Hayward ProLogic Upgrade?

[trush]

Hey Gang!

Equipment details are in my signature below…. I wanted to see if anyone has any recommendations on a control panel upgrade.

Some history: 5 year old pool that was already installed when we bought the house (so I had no input on the equipment installed). Previous pool that I owned had Pentair equipment. Earlier this month, we had a storm roll thru in N. Texas. Immediately after the storm, I noticed that our Aquapod Remote wasn’t connecting to the base station. The WiFi signal is showing bars, but was getting a message stating that “The base station is not responding”. All control panel functions are working normally and handling the timers as normal. After a bit of research here, I was leaning towards a bad WiFI antenna. Purchase a new antenna, however, it wouldn’t show any antenna signal at all. Figured I needed to “Teach Wireless” on the control panel. To my surprise, the “Teach Wireless” section is not available on the ProLogic Panel Settings menu. According to the control panel documentation: "This menu will only appear if a wireless base station (AQL2-BASE-RF) is connected to the Pro Logic”. Hmmm, that’s weird, b/c the Aquapod Remote was working fine for 2.5 yrs. Put the old antenna back on and still getting the same lack of “Teach Wireless” function being available. Upon a closer inspection of the pins on the motherboard, I noticed that one of the four pins that the antenna connect to, looks a bit darker than the rest. After sending pictures including the details above, to Hayward Email Support, I’m only getting generic responses that are not helpful at all.

I’m leaning towards the storm frying this component of the motherboard? I’m not really a fan of the Aquapod Remote and would like to have a phone based interface to control the pool and lights.

So I figured I’d reach out to this group and see if anyone had any experience replacing the ProLogic PL-PS-8 panel with another motherboard that provides wireless remote capabilities. On my previous pool, I was able to upgrade the motherboard with an EasyTouch board that provided phone based wireless remote capabilities with an Autellis module add-on. I did find some other post that reference a control board replacement (GLX-PCB-PRO), but wanted to see if there may be other options or if anyone has any other ideas that I’m not thinking of.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[ajw22]

Welcome to TFP.

Hayward has the OmniPL Upgrade Kit that upgrades your Prologic system to OmniPL which has built in networking using their OmniLogic app.

Hayward ProLogic to OmniPL Upgrade Kit w/Web

 

[trush]

Thank you! I'll check that out.

 

[Kdart]

Any updates with this post? I'm having the same issue as the remote is reporting the same message "not responding". No ability to "teach" either as that function is not available in the Settings Menu. Looking at the attached pic, my remote does not show any wireless signal being immitted. Time to replace or upgrade?

 

[trush]

Sorry for the delayed response....

The issue in my case, was bad COMM ports, likely due to the storm that passed thru. All three COMM ports were bad, except for the port that the keyboard/display connected to. Due to the bad port, the software was not recognizing the antenna and therefore, wouldn't display the "teach" function. Additionally, I had a ColorLogic LED light module that was using one of the bad COMM ports and it was causing the LED lights to not function properly.

I ended up talking with a guy that repairs Hayward boards in Canada. He suspected that my COMM ports were bad and suggested that I plug in my display into the three COMM ports to see what the display would show. Sure enough, there was no connection to the display on those ports (it showed an error fault code on the display).

I ended up purchasing the OmniPL Upgrade Kit and was very please with the upgraded features. I was never a fan of the old remote and lack of built-in internet access to the controller.

I did run into a particular issue, that might be helpful for you, if you decide not to upgrade:
During the OmniPL Upgrade install, the instructions were very clear, that if you have ColorLogic 4.0 lights that have been programmed by the ColorLogic LED light module, you must reset the lights back into "Standard" mode before the OmniPL board will work with the lights. Since the light module plugs into one of the COMM ports that is now bad, the software was not recognizing that the module was installed and therefore, not letting me reset the ColorLogic lights back to Standard mode - stupid design ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The repair guy suggested that I tie the light module wires into the display wires and therefore both would be connected to the only working keyboard/display port. This did it! I was able to get the ColorLogic lights reset to "Standard" mode, as the software now recognized the light module. Once this was completed, I ripped that piece of junk motherboard (literally and figuratively) out and replaced it with the new OmniPL Upgrade board.

I mentioned this, b/c if you decide not to upgrade your board, and your COMM ports are bad, you might be able to pigtail them together on the display port? For me, the OmniPL upgrade was everything that I wanted in a board replacement. I was even able to plug my Salt/Chlorine generator into the new board and can now control the settings via my phone.

Hope this helps you out!