Raspberry Pi pool controller questions

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karatefeet

New member
May 28, 2022
3
Toronto
Hello,
I am looking at using a RPi to control my pool equipment and a friend recommended this forum. Doing a search, I came across some very impressive setups but the complexities were way over my head with controlling valves and SWGs. Hoping someone can clarify the best approach I should take based on my setup. My goal is fairly simple - basically remotely control my variable speed pump and heater.

Current setup:
1. Jandy variable speed pump controlled by a Jandy JEP-R digital controller.
- Looking at the manual, there's a remote control connector.
"The controller allows speeds "1" through "4" to operate via remote contact closures (switch or relay)." This seems simple but I couldn't find any information on anyone using it.

2. Pentair tempmaster 200 heater
- Guessing I would need a usb RS485 adapter and interface with the RS485 port?

I don't have any type of pool controller ie. intellicenter etc currently. It's all manual control on the heater itself or the JEP-R controller.
What would be the best approach I should take?

Thanks in advance
 
karatefeet said:
Hello,
I am looking at using a RPi to control my pool equipment and a friend recommended this forum. Doing a search, I came across some very impressive setups but the complexities were way over my head with controlling valves and SWGs. Hoping someone can clarify the best approach I should take based on my setup. My goal is fairly simple - basically remotely control my variable speed pump and heater.

Current setup:
1. Jandy variable speed pump controlled by a Jandy JEP-R digital controller.
- Looking at the manual, there's a remote control connector.
"The controller allows speeds "1" through "4" to operate via remote contact closures (switch or relay)." This seems simple but I couldn't find any information on anyone using it.

2. Pentair tempmaster 200 heater
- Guessing I would need a usb RS485 adapter and interface with the RS485 port?

I don't have any type of pool controller ie. intellicenter etc currently. It's all manual control on the heater itself or the JEP-R controller.
What would be the best approach I should take?

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
I'll take a stab at it. You'd want:
1. Raspberry pi to run the excellent open-source nodejs-poolcontroller software
2. Sequent Microsystems 4-relay HAT to connect to your JEP-R contact closures so you can select your speeds; this also has an RS-485 port on it to communicate with your MasterTemp 200.
3. A waterproof box to put it all in.

Put the pi in the box, wire your MasterTemp RS-485 port to the SM relay HATs RS-485 port, wire your 4 speed wires to the relay HATs 4 normally open (NO) ports, and configure Nixie. Bobs you're uncle you're now remote controlling your pool pump and heater*
*=Slightly more involved than this short sentence but not by much.
 
@cmc0619
Thanks for your reply! I've been doing a ton of reading and also found the nodejs-poolController on Git. Now I have the following question about hooking up my MasterTemp heater. The wiki recommends using the 2 wire method via the fireman's switch which seems straightforward. What would be the advantage of doing this vs interfacing via the RS-485 port? The 2 wire method I'd need to setup a sensor to monitor the water temps. Do I still need a sensor using RS-485?

Now if I use the 2 wire method, I'm thinking I can get away with just a Pi with an 8 channel relay. Since all 5 (4 for the pump, 1 for the heater) would be for closing contacts only, would I need to install the REM software in the Nixie pool controller package?

Also if I connect my pump via RS-485, the advantage would be to allow setting any rpm I choose?
 
Side topic. Sounds like a great project. A tip is to consider reading up on AquaLinkD . This is open source Linux software to talk to AquaLink systems. Not what you want, but the guy who built it is a serious engineer and has obviously sunk a bunch of time in it. The part you'll want to read is about the 24/7 reliability of Raspberry Pi, which is by default "not good." The gist is that a standard Pi is likely to corrupt its SD memory if power fails, which turns it into a doorstop. He talks about workarounds.
 
Btw I am a software engineer of 30+ years and the reliability of Raspberry Pi is excellent. While you can corrupt an SD card U1 has increased the write cycle durability dramatically. njsPC also uses persistence algorithms that maximize the life of the card. I have several that have been running time series databases without fail for several years.
 
karatefeet said:
@cmc0619
Thanks for your reply! I've been doing a ton of reading and also found the nodejs-poolController on Git. Now I have the following question about hooking up my MasterTemp heater. The wiki recommends using the 2 wire method via the fireman's switch which seems straightforward. What would be the advantage of doing this vs interfacing via the RS-485 port? The 2 wire method I'd need to setup a sensor to monitor the water temps. Do I still need a sensor using RS-485?

Now if I use the 2 wire method, I'm thinking I can get away with just a Pi with an 8 channel relay. Since all 5 (4 for the pump, 1 for the heater) would be for closing contacts only, would I need to install the REM software in the Nixie pool controller package?

Also if I connect my pump via RS-485, the advantage would be to allow setting any rpm I choose?
Click to expand...
So considering rstrouse's (also a serious coder who has sunk a bunch of time into an awesome software package for free) comment that you don't get temp info over RS-485, I'd just go with the 2-wire/relay method. Going to be a simpler setup. I agree the 8 relay option is a better option and value ($5 more I think) and once you get the bug you'll probably want to do lights and who knows what else so the extra relays could be useful. Automation is addictive :)

I'm not sure Nixie does Jandy pumps over RS-485. @rstrouse have you guys added that functionality? If not, you may have to look into the aqualinkD project. Nixie has MQTT hooks as does aqualinkD. I haven't tried it but I suspect you could probably use aqualinkD to act as a protocol converter and have Nixie send MQTT messages to aqualinkD to control your pump. Would require some experimenting but the software is free and the required hardware is the same either way so you don't lose anything by trying it.

