Well told! I love a happy ending! That tree had to go! Did you take it down on your own? I would scared to death about it hitting the house!
Hope the install went well because this is brilliantly well done! Especially the custom PCBs, very clean and professional looking.Then one day a sickness came over the land and the owner was forced to work from home. So with all the extra time available, the owner finally got off his butt and started building the automation he had always wanted to build. View attachment 482793
View attachment 482794
Version 1 was build and installed along with new wiring and mostly worked,View attachment 482796
But sensors were added, new pumps were required and improvements were needed in general so version 1.5 was built.
View attachment 482795
Version 1.5 worked well and for the last two years the pool has stayed blue all year long. But the man got bored and the wires got snarled, View attachment 482797
So over the last month a new version 2 was designed, and today the boards came. And immediately there was much rejoicing and soldering.
View attachment 482798
View attachment 482799
A new controller board,
View attachment 482800
a new display board,
View attachment 482801
and a new relay interface boardView attachment 482802
And Sunday it will be installed and life will be good?
Any Ideas on what to do with my old pool sweep? I've already repurposed the return line for it as the pipe I put my eTape liquid level sensor in. So all it's doing is sitting and taking up space.
I'm also thinking about putting in a slight restriction in the line from the pump to the tank to encourage more flow through the sensor loop.
I had a friend help me do it.Well told! I love a happy ending! That tree had to go! Did you take it down on your own? I would scared to death about it hitting the house!
The sensors have to be in a loop to make sure they don't ever dry out.Very nice pool recovery. Trees and pools are never a good mix, that concrete repair was next level.
A slight restriction would help increase flow in the sensor loop. Increasing the plumbing size in the sensor loop would help too but I would probably just put the sensors in the main line without the loop.
Im not sure about acid injection in front of the pump, I thought that was meant to be injected in after all other equipment.
I'm a programmer by trade so I wrote everything custom. I have a routine that watches the flow meter and sets a GPIO pin when the flow meter is on. Then I have two programs that add Chlorine and Acid. They turn off the flow pin, and then check to see if it has been turned back on. If so then they pump an ounce of the appropriate chemical. In addition to that I have a hardware interlock consisting of a 3 input and gate where the inputs are the pump pin, the chlorine pin and the inverted acid pin, or visa versa for acid. So there is no way that Chlorine and Acid can pump at the same time, and also there is no way that either chemical can be added to the line while the pump is off.Hope the install went well because this is brilliantly well done! Especially the custom PCBs, very clean and professional looking.
Care to share any details on how you have the Raspberry Pi controlling everything? Did you base it off of another automation system or is it completely custom by you?
I've had it running in various configurations for the last 2 summers without any issues, so I'm not too worried about the high temps. My neighbor has an oak tree, you can see the leaves in the last pic, that overhangs the equipment pad so that helps some. The other thing is that there aren't actually a lot of components, I've got the ras pi zero, an ethernet hat for it, 4 chips, a couple of resistors and diodes, and 2 TIP120 power transistors to control the pumps. The rest is just connections to the sensors.As an old EE I absolutely salute the automation effort! Beautiful and fascinating.
One thing to pay attention to is temp ratings vs. temps that will exist inside the component boxes on the 100F+ days I see in historical weather for your location. Definitely keep the electronics protected from the sun. Chinese clone components probably won't hack it.
I suppose you know that.
This is one thing the exorbitantly priced Pentaire, Jandy, etc. systems do get right.
I'm very much interested pointers to the dosing pumps you're using and reports on how they perform. Thanks.
Thanks! Perfect advice.II did have to replace one, because I didn't have the right tubing for acid and fumes killed it. That was also when I moved the two pumps to their own sealed boxes and out of the controller box. Now that I have the right tubing it shouldn't have any more issues. The chlorine pump hasn't had any issues. The one thing to make sure of is that these pumps use 10mm x 7mm tubing, if you try to use 10mm x 8mm tubing, the rollers don't pinch hard enough and the pool pump will suck the chemical straight through the chemical pump.
I'm using tygon r-3603 for the acid. I got it from McMaster.Thanks! Perfect advice.
So what is the magic tubing material? The classical Stenner pump has some advice here. There's a row for muriatic acid. Santoprene seems preferred, but 10mm x 7mm seems hard to find. There's lots of 7/16" x 5/16". Maybe metric manufacturers use a different name for this material?
I'm a programmer by trade so I wrote everything custom. I have a routine that watches the flow meter and sets a GPIO pin when the flow meter is on. Then I have two programs that add Chlorine and Acid. They turn off the flow pin, and then check to see if it has been turned back on. If so then they pump an ounce of the appropriate chemical. In addition to that I have a hardware interlock consisting of a 3 input and gate where the inputs are the pump pin, the chlorine pin and the inverted acid pin, or visa versa for acid. So there is no way that Chlorine and Acid can pump at the same time, and also there is no way that either chemical can be added to the line while the pump is off.
*snipped the rest*