Automating Pool Chemistry

[shenandoah75]

Anyone gone further than controling pump/solar/water level via HA and actually gotten into chemistry (at least monitoring , not necessarily adjusting)... A while back i found the following thread and found it interesting...

http://www.truetex.com/poolcontrol.htm

Again, at least for starters, i want to be able to have a rule that emails me when i need to add some acid or change the chlorinators settings, not actually do it (would need to tie into autoclear's control circuit for the latter somehow - out of scope for now)...

I've also looked at some of the electronic sensors available, but most i find are self contained handhelp battery operated units. I'd like to put a probe(s) into the PVC or something and feedback to an Elk input...

thx
-brad


sure hope i can post multiple thread in a day - i'm addicted...

 

[Rupp]

Brad one user ask a similar question recently on the HomeSeer bulletin board and the consensus was if the device has an interface then HomeSeer can interface to it. Here's the hardware device in question.

http://www.hannainst.com/downloads/instr/hi%209815.pdf

 

[3DogKnight]

Not really answering your question, but this site
http://www.automatedaquariums.com/

has a lot of devices to monitor aquariums with RS-232 links to the computer. Maybe these could be adapted for pool use?

 

[roussell]

Have you seen this?

The picture shows a couple of x10 modules with the unit so it may already be automation-friendly.

I did some work for a water treatment plant a few years back, they had Ph sensors that reported back via RS485. I'll see if I can dig up a resource on that stuff...

Terry

 

[Mike]

This kind of changes the question (and I don't remember prices or if it could be retrofitted) but I think they have a salt-generator concept where they just dump a large amount of salt in the water at the beginning of the season and the salt generator automatically creates the proper level of chlorine and uses the salt for this purpose.

Not exactly what you wanted, but it would avoid the modification of chemicals (I think, I may have missed some concepts here) as well as the whole need to measure chemistry. Of course I suspect it is probably a bit more expensive than monitoring the existing setup that is working.

 

[shenandoah75]

Ya i actually have one of those

that's what i meant talking about tying into control unit... I have Autoclear (which was ought by Polaris some time ago)... there are some units can do it all including corrective measures, but not this one...

It's semi automatic in that it converts the salt to chlorine without adding anything else, but you have to pick a level (seems to just be an arbitrary number been 1-24), but it's not smart enough to choose/change the level such that it maintains say 3ppm .... (this is my struggle - i'm at 10ppm right now and just guessing how low to set the control unit without going to 0). I at least want to monitor the trend without whipping out a test kit several times a day.

thx
-brad