Omnilogic Questions

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Here are my observations relating to the flow switch / alarm on my Omnilogic:

1) I have seen spurious alarms, sometimes it seems like I've missed alarms (either "sets" or "clears"). In my case, I was pretty sure it was only the alarm notifications (i.e. the panel seemed to always be sane, but I wasn't always notified about a state change). Did you try resetting / restarting the panel?

2) I originally tried running my EcoStar around 1700RPM, but was seeing occasional flow alarms, so I bumped it up to 2000RPM and haven't seen any since.

3) If I remember correctly, there is a configuration option to specify whether you want the pump to shut off on a no-flow alarm or not. I have that set, so when I got those alarms, I'd have to manually restart the pump.

4) When I manually turn off the pump (like to empty the basket), either on the pump itself, or on the panel, I get a no-flow alarm. This clearly should be filtered out.

My take is that there are still some kinks in the firmware related to these alarms. I'd try a restart of the panel if you haven't already.....
 
I haven't tried restarting the panel yet. I'm sure that would clear it but you would think it would clear as soon as the flow was good again. In another thread someone told me that I could glue a larger paddle to reduce the amount of flow needed to activate the switch. I may try that.
 
Found what seems to be another bug in at least the iPad app. If I go to an accessory and set a schedule for that accessory I get a pop up that says something like "schedule command successfully sent." I click the OK button and it takes me back to the schedule list but the schedule I just created doesn't show up. I open the app on my iPhone and it's there. Force kill the app on my iPad and open it back up and there it is like it should be.
 
travisr100 said:
I found another odd thing. Just sent the following to Hayward...

I recently plumbed in a Hayward GLX-FLO flow switch just as protection for my pump. I do not have a SWG. When playing with the pump speeds this morning I noticed that when I put the pump down to 20% I got an alarm on the OmniLogic web and phone interface saying "No Water Flow FlowSensor ." I sped the pump back up but the message remains. There is no way to clear it. I tested the switch and I know that it is working properly. Why won't this message clear once flow is restored? It must be actually seeing flow since it hasn't shut the pump off to protect it after I raised the speed back up. How do I clear the message? How low a flow can I have and still get the switch to sense it? If I'm using this to simply protect the pump from a no water condition it would seem that if I use this flow switch that I can't run at very low speeds because the Omni is going to shut off the pump because of no flow when indeed there is flow.
Click to expand...

I received the following response from Hayward...


The flow switch like you said can be used to protect
the pump. But it needs at least about 14 to 15 gpm to make the
contact. It doesn't work only on the concept of no water flow at all.
We have seen with some alarms that a simple reboot(power down)of the
unit from the MSP(display)will clear that message. It is an issue
that the engineers are aware of and in future software updates some
of those issues will be addressed.
 
Graphing data from my Omni. :). AUTOMATED graphing. This may deserve a thread of its own.

SnipImage.jpeg
 
For the benefit of others with Omni I'm going to post some issues I've run into. Spending a lot more time with it I'm definitely finding more weirdness in the system.

Today I set up my Sense & Dispense. I have a Stenner tank for bleach so I'm not using the ORP to control chlorine. I am however using the pH control portion of it to control an AQL-CHEM3. This unit is nothing more than a preconfigured Stenner tank to dispense acid. The manual for the S&D (HL-CHEM) only covers setting up S&D if you are doing the initial configuration of your Omni and going through the Q&A. If you're adding it after your Omni is configured the process is a bit different although nothing too difficult to figure out. You just go to the Config Wizard and choose to set up "chemistry." Once done with that however things get a little more complicated. The S&D manual on page 14 says to get to the pH screen (presumably from the main Omni panel) that you go to the pool body of water then click on the "settings" button. The manual shows you a screen whereby you can turn pH control on and off as well as showing a "force" button. It says you can click the force button in order to run the dispenser for 15 minutes manually for testing. The problem is there is no "settings" button on the main panel. Period. Doesn't exist. On the app for the iPad there is a pH button once you've selected the bodies of water screen where you can calibrate the pH reading. There is no force button here either however. The screen shown on page 14 of the manual just doesn't seem to exist anywhere. Called Hayward and the tech, Walter, couldn't find it either. After the call went back to the main panel and noticed there is no pH button at all. From the main panel you cannot set the calibration offset, view pH, or in any other way access pH or even tell that you have a S&D installed except to go into he config wizard to configure it. In order to make sure the pH function even worked I entered a calibration offset so it would think my pH was high. The acid pump turned on and started dispensing as I would have expected. It's a bit of a black box though. No way to know when the pump comes on or shuts off. Being a bit of a control freak with my chemicals and numbers I'd like a way to see how many minutes per day the pump runs. At the very least it would let me know that it's working and estimate how much acid has been consumed over a given period. As it is I guess I just check the tank periodically to see how much is left. On the iPad app as well as the web interface there is a "dispensing" light that should at least light up when the pump is running. That doesn't work either. Even when the pump is running the app and web interface don't indicate that it's dispensing. I will say that the probe was dead on with my test and no calibration offset was necessary. Even though I'm not using a salt cell and therefore not using ORP to control chlorination I'd like to keep a log of my ORP. The ONLY place you can see ORP is from the web interface. You cannot see it on the main panel, iPhone, or iPad.

