I have a 29' long kidney bean shaped fiberglass pool that was installed in 2013. In those early years, I had a corded pool robot, I forget which brand, that I used that would do a decent job of cleaning the floor of the pool of large debris like leafs. It lasted a couple of years, but quit working and I just went back to using my suction side pool vacuum.
The problem with both methods of cleaning is that neither worked at all for removing fine sediment. I live on a sloped lot and here in San Antonio we get thunderstorms that often drop a lot of rain in a short period of time and every time that happens, I see dirt in the bottom of my pool. The only way I have consistently found to get it out is to use the vacuum but instead of having the water circulate through the cartridge filter and back into my pool, I drain the water.
This works but waste a ridiculous amount of water and is a manual and time intensive process.
When I saw a promotion for Beatbot Aquasense back in January 2024 that promised a device with intelligent mapping that could clean the floors and walls and was cordless and had an ultrafine filter and I would get a $400 pre-order discount, I was excited that someone had finally solved my problem.
I took a leap of faith and ordered it. The device was shipped a couple months later and arrived in March just as it was about time for me to get ready and open the pool. It was incredibly well packaged and as I carefully unboxed all the components, I was excited, but I made sure to keep all the packaging. My total price with the discount was nearly $1000 and I Dang sure was gonna send this thing back if it didn't meet my expectations.
The first step after packaging was to install the app and pair the device and connect it to my home internet. At this step I ran into major problems. Although the app walked me through the steps, it kept failing at the step where the beatbot was supposed to connect to my internet. I went back and forth with support over email and phone for a few days. I felt like support was pretty good in that even though I couldn't always get someone on the phone, they would typically respond to my emails within 24 hours. It turned out that the problem was with my internet service provider, Spectrum. The Beatbot requires the internet connection to be in 2.5ghz mode. However my router though capable of 2.5ghz wifi was set in 5ghz mode by default and the only way to change it is to call Spectrum and have them set it into 2.5ghz mode which it will stay in for an hour before converting back to 5ghz mode. Any device successfully connected to 2.5ghz during that time will remain connected in that mode.
It took me about a week and 20+ attempts at connecting before I finally got everything set up properly and finally the machine was connected to wifi and ready to try out in my pool.
I set the cleaning mode to floors and wall and put it in my dirty pool where the main issue was leaves and other larger debris and fine dirt. I watched the device settle to the bottom, hesitate for a few moments and then start navigating the floor of the pool. It was satisfying to see that wherever it went, it picked up debris effectively and a swath of clean pool was left in its wake.
I didn't get notified when it was finished, but when I went out to check on it a few hours later, the device was hovered at the waterline seemingly having finished the job. Unfortunately, though the device was finished, it was very apparent from the contrast between the clean and dirty areas of the pool that it had missed many spots. I ran the device on subsequent days and multiple times in a day with charging in between to see if I could get it to cover the whole pool. I switched to floors only mode and to walls only mode and neither did a good job of cleaning even with just a single surface to clean. When it was finished regardless of mode and regardless of running it multiple times there were always large swaths of dirty pool. My pool has a bench in the deep end, stairs in the shallow end, and a safety ledge all around the perimeter and these were all left unacceptably dirty. I even got an update from Beatbot to a beta feature that was specifically supposed to focus on the stairs, but in the end nothing helped and the device simply did not do a good job.
Check out the attached pictures. What you see is the result after I ran the thing like 3 times in a row.
I reluctantly packaged the whole thing back up and sent it back for a full refund.
If anyone has an idea of a pool bot or pool cleaning technique that can do a good job of picking up the fine sediment that accumulates on my pool, please let me know. I've been struggling with this problem for 10 years now and unfortunately Beatbot was not the solution.
The problem with both methods of cleaning is that neither worked at all for removing fine sediment. I live on a sloped lot and here in San Antonio we get thunderstorms that often drop a lot of rain in a short period of time and every time that happens, I see dirt in the bottom of my pool. The only way I have consistently found to get it out is to use the vacuum but instead of having the water circulate through the cartridge filter and back into my pool, I drain the water.
This works but waste a ridiculous amount of water and is a manual and time intensive process.
When I saw a promotion for Beatbot Aquasense back in January 2024 that promised a device with intelligent mapping that could clean the floors and walls and was cordless and had an ultrafine filter and I would get a $400 pre-order discount, I was excited that someone had finally solved my problem.
I took a leap of faith and ordered it. The device was shipped a couple months later and arrived in March just as it was about time for me to get ready and open the pool. It was incredibly well packaged and as I carefully unboxed all the components, I was excited, but I made sure to keep all the packaging. My total price with the discount was nearly $1000 and I Dang sure was gonna send this thing back if it didn't meet my expectations.
The first step after packaging was to install the app and pair the device and connect it to my home internet. At this step I ran into major problems. Although the app walked me through the steps, it kept failing at the step where the beatbot was supposed to connect to my internet. I went back and forth with support over email and phone for a few days. I felt like support was pretty good in that even though I couldn't always get someone on the phone, they would typically respond to my emails within 24 hours. It turned out that the problem was with my internet service provider, Spectrum. The Beatbot requires the internet connection to be in 2.5ghz mode. However my router though capable of 2.5ghz wifi was set in 5ghz mode by default and the only way to change it is to call Spectrum and have them set it into 2.5ghz mode which it will stay in for an hour before converting back to 5ghz mode. Any device successfully connected to 2.5ghz during that time will remain connected in that mode.
It took me about a week and 20+ attempts at connecting before I finally got everything set up properly and finally the machine was connected to wifi and ready to try out in my pool.
I set the cleaning mode to floors and wall and put it in my dirty pool where the main issue was leaves and other larger debris and fine dirt. I watched the device settle to the bottom, hesitate for a few moments and then start navigating the floor of the pool. It was satisfying to see that wherever it went, it picked up debris effectively and a swath of clean pool was left in its wake.
I didn't get notified when it was finished, but when I went out to check on it a few hours later, the device was hovered at the waterline seemingly having finished the job. Unfortunately, though the device was finished, it was very apparent from the contrast between the clean and dirty areas of the pool that it had missed many spots. I ran the device on subsequent days and multiple times in a day with charging in between to see if I could get it to cover the whole pool. I switched to floors only mode and to walls only mode and neither did a good job of cleaning even with just a single surface to clean. When it was finished regardless of mode and regardless of running it multiple times there were always large swaths of dirty pool. My pool has a bench in the deep end, stairs in the shallow end, and a safety ledge all around the perimeter and these were all left unacceptably dirty. I even got an update from Beatbot to a beta feature that was specifically supposed to focus on the stairs, but in the end nothing helped and the device simply did not do a good job.
Check out the attached pictures. What you see is the result after I ran the thing like 3 times in a row.
I reluctantly packaged the whole thing back up and sent it back for a full refund.
If anyone has an idea of a pool bot or pool cleaning technique that can do a good job of picking up the fine sediment that accumulates on my pool, please let me know. I've been struggling with this problem for 10 years now and unfortunately Beatbot was not the solution.
