelting the side of the house with water.

There was one particular day during testing when I moved the sprinkler while mowing the grass, then forgot to replace it in the yard when I was done. The manual controls on the B-hyve Smart Hose Faucet Timer can be hard to use. That said, all bets are off once you’re inside the house or off-property, making the version with the Wi-Fi hub an even more worthwhile investment since it allows you to make adjustments from wherever you happen to be.

HOSE BIB SMART TIMER BLUETOOTH
However, if you can see the timer, you should generally be fine on Bluetooth alone. Over a few weeks of use, I had several occasions when the Orbit B-hyve timer informed me the “device is taking too long to respond,” before canceling a command. Though the Orbit B-hyve Smart Hose Faucet Timer boasts a long-range Bluetooth chip that allows for connectivity within a 500-foot line of sight, I found that range to be far more limited in practice when operating using only the Bluetooth connection. The Bluetooth range is too limited for large yards However, your results may vary depending on where you live. I ultimately found that a threshold of at least 70% and an inch of rain were necessary to circumvent the Rain Delay rules and run the sprinkler as scheduled on a typical summer day in the Sunshine State. The option of manual watering is always available, however, I wanted to see just how much leeway the Rain Delay setting was giving itself when I had a program set to run automatically. However, I found that the typical forecast during an Orlando summer met those baselines virtually every day, regardless of whether (or how much) it ended up raining. The device’s Rain Delay Percentage Threshold came at a 30% chance of rain with the depth threshold set to 0.125 inches, and the app noted that a delay would not be triggered unless both requirements were met. Though the setting is no doubt useful in a drier or more predictable climate, it presented some challenges where I live, in Florida, due to the erratic weather so common to our state. Included among the smart hose timer's many features is a weather adjustments panel that allows you to tweak the thresholds that put the timer in Rain Delay mode, effectively canceling any pre-programmed sessions if rain is expected in the area. What we don't like The Rain Delay feature can be finicky You can also use voice commands to change modes, like starting or stopping a watering cycle, and check in to see when your next water schedule is set to. With Alexa or Google Assistant, you can use hands-free voice control to control features like rain delay and watering schedules. Additional voice control features like managing rain delay, watering schedules, and modes are also available with both smart assistants. Using hands-free voice control via Alexa or Google Assistant, you can turn the faucet on and off with just a few spoken words. For a smart hose timer that works with HomeKit, check out the Eve Aqua Guard. Apple HomeKit functionality is not yet available and is "coming soon," so you can't use Siri to control hose. If you're the type who would rather control your garden hose with your voice than your phone, you'll be pleased to know that this smart hose timer works with Alexa and Google Assistant.

You can water the grass with smart assistants Alexa and Google Assistant In the app, the information can also be filtered by watering program (the device can handle up to four simultaneous schedules in addition to the automated Smart Watering option) or by zone, which is more useful for those using multiple hose timers.

The app shows other helpful insights like watering totals broken out by day, week, month, or year, with side-by-side comparisons illustrating cycle-over-cycle changes using bar graphs alongside the raw data.