I replaced my 1 hp water feature pump with a Tristar VS pump today. Let me set the stage with my plumbing arrangement on this. The Tristar VS is my feature pump. On the output of this pump is a tee. The left side of the T goes to an automated on/off valve which feeds my bubblers. The right side of the T goes to another automated valve that fees my lions. So there are two features being supplied by 1 pump and an automated valve for each feature. The way Hayward says to set this up is to go to the config, select the body of water, select features, and add a feature. I did this for the bubblers selecting the Tristar VS pump and the respective valve for the bubblers. I then went and added the lions as the next feature selecting the Tristar VS pump and the respective valve for the lions. After doing so I now have 2 features set up in the panel. If I turn on the bubblers and set the pump to medium the pump comes on and bubbler valve opens. If I then turn on the lions the valve for the lions open and the pump continues running as it should. If I then go to the lions and set the pump to low the pump turns to low for about 15 seconds then returns to medium. If I go to the lions and set the pump to high the pump turns to high for about 15 seconds and goes back to medium. The app will continue to show what I selected for the pump speed even though the actual speed always goes back to that of the bubblers after about 15 seconds. The real problem comes in here. If I turn off the bubblers and turn on the lions to medium the pump will go to medium for about 15 seconds and then shut off (because the bubblers are off). So it always uses the bubblers pump state. You would think that it would "sync" such that if I turn the pump to high using either feature it would turn it on high and indicate high for both features. It's the same pump. Hayward is looking into this but it's a pretty obvious bug. Also, when editing a feature it will always show valve 1 as the assigned valve until you go to the actual screen to choose the valve, then it shows the actually selected valve as the assigned one.

Another issue I ran into when setting up these features was that I would set up the feature and tell it to use the variable speed pump. When I would go to edit the feature however it would only allow me to choose the relay that controlled the feature, not choose a different VS pump. So while testing and getting it set up anytime I wanted to make a change to the feature I would have to delete it entirely and set it up again because on the edit screen it expects a pump tied to a relay, not a VS pump. When I got on the phone with Hayward about it and went back to the panel it was working correctly. When I would edit the feature it would allow me to choose another VS pump as opposed to forcing me to choose a relay. Hayward said sometimes you just have to walk away from it for a while. Let it catch up I guess. LOL.

I'm sure this is fairly detailed and most people will probably never run into these issues. For those that do however I hope this helps. I'm expecting a call back from Hayward tomorrow to see what they find in their research.
 
One more oddity. My Stenner bleach pump is set up as an accessory. Hayward rep recommended I set it up as an accessory instead of a feature but don't remember why. On the iPad and web interface I see my bleach pump under features along with my lions and bubblers. On the main panel it doesn't show up at all. Going to features on main panel shows my lions and bubblers but not my bleach pump. Can't find it anywhere in main panel.
 
Started playing with Favorites. From the web interface you can add a favorite. Note however that when you do this it looks as though nothing happened since you can't really use favorites from the web interface. When you go to your phone you'll see it. From the phone you can also add favorites however there is no way to delete them using your phone. You have to go back to the web interface in order to delete a favorite.

By default your phone will always show the filter pump and heater for a given body of water. When you go to add a favorite you can choose to add the filter pump or the heater to your favorites list. Adding them does nothing since they are already there and can't be removed.

This interface definitely needs some work. On the phone you have to click a small up arrow at the bottom right to get to another row of buttons. No reason for this since all the buttons would easily fit in one row across the bottom of the screen.
 

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jking3 said:
This is great. Did you take advantage of an API locally? or grab the data from the haywardomnilogic.com login? Please share details. Thanks! I agree, maybe its own thread.

J
Click to expand...

It's pretty darn simple. I'm sure what I'm using they would consider part of their API. I'd sure like to see the entire API published. I'm guessing they would be most unhappy if I published anything here in a public forum. PM me and I'll tell you what I'm doing to get the data and how I figured it out.

