My B-hyve hose faucet battery

[smaug]

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Finally found this thread, hoping for a simple solution for my issue: All six devices show wrong battery levels, all different but specific for the individual devices (just swap the battery packages and you will get 3% for batteries that showed 11% in another one, while 11% are shown on the other device for the batteries that were rated 3% originally). Removing six devices, adding them again, and re-doing the programming will cost me a day‘s work. So did somebody already successfully try the solution proposal? I‘m close to sending the devices back and buying Eve watering devices with Thread support instead, to be honest. I would need some positive news to remain a loyal customer which doesn’t write furious Amazon one-star reviews. Fixing the firmware would do the trick, for example.

[Chris5596]

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Same battery issues here too. Was away for a month and the app reported dead batteries @ 5%. Replaced them and still showed 5%. I deleted the device (Faucet Timer 21005) from the app and the battery % showed ok briefly and then disappeared. If I switch to bluetooth control it appears briefly again but then disappears after a second or two. This is absolutely useless now.

[smaug]

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Thanks, @Chris5596: I tried this out for one of my six faucets. After the usual struggle (adding a device never worked for me on first attempt) it shows the same behavior as yours. At least the faucet can now be operated manually again. I use Homebridge to expose the faucets to HomeKit, and there I now get periodic alerts written into the log telling me that the battery is at 0%, maybe the plug in author will fix that from his side.
This fix from Orbit is hopefully a temporary solution only. Taking away the battery state information for battery operated devices is not acceptable, as plants will die because of this – and I of course hate purchasing new batteries just to find out that it‘s not the batteries but the devices. In their current state, buying these faucets cannot be recommended at all. Orbit should get a chance to fix this though.

[Chris5596]

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Hi @smaug. Couple of questions. Is the Homekit (I’ve not heard of it) patch a suggestion by Orbitz as a workaround? Is the battery indicator level a bug that they are going to fix do you know?
About battery life. I’ve been using rechargeables but they only last 2-3 months. I found lithium to last 6 months or so. To be honest if this level indicator doesn’t get fixed I’ll consider the new Rachio device. I have the Rachio 3 sprinkler controller which get 6 stars from me. They just launched a smart faucet timer and uses their same App as the sprinkler one.

[smaug]

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Hi @Chris5596, HomeKit is the Apple Smarthome environment. Adding B-Hyve devices there via a software bridge called Homenbridge allows you to control the faucets in the same environment you would use to control smart lights and other smart home devices. Unfortunately that doesn‘t fix any of the issues that Orbit has caused by the battery indicator bug (maybe a bit: you can start watering manually there even when the B-hyve app refuses because it thinks that the batteries are empty). Orbit doesn’t officially support Apple HomeKit, thus they won’t recommend anything into that direction as a workaround. I’m not an employee of Orbit, but I do hope they give us the battery status functionality back, because it’s a must-have feature for those devices. As a software developer I can tell what a bug is when I see one, and this is one, and the current workaround can only be acceptable for a very short period of time.

Rachio doesn’t seem to be available in Germany, but thanks for the hint: I’ll keep my eyes open 🙂

[wilson0626]

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I also have this issue. I have used these for years and now suddenly they are broken due to an app or firmware issue. Can I have my money back? Battery level monitoring is a key feature in this device.

[sherb12]

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You can add me to the list of people with battery issues caused by poor software/firmware. I’m pretty disappointed that I have devices that have trouble multiple times in a season. If I’m being honest I don’t think I have gone more than a few weeks without something going wrong with them.

The last time I reached out to them for support(last year), it was an awful experience. For some reason they aren’t able to speak on the phone with you and require you to send text messages back and forth for an hour, trying to troubleshoot and give steps that could have been done in 10 minutes. One of the worst support experiences I’ve ever had.

[ruralwater]

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I just reactivated an old phone running Bhyve app version 3.0.22/build 1056. current iOS version is 3.0.28/build 1112. The old version shows the same lack of battery info, which leads me to believe that it is a problem with the firmware, not the app. So if you’re not at version 58 or close to it….don’t update!!

I don’t know if Orbit can’t find decent programmers, is too cheap to do so, or simply doesn’t give a crap (which surprises me as they’re owned by Husqvarna who is generally reliable), but it would be REALLY NICE OF ORBIT TO FIX THIS NOW! Some of us actually RELY on the battery %.

[ruralwater]

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I just chatted with the Orbit support (for what it wasn’t worth). They said “they’re working on it” and I asked if there was an ETA to which I received no response and finally gave up after half an hour.

[Chris5596]

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Hi All, I updated the hose end timer firmware a couple of days ago and the battery level is showing again. Device information shows firmware version 0041.

[smaug]

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Same here: This seems to be fixed now. It’s not that simple though: In one case, firmware was updated to version 0041 some days ago but the battery still showed the wrong status. Switching to Bluetooth connection in the B-hyve app and back to Wi-if led to showing 100% temporarily, but values got down to the flawed value after some seconds. But now that changed (is there some connection to a recent server-down from Orbit?), toggling the connection type on B-hyve app start page now helped. Upgraded all remaining devices to new firmware, toggled the connection once for each device to force reset of battery status display, and voilà: I’m back in business. So thanks to Orbit for finally fixing this problem 👏👏👏
A bit more transparency would be great next time 😉

[Tom Cunningham]

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Wait, how come some device information shows firmware version 0041 and others show 0058? Mine are all 0058 and the battery level shows N/A.

[smaug]

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@Tom Cunningham, we can try to figure out: I use devices listed at Amazon as Orbit B-hyve 94990 and 94995 (with and without hub respectively), hardware version HT25-0000 for hoses, HT1-0000 for hubs, B-hyve app version 3.0.28 on iOS 16.5. All hoses show plausible battery level values. Last firmware update performed one day ago. Do you spot any differences?

Fun fact: I use a software bridge called Homebridge to have my devices shown in Apple Home, which is nice, but there all devices warn that battery level is 0%. Seems there were some incompatible API changes. I shouldn’t try to fix that by trying to get newer firmware for the time being…

[Chris5596]

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Well I’m not sure this is over yet – I’ve been connected via wifi the last few days with my rechargeable batteries in the timer showing 58%. I was trying to test manual watering which consistently failed (actually the valve turned on but the app kept saying “Timeout”), so I switched to Bluetooth control. Guess what ,the batteries showed 34%. I was having all kinds of glitchy stuff on the App so I decided first to upgrade the IOS on my phone to 16.5. After that the App would not launch at all, no surprises there. Deleted the App, reinstalled and logged in. Had to reset the hub and timer and setup all over again. Took me at least 30 minutes as I was getting all kinds of stupid “something went wrong” errors and “hangs”. Anyway finally succeeded only to still find a different battery % between BT and wifi – 34% on BT and 55% on wifi. Would be interested if anyone else sees this?. Wife and I travel a lot with extended periods away and rely on this working 100%. At this rate this lot is going in the bin soon and I’ll change to the new Rachio hose end timer.

[gkissell]

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I use Energizer Lithium. At first, the battery would keep showing about 58%. When I connected to the device, 100%. By the next day all timers show 100% all the time.

There are several issues with the latest app update. Fingers crossed, there will be some resolution soon.

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