Hi All,
With the new house we bought, we got a pool with it - but the pool was entirely manual maintenance based. I went to automate as much as I could but found the controllers on the market were just ridiculous priced for what you got - and none did everything. Since I work in the product design industry, it became very apparent something was needed for "the rest of us", so I designed a new one - one that is open source.
This design automates all the mundane stuff - it takes care of my pump, chlorinator, filter backwash, solar heating, timers (off peak etc), pool lights, garden (wall) lights, water feature, pool vacuum cleaner and a few statistics all via an RF remote control (off ebay of course). I have set it up on my own pool as a beta site, and debugged it all, and is now working really well.
The idea is that this controller is made available to anyone who is into DIY projects. The design is based on an FPGA, which is programmable hardware. So you can download the controller from the web site, wire up the parts to an FPGA board and off you go. If a new feature comes out - such as defrost for your solar heating, download and you got it. Hardware such as jandy actuators and valves are required, but id like to think thats an understood pre-requisite of any automation controller. Anyway - thats the idea.
I thought id raise the topic here to see if its something people would be interested in. It does require a bit of learning, purchasing of parts, and installation, and as with any DIY may have a few problems to over come, but im sure with the template design I have up and running, this should be no show stopper.
Anyway, I have started putting a web page together for anyone for may want to comment. I have only just started, so there is still a bit of info to be put up as yet. Hopefully Ill have all the info need up so the concept is clear.
Be good to hear any idea's.
Website is at;
http://www.applelogic.org/PPPhome.html
steve
With the new house we bought, we got a pool with it - but the pool was entirely manual maintenance based. I went to automate as much as I could but found the controllers on the market were just ridiculous priced for what you got - and none did everything. Since I work in the product design industry, it became very apparent something was needed for "the rest of us", so I designed a new one - one that is open source.
This design automates all the mundane stuff - it takes care of my pump, chlorinator, filter backwash, solar heating, timers (off peak etc), pool lights, garden (wall) lights, water feature, pool vacuum cleaner and a few statistics all via an RF remote control (off ebay of course). I have set it up on my own pool as a beta site, and debugged it all, and is now working really well.
The idea is that this controller is made available to anyone who is into DIY projects. The design is based on an FPGA, which is programmable hardware. So you can download the controller from the web site, wire up the parts to an FPGA board and off you go. If a new feature comes out - such as defrost for your solar heating, download and you got it. Hardware such as jandy actuators and valves are required, but id like to think thats an understood pre-requisite of any automation controller. Anyway - thats the idea.
I thought id raise the topic here to see if its something people would be interested in. It does require a bit of learning, purchasing of parts, and installation, and as with any DIY may have a few problems to over come, but im sure with the template design I have up and running, this should be no show stopper.
Anyway, I have started putting a web page together for anyone for may want to comment. I have only just started, so there is still a bit of info to be put up as yet. Hopefully Ill have all the info need up so the concept is clear.
Be good to hear any idea's.
Website is at;
http://www.applelogic.org/PPPhome.html
steve