This will be changing pretty soon since I reconfigured my system today but here are just a few of the data points graphed...

http://travis.waymirenet.com/test.aspx
 
My local Hayward rep came out today. Apparently you can't assign multiple features to the same pump. So instead of having a lion feature and a bubbler feature I now have 3. Lion, Bubbler, and Lion/Bubbler. The lion works its valve, the bubbler its valve, and the lion/bubbler the pump. To turn on the lions I have to create a theme that has the lions and lion/bubbler on. To turn on the bubblers I have to create a theme that has the bubbler and lions/bubbler on. Seems like a bit of a hack to do it and I can't just go to features to turn each one on, I have to use themes to do it.

And I did find the pH screen on the main panel. My fault, I wasn't looking in the right place.
 
Does anyone know the purpose of selecting the type of feature when adding a feature? They list waterfall, waterslide, and one other I don't recall. Choosing any of the three doesn't seem to affect anything else in the configuration.
 
Is the Omnilogic re-485 based like intellitouch? Does anyone know if Omnilgic will control pentair vs/vf pumps? I would really like to switch to Omnilgic but have a large investment in pentair equipment. Mainly the two smart pumps and ic60 are only things that talk rs-485 that I would need to support. And if Omnilogic controls the lights via power cycles, if I can define pentair color scheme in Omnilogic that would be a help too. I would switch in a second if it can do these things.
 
For anyone interested, here's my latest graphing from the Omni. Live version can be seen here: Live Graph

What I find very interesting is the ORP. You can see from the graph that the ORP tends to change from the amount of sunlight. This pool receives no shade. When the bleach pump comes on it has no affect on ORP.

Graph.png
 
Travis, thanks for posting your experience with the Omnilogic. I'm about to start a similar exploration. "Apparently you can't assign multiple features to the same pump." That's a red flag for me; I appreciate hearing how you handled it. I expected to be able to control a pair of lion heads, 2 pairs of ColorCascade bubblers, and possibly a sheer descent on one VSP.
 
travisr100 said:
My local Hayward rep came out today. Apparently you can't assign multiple features to the same pump. So instead of having a lion feature and a bubbler feature I now have 3. Lion, Bubbler, and Lion/Bubbler. The lion works its valve, the bubbler its valve, and the lion/bubbler the pump. To turn on the lions I have to create a theme that has the lions and lion/bubbler on. To turn on the bubblers I have to create a theme that has the bubbler and lions/bubbler on. Seems like a bit of a hack to do it and I can't just go to features to turn each one on, I have to use themes to do it.
Click to expand...

Hi there (Travis?),

My wife and I just got our first pool up and running and have a similar issue to a post you made about your lion and bubbler features in the past. I was hoping to get your opinion because our pool builder is going to need to rectify it and I'm not sure they realize the limitations or work around you discovered.

Here is our situation (the short version hopefully). Like you, we have the Omnilogic system. We also got 2 Pentair LED bubblers and 4 Pentair laminars. The bubblers group and the laminars group were supposed to run independently of each other. For example, we could turn only the bubblers on, or turn only the laminars on, or have both the bubblers and laminars on at the same time. However, it was not plumbed that way. Currently, the bubbler group and the laminar group have to be on at the same time and are running off of a Hayward Tristar singe speed motor. The good news is, the pool builder is very accommodating and recognizes how it was supposed to be plumbed (and perhaps more importantly we actually are fortunate enough to also have how they were supposed to work it in writing).

Right now, the pool builder is supposed to be figuring out what to change to make it run as we wanted. Do you have any suggestions on what you'd do since you seem to have been in the same boat with your lion heads and bubblers?

I have zero knowledge of pools other than what I have learned through this building process trying to research things. But, it sounds like we should probably change the water feature pump to a Tristar variable speed pump for starters and then have the bubbler group and the laminar group each run off their own valve. Does that sound correct? Sounds like the pump would run the bubblers and the laminars (I guess sort of like it currently is) and then by closing the valve to the bubblers then only the laminars would work, and vice versa, by closing the valve to the laminars only the bubblers would work? And I would just setup a theme to switch between all on, bubblers on only and laminars on only?

I'm also assuming the variable speed pump is a must because I would have to be able to lower the speed of the pump when running only one group (the bubbler or laminar) because otherwise going from both features on to just one feature on will increase the pressure to the one feature on so much that it will shoot out of the pool.

Does it sound like I am on the right page in my understanding? Any guidance is appreciated - meeting with the pool builder tonight and I'd like to suggest a solution.

Chris

Note - After posting the above I realized that maybe a third option would be just adding a third pump and having two water feature pumps??? Any negatives to that beside more electricity I suppose?
 
I'm trying to figure out which lights to get for my new pool. We are getting the Omnilogic system so I checked out this thread. Should I request the universal color logic lights or the color logic 4.0 from my pb? I also need something for lighting my step area which sticks out of my rectangular shaped pool creating an L. Should I do a spa light or one of their accent lights. It seems like this may be complicated with the Omnilogic system because I would like for them to all sync together.

thanks,
karen
 

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