Pool Control by Autelis for Jandy: Web and home automation

hamw

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LifeTime Supporter
Jul 4, 2011
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Wanted everyone to know about this new-ish device, the "Pool Control" by Autelis. I have a Jandy RS-8 OneTouch and had been trying forever to figure out how to get control from the house and also my home automation system. The pool is located 150 ft away from the house, and to run a 4 conductor wire would probably be 250ft when all was said and done. On top of that, we had a lightening strike last year which knocked out a bunch of equipment that had buried wires, so I did not want to add another vulnerable component. Trying to work around these issues, I spent several frustrating months trying various RS485 wireless bridges, but it turns out that Jandy uses a proprietary protocol that does not play well with standard RS485.

Nlagaros on the Perceptive Automation boards found the Pool Control by Autelis and pointed it out. The Pool Control wires directly to the 4-conductor RS OneTouch output and is seen as just another keypad. It has an ethernet socket that can plug directly into your network. There is a built-in web interface that allows full equipment control from a computer or smartphone on the network, and it has an RS-OneTouch emulation that allows full programming of the system from the networked device - you can pull up the RS OneTouch controller and program the system from your smartphone! So, with the ethernet output, I was able to simply hook the system into a spare Apple Airport Express N set up as a wireless extender, and now my pool can be controlled inside my house from any computer or handheld on the network via a simple 10.0.1.XX address. I have WiFi out at the pool now, too. I should add that I *think* if one sets up port forwarding that one could log in when away from the network, but I haven't done that. It is very simple, however, to use a VPN such as Team Viewer or, for the Mac, RemoteTap to log on to a home computer from afar, pull up a browser window and navigate to the Pool Control web interface. So, it can really be controlled from anywhere pretty easily without a full-blown home automation setup.

On top of that, Perceptive Automation makes the Indigo home automation control software for Mac computers, and because Autelis has a telnet interface in the firmware, the user who bought the Autelis initially was able to make a plugin for the Indigo system so that it could be used in HA with full status feedback. I've been able to integrate the Jandy into my home control iPhone pages, and now can monitor and control the pool's basic functions from anywhere. The pics are screen grabs from the Indigo touch control pages, which are user-created. The last pic is a shot of the RS OneTouch emulation, which works every bit as well as the physical keypad. It is only available over the network, however.

Overall the Pool Control is a great device, and I highly recommend it. The Autelis folks have been extremely supportive and are interested in extending the control to the different Jandy controllers. Don't know their other plans but I'd imagine they will also support other manufacturers in the future.

Hope you all find this helpful. Please note that I am just an end user and have no other affiliation with Autelis or Perceptive Automation aside from using their products.
 

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Re: Pool Control by Autelis for Jandy: Web and home automati

What is u/g? Also, does the Zodiac/Jandy work over standard WiFi? Does it have a serial protocol to interface with a home automation system? What's the price? The Autelis unit is $295.00.
 
Re: Pool Control by Autelis for Jandy: Web and home automati

U/G is upgrade.

It's a new PCB and an antennae. In the antennae is an 10/100 Ethernet connection. Hook it to your router and you're good to go.

IIRC, it's about $500, including firmware! Even older controllers can be upgraded now for a lot less that they used to be.


Scott
 
Re: Pool Control by Autelis for Jandy: Web and home automati

PoolGuyNJ said:
U/G is upgrade.

It's a new PCB and an antennae. In the antennae is an 10/100 Ethernet connection. Hook it to your router and you're good to go.

IIRC, it's about $500, including firmware! Even older controllers can be upgraded now for a lot less that they used to be.


Scott
This good to hear. I have been waiting for this for over a year. It appears that the RS kit includes a new board with type R firmware.

What I don't understand is how this new board knows what the original chip was and how many relays needs to be controlled.
 
Re: Pool Control by Autelis for Jandy: Web and home automati

PoolGuyNJ said:
Nice but Zodiac/Jandy has an u/g kit with wireless capabilities, iOS app, and soon, an Android app to control the RS automation system.

Scott

I'm working on a similar Indigo plugin for my Pentair Intellitouch system (through it's RS232 serial interface). Again, it will be nice to control the pool and auxilliary circuits from my iPhone.

Like you note here for Jandy, my pool builder tried to sell me on a similar pre-canned setup from Pentair that would let me turn on the spa etc... from my iPhone.

Ultimately though, the main reason to have this kind of setup isn't just remote/iPhone control, it's that it hooks it in fully to my Home Automation system. My 'All Off' command will be able to shut the pool lights down with it. You can store a 'scene' for the whole backyard that not only turns on certain yard lights, etc... but sets the pool lights and firepit up too. Plus, you'll be able to monitor temps (which is something I'm really excited about) so I'll be able to set up a rule to make an announcement on my whole-house audio system when the spa has reached its set-temp.

So if you want to 'control your pool from your iPhone', by all means, save yourself some trouble and get the setup that Jandy or Pentair sell. If you want to do a lot more than that, you'll need something like hamw and nlagaros have.
 
Re: Pool Control by Autelis for Jandy: Web and home automati

Swancoat has nicely described the difference between remote control and automation. My Pool Control is working very well, and was quite reasonably priced. I have already incorporated the pool light into my backyard scenes so it goes on with my moon lights. Can't wait to get the whole house audio announce the temp!
 
Re: Pool Control by Autelis for Jandy: Web and home automati

@hamw What is the speed link on the interface. I have the Jandy PDA system and the PDA is slow. This is much more affordable than buying the Jandy upgrade.

Yes I get the ability to control my pool anywhere but I can do the same w/ port forwarding.
 
Re: Pool Control by Autelis for Jandy: Web and home automati

I'll throw my two cents in. Since my longtime wish was to control the pool with my iPhone, and my PDA was starting to flake out, I researched the iAqualink and Autelis. After weighing the pros and cons I went with Autelis. The iAqualink would've cost three times as much with the new system board I needed (really? new system board?) but that wasn't the main point. The deciding factor was that iAqualink needs the internet and Jandy's servers to operate, which I regard as a serious flaw with many potential points of failure/obsolescence. From what I could determine there is no standalone mode, so you don't have the choice of doing a local-only configuration, or even using the thing when the internet's down. The Autelis lives happily on your home LAN, and their customer support is truly great. Hopefully it will arrive by this weekend and I'll get a chance to set it up and play.
 

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Re: Pool Control by Autelis for Jandy: Web and home automati

jkurl said:
@hamw What is the speed link on the interface. I have the Jandy PDA system and the PDA is slow. This is much more affordable than buying the Jandy upgrade.

Yes I get the ability to control my pool anywhere but I can do the same w/ port forwarding.

I'm not sure what the speed of the connection is, but it may be that the Jandy is the limiting factor. To me it is fast enough, but definitely takes a couple of seconds for the status changes to register, whether accessing via 3G vs WiFi. I'm using Indigo, a Mac home automation system, and one of the users has written a dandy plugin for it so users can control the pool within Indigo's iPhone interface with Jandy initiated status updates. I'm sure the same thing could be done with PC based systems too. I think it's great. For me it was the only viable solution as my pool house is simply too far from the house to run 4-conductor.
 
Re: Pool Control by Autelis for Jandy: Web and home automati

I've been using the Autelis PDA interface for the past few weeks and I really like it. So far it's been rock solid. It basically replicates the PDA interface on whatever device you're using, so the response time and behavior is similar to an actual PDA.
 
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