The Orbit B-Hyve controller is a huge improvement over using a sprinkler controller that cannot be program, controlled, and monitored with your cellphone. Many years ago, I switched both 12 zone systems in Minnesota to the Orbit B-Hyve controllers. After we moved to Florida almost three years ago, I immediately replaced our old dumb controller with an Orbit B-Hyve.
In Florida, I now have three 12 zone and one 16 zone B-Hyve controllers. We have a lot of garden areas to irrigate. I currently have 26 zones deployed now, but I'll probably increase the zone count by another dozen in the future. The 12 and 16 zone models make the system more future proof, if you want to expand your zones in the future. The 16 zone model does not have a local control, only the cellphone or computer control. I only use the cellphone control because using the local control is a hassle, and inconvenient, compared to using the cellphone app.
The Orbit B-Hyve app had a number of bugs in the past several years, which I reported to Orbit. It took them a long time to fix the bugs. There is one known bug left to fix. Sometimes when looking at the historic watering, the last zone does not indicate that it ran, even though it did run.
The weather sensing doesn't work that great in Florida, compared to in Minnesota, because where it rains is much more irratic and inconsistent than in Florida. A local weather station would probably improve that problem. I bought a cheap weather station from Costco, that quit working in less than a year. I replaced the rain sensor, and it failed again a couple months later. I need to upgrade to a better quantity weather station.
I did have one of my Orbit B-Hyve controllers fail. The WiFi receiver intermittently failed, dispite a strong WiFi signal. Then the WiFi receiver failed completely. Then the Bluetooth receiver failed. Orbit gave me credit to buy a new replacement B-Hyve controller for free to fix the problem.
Overall, I'm happy with the B-Hyve controllers. I think a decent local weather station would improve the automatic rain delay accuracy.
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