Orbit Hose Timer data dump:
TL;DR- This device is flawed and if there’s anyway you can avoid buying it, I’d suggest doing so. The key problem is that it has severely limited zigbee range. Within a few feet of a hub or repeater it seems to work fine, but more than 10-15 feet it becomes erratic or doesn’t function at all.
I have now spent three days trying to get two of these devices to work I’ve tried them with both SmartThings and Iris hubs, and using both the gussery3 and SmartPower Outlet Device Handlers. The range limitation is common to both hubs.
Of the 2 device handlers in Smartthings, the SmartPower Outlet handler works better. It at least reports correct state and seems to respond a little quicker… when its working that is. For example when you first switch to this DH, the icon in the ST app will switch from open/close to on/off. As soon as you press this button for the first time however, you’ll be stuck in “turning on…” for a good 15 minutes. Finally the device will right itself and begin responding. This odd pause/stuck behavior may return for reasons that I’ve yet to determine, or it may simply be masked by the fact that I’m blasting commands at it.
Because of this weirdness, I’ve wrapped both of my Orbit devices with a simulated switch. This switch then controls a piston that sends a barrage of start and stop commands to the valve. I’ve had good luck so far with a loop of 6 commands spaced 10 seconds apart. It would take a great deal more time and testing to optimize this setup and I don’t really feel like spending any more hours on this.
My setup basically looks like:
foo.valve -> the device itself using the SmartPower Outlet device type
foo.switch -> a simulated switch created in the IDE console
foo.controller -> a WebCoRE piston that fires a set of commands at foo.valve based on foo.switch state
foo.scheduler -> a WebCoRE piston that turns foo.switch on and off at designated watering times
Note that you can not control the watering time with ST. When the device receives an on command it will start for 10m. You can configure this from the Iris interface but not ST. If you need longer watering times you’ll have to configure multiple start events.
As I said, I bought an Iris hub just for these devices. I figured that the $69 to get my sprinklers working was worth it given the cost of a full blown smart watering system. These devices are discovered and pair with Iris quite easily. The firmware then updates for 20-30 minutes, at which point they become fully useable. As a side note, upon switching these devices back to ST I’ve noticed no improvement in their handling with the new firmware.
Anyway, the whole IRIS process is pretty smooth, and unlike in ST the water time can be scheduled from the app. ST with WebCoRE is much better at configuring complex actions of course, but my plan was to hook my hose timers up to Iris and then trigger them from ST via IFTT or something.
I didn’t get that far because as soon as I moved my IRIS hub to its final location, the devices didn’t work any better than they did with ST. At that point I figured that I could add the devices back to ST, return the Iris hub, and with the $69 from the return, buy 2 Iris smart plugs to uses as zigbee repeaters and I’d be in better shape.
In summary, I have two Orbit hose timers setup. It took many more hours than it should have to get them to a state where it seems like they work, and I still don’t quite trust their reliability. They only turn on if I blast multiple commands at them, and all in they cost double what they appear to because of the need to add zigbee repeaters to my network, though one could argue that there is benefit to those beyond the Orbit valves.