CraigMW,
Yeah, the motherboard is a bummer. While the ET is not straight forward to program, I didn't think it was all that hard. Until I contacted Pentair I thought I was loosing my edge. The repair guy will be here next week once he receives the new board.
In the mean time, the VS pump can be used stand alone. Like you, I'm working on getting the chems in line before I turn up the IntelliChlor. The VS pump should work well with the infloor cleaning system. I know, I know how people on this board feel about infloor cleaning systems. But there is a WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) that needs to be considered. She does not like hoses or creepy crawly things in the pool, mechanical or natural (snakes, rats, birds, etc.). We had an infloor cleaning system in our last house. While I wasn't enamored with it, it worked okay. There are more important things to stand my ground.
I like the ET4 at our rental property. It makes using the pool and spa pretty idiot proof for the tenant. The ET8 should be great with the new pool. Like you, I enjoy the "Geek Factor". Our home theater system is controlled by our iPhones/iPads using the Roomie app. It does "wow" our friends and neighbors.
This morning I was able to play with the Autelis System and it's up and running on the home network using
http://poolcontrol. Now I have to set it up to work off the Internet. I may call on your expertise to walk me through it. But I'll give it a shot on my own.
Once I have everything humming and have a few spare moments I'll post pictures of the pool, outdoor kitchen (grill, dual side burner, sink (hot & cold), frig, lots of storage and TV of course) build and landscaping - 2 months from start to finish.