Also, I've actually done this. My system has been running for three years now on the same raspberry pi and the same SD chip. I have frequent power outages during the summer, my pool closers just hit the breaker when they close the pool and I don't even take it off my pad for snow season so it sits out there in freezing temps for weeks. In my informed opinion the raspberry pi functions just fine for this sort of task. You can also pull the SD chip when you have it to your liking and make an image so you can quickly reload the image right back to working status in the unlikely event of a failure. There's also the option of a battery backup hat from the same place you get the relay board. But in my experience, power failures do not make the pi a doorstop.
EDIT: Jinx
 
With some prodding I answered my own question. I included a screenshot of what comes included with Nixie by default. So yes, you could ditch the JEP-R and go RS-485 to your pump and control the RPMs of your Jandy pump in Nixie.

Disclaimer: I'm making some assumptions here. Namely that you are 100% sure you have RS-485 on your pump. Not all pumps have them. But even if you don't you still have the JEP-R


1654142898371.png
 

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Thanks for your replies everyone!
For phase 1 and to make things simple, I'm thinking of just using relays and ditching the rs-485 interface. I'm happy with the 4 preset speeds configured in the JEP-R so will just use the remote contacts to control pump speed.
I'll just use the pi's gpio pins to control the relays - 4 for the pump and 1 for the heater.

@rstrouse I read that njspool-controller needs the rs-485 port connected? If so, I'll have to rethink things and just use home assistant for the automation.

Another thought is using a sonoff 4 ch I have to control the relays. I believe you can connect a temp sensor to the gpio pins as well.
 
njsPC does not need an RS485 port if you do not have any RS485 devices to control. Simply disable the primary port in the menus and you are off to the races. You can also get more advance control of the pump because njsPC supports relay pumps such as this. If this is anything like the Hayward versions of this then you actually get 8 speeds out of 4 relays.
 
rstrouse said:
Btw I am a software engineer of 30+ years and the reliability of Raspberry Pi is excellent. While you can corrupt an SD card U1 has increased the write cycle durability dramatically. njsPC also uses persistence algorithms that maximize the life of the card. I have several that have been running time series databases without fail for several years.
Click to expand...
Haha. Btw so am I. I claim no knowledge of rPi reliability, only that this guy seems pretty sure, excepting Pi 3. He must have had some bad experiences.
 
Sounds more like he bought the 12pack of SD cards at the Walgreens checkout counter. Or the other possibility thrash writing to persistent storage that doesn’t have a write cache. Don’t get me wrong you can destroy an SD card but you can also destroy an nvme the same way. Fortunately, the write cache on that 2TB gold plated stick of gum does wear leveling and these days trim.
 
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Since this thread has a general title, hopefully no one will mind if I ask my pi Pool Controller question here.

I've decided to setup a pi3 with a ttl to rs-485 converter to control my aquarite swg.
The setup instructions I've found are for using the 485 interface in the Sequent hat.

I'm going to connect the 485 converter to the TXD0/RXD0 pins on the pi, but wondering how to setup pool controller after that?
Do I go into config.json and edit something?

I think I need to install and setup for Nixie in standalone mode, sound right?

Install per this, without REM? I'd enable the Pi serial port, disable I2C.

Any advice on how to proceed would be appreciated.

Randy
 
Simply set up dashPanel and njsPC. Then in the configuration tabs add the chlorinator to be under Nixie control via the chlorinator dropdown. If your MaxFlo uses the same protocol as the other Hayward ?Star pumps, njsPC can control that as well. Depending on the AQ controller you may also need to supply 10-12v on the control cable as well. In the repo discussions there are folks there that can tell you what needs external power for the cell.
 
rstrouse said:
Simply set up dashPanel and njsPC. Then in the configuration tabs add the chlorinator to be under Nixie control via the chlorinator dropdown. If your MaxFlo uses the same protocol as the other Hayward ?Star pumps, njsPC can control that as well. Depending on the AQ controller you may also need to supply 10-12v on the control cable as well. In the repo discussions there are folks there that can tell you what needs external power for the cell.
Click to expand...
Great, thanks.

Yeah, based on what I've read, I need to add a little DC supply of around 10V. They must have a little regulator in there to convert to 5V to power their 485 interface.

Randy
 
My thoughts on pi reliability and SD cards and power loss.

You can corrupt a sd card by shutting of pi power so I always try to do run a "sudo poweroff" command from the terminal before I pull power from a pi. But sometimes you can't, and normally its ok, But once in a while you will end up with a corrupted sd card.
So make sure you backup your image. This is how I backup to an attached usb drive, or to a NAS

This pi program won't change much for me, so probably just need to backup to NAS once after it works, then I'm good. My other projects are changing, so I have those on scheduled backups.

Also don't get a cheap no name uSD card. Spend a little extra to get a higher quality one. I'm using Samsang EVO cards right now. I think a cheap uSD card is more likely to lead to problems then power loss, as long as you don't loss power all the time.
 
njsPC will schedule file writes/commits as well as data backups so you can download those to your NAS for an added measure. That being said I haven't had an issue with corruption. The biggest issue with SD card corruption can occur when there is low power for the pi. A lot of this occurred in the past when folks tried to use 2A power supplies from earlier offerings on the pi4 or power some of the 7+ inch LCD screens off the pins on the pi.
 

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