Raspberry Pi Swimming pool monitor

[wayner]

I don't know if people here are familiar with the Raspberry Pi (RPi) but it is a credit card sized computer that costs about $35 (but it does need few more things to run) and only uses about 2W of power. The RPi was designed for students and hobbyists and it is easy to hook up stuff like temperature sensors or relays to it. (There is a project calle OSPi where the RPi is used as a smart irrigation controller.)

Perhaps you could also add a pH sensor and a way to estimate other pool chemistry variables. The pool computer could then log these values to the cloud (or other PCs on your LAN) or could even have its own web browser UI so that you could check it out whenever you wanted.

What if you could make such a computer with these sensors and put it in a floating waterproof solar powered case (like the Solar Breeze). You could even put a camera on it.

Alternatively you could just mount this near your pool and also connect it to relays, etc and use it to control your pump, heater, etc, assuming that you could interface to those devices. Theoretically you could integrate weather data and/or forecasts to heat (or not heat) your pool, crank up the chlorine, etc.

Someone has already connected a RPi to a Pentair Easytouch controller: http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,23922.0.html and https://github.com/dminear/easy-touch-raspberry-pi

I think this would be very cool, or am I just being too much of a geek. There is a thread on another forum about a project like this (sans waterproof solar case) here.

FYI, this is the Solar Breeze solar powered robotic skimmer

 

[peterdaly]

Nice. I built my own controller with arduino technology. I hope to be able to sell it someday, but the board has some bugs, and I have had other priorities.

Check out http://poolduino.com for details about the controller I built to monitor and automate my equipment.

 

[wayner]

I still plan to work on this - here is a photo of the prototype in my pool:

Here is what the device looks like. I am using a Lock & Lock kitchen container that has rubber seals so it is waterproof. I think I will let the temperature probe just trail behind in the water - it has three wires that are of a pretty small gauge so hopefully that doesn't affect the seal.

The solar panel is a 15 W unit that I bought on eBay. For batteries I am using Eneloop AA NiMH batteries - either 8 of them for 10V or 10 of them for 12.5V. I also have a solar charge controller but I am not yet getting the solar panel to properly charge the batteries.