Three years after its first steps into sensible irrigation methods, Orbit’s B-hyve model is again with its most superior sensible watering {hardware} but. The new B-hyve XR is filled with options, so let’s dive into it.
For starters, the {hardware}—a beefy system that weighs greater than two kilos—is designed for both indoor or outside set up, with no further housing required. (That stated, the system is clearly not absolutely waterproof, so I’d advise giving it some stage of safety when you’re mounting the XR outdoors.)
This overview is a part of TechHive’s protection of the best smart sprinkler controllers, the place you’ll discover critiques of competing merchandise, plus a purchaser’s information to the options you must contemplate when looking for this sort of system.
A row of connectors beneath a detachable panel helps as much as eight valves (or 16 valves for the subsequent mannequin up, which prices a further $30) and consists of room for a rain or freeze sensor. Unique to the sensible irrigation area, the XR consists of no exterior energy brick (which is one cause why it’s outside pleasant); the transformer is as a substitute constructed into the principle housing. This additionally helps to clarify its total measurement and weight.
The Orbit B-hyve XR depends on the everyday clips to safe your sprinkler system’s wiring, but it surely takes various drive to shove the leads in (16-zone mannequin proven right here).
As with most sensible watering methods, your valve leads connect through easy wire clips. (The earlier B-hyve required wiring to be connected with tiny screws.) I initially tried inserting my leads into these clips and thought they had been related, solely to search out that once I ran a check watering run, nothing occurred. After some trial and error, I discovered that the XR requires pretty lengthy wiring leads, and people leads have to be inserted with a major quantity of drive as a way to maintain. I ended up trimming and re-stripping my wiring to enhance the connection, after which every thing labored effective.
With the B-hyve XR powered up, you’ll shortly discover its most attention-grabbing characteristic: A panel of three tiny, coloration LCD screens constructed into the hexagonal design sample on the housing. These micro-displays provide you with some fundamental details about your system, together with the present climate and the time and date of your subsequent scheduled run time. Strangely, the climate report solely consists of the general situation (sunny, raining, and so on.) however not the temperature, which might have been a bit extra helpful.
Christopher Null / IDGWhile it’s a monstrous {hardware} system, the B-hyve XR provides a lot of new options you gained’t discover on competing water controllers.
Once your {hardware} is configured, it’s time to make use of the B-hyve app to attach the system to Wi-Fi. Both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks are supported, and I had no hassle bringing the XR on-line, after which I might start configuring my watering zones. Like most fashionable sprinkler controllers, the B-hyve XR provides each handbook and “smart” watering applications, the latter establishing what it thinks is a perfect watering schedule primarily based on solutions you present concerning the measurement, situation, and composition of your garden or backyard.
Christopher Null / IDGYou can set as much as 4 separate watering applications, or let B-hyve’s sensible watering system determine for you.
After telling the app concerning the soil, plant sorts, sprinkler heads, floor slope, and solar situation, my system urged a considerably unusual sensible watering schedule: two 18-minute soaks, one proper after the opposite, working as soon as each three days. I don’t know if that is actually the best technique to water my crops, as I do know a smaller quantity of water daily tends to work finest in my backyard. The complete quantity of water being delivered over the course of per week, nevertheless, was nearly proper.
If you wish to fine-tune issues, B-hyve helps catch cups, whereby you bodily measure the precise quantity of water your system is placing out, after which use that data to tweak its programming. As properly, when you’ve got a Flume water-leak system put in, a brand new partnership with that firm enables you to use its knowledge to measure precisely how a lot water every zone is utilizing. If the numbers out of the blue bounce, that’s an indication that there’s a leak or break someplace in your irrigation tubing. This characteristic is accessible now, however Orbit says it gained’t be absolutely applied till the top of the 12 months.
If you don’t like B-hyve’s sensible schedule, it’s simple to disable. The system consists of 4 handbook program schedules you could customise, and all 5 of those schedules (together with the sensible schedule) may be turned on and off individually or all run concurrently. If your municipality has watering restrictions, you possibly can embrace this data as a form of grasp override over all applications to forestall water from flowing throughout sure days or occasions.
Christopher Null / IDGIf your water utility points restrictions as to when you possibly can irrigate, you possibly can enter that data into the B-hyve app.
The system consists of configurable push notifications, however just for warnings and when watering is completed, not when it begins. Alexa and Google Home are each supported and pretty robustly, letting you employ your voice to run on-demand watering applications, delay an upcoming schedule, and extra.
B-hyve’s app in all fairness intuitive, however its largest flaw is the way it presents future and historic watering data. A each day calendar offers you a take a look at the watering schedule previous and current, however it may solely match a number of hours of a single day on the display at a time, which implies you’ll have to scroll up and down and do numerous switching between days to get an excellent sense of what’s occurring. There’s additionally a “watering history” perform deep within the settings menu, however this solely reveals you the final time that water was run, not a real historical past of watering occasions. If B-hyve overhauls the calendar to be extra purposeful, it’ll go a great distance towards enhancing its total usability.
The B-hyve XR additionally consists of onboard controls that allow you to do numerous issues by interacting with the {hardware}, sans app, however that is largely a missed alternative: There’s solely a single button on the entrance of the XR, and you employ that to do every thing, by way of combos of quick presses and lengthy presses of that one button. Figuring this out isn’t simple, so B-hyve consists of an exhaustive cheat sheet on the within of the flap that covers the wiring leads. But it’s written in tiny kind, so that you’ll have to take away it fully to make any use of it. And frankly, all of that is actually convoluted; it’s a lot simpler to simply use the app reasonably than futz with the button.
At $150 for an 8-zone unit, the B-hyve XR is an effective worth, if not fairly an insanely nice one. The product works properly and the training curve is much less steep than with competing {hardware}; as such, it’s positively value severe consideration for nearly any surroundings—particularly when you want a unit you could mount outdoors.