Dolphin M500 owners...help please!

[houston_tink]

I realize there is a long thread for dolphin M series owners but I have lots of questions so I thought a new thread was best. I just got my M500 and ran it for the first time today
1. I know you are supposed to have the handles on a diagonal position when running in the water, but when I push the tabs down and click the handles to the grooves and release the tabs, the handle just falls backwards or forwards. What am I missing?

2. How does the dolphin know where to go? It seems like it really focused on the center and far end of my pool and not so much the front end where all the steps and sun shelves are.

3. At one point I noticed the red light for the filters came on. Why does the dolphin continue to run if the filters are full?

4. If I have to stop the dolphin to clean the filters, does the clean cycle start all over again? Is there a way to just resume where it left off?

5. If I choose a shorter cycle time does he just clean the pool faster so that he gets to all the walls?

6. What is the shallowest water he can run in?
[FONT=.SF UI Text]
[/FONT]

 

[thebombardier]

1) The handle is locked at a diagonal while running so when it climbs the wall it is buoyant at an angle to it's direction of drive. This causes it to crawl sideways along the water line. They tell you to switch it as a holdover from the older Dolphins that relied on this to navigate around the pool but would eventually tangle their cables from running around in what is more or less a circle so often in one direction. The switching angles prevents cable wear.

2) The Dolphin knows a) How long it's been going in a direction and b) If it's on a wall or the floor. Using these two pieces of information it will do a preliminary measurement of the pool and determine the best run cycle based off that. It doesn't have eyes or GPS tracking, it's just doing basic geometry and wayfinding.

3) The filters aren't necessarily full, it's just sensing a certain amount of resistance on the impeller due to low water flow. I've also seen hair wrapped around the impeller cause the filter light to come on. It's more a reminder than a warning message.

4) Yes it starts over. No, there's no "pause" button.

5) No it will just prioritize cleaning the floor as opposed to climbing all the way up the wall. The motors run at a set speed regardless of cycle time.

6) Theoretically as long as the impeller is under water it will run, however I say rule of thumb is deep enough so the handle can float straight up, so about a foot and a half.

 

[houston_tink]

Thank you! So helpful! A few more questions: if I set the cycle time to say 3 hours on the power supply when I turn robot onwhy doesn't it seem to match what the cycle time is when I open the app (app always is set to the last cycle time I did)? Also, if I set clean mode on app to floor only he still tries to climb the walls. It's almost as if the app isn't connected but I know it is because the robot responds to my manual remote control directions.

also, in the deep end a lot of times he doesn't climb the walls-goes about 1/4 of the way and then goes back down (walls are 6ft)

 

[thebombardier]

Thank you! So helpful! A few more questions: if I set the cycle time to say 3 hours on the power supply when I turn robot onwhy doesn't it seem to match what the cycle time is when I open the app (app always is set to the last cycle time I did)? Also, if I set clean mode on app to floor only he still tries to climb the walls. It's almost as if the app isn't connected but I know it is because the robot responds to my manual remote control directions.

also, in the deep end a lot of times he doesn't climb the walls-goes about 1/4 of the way and then goes back down (walls are 6ft)

You can't adjust the cycle time on the power supply. The 1, 2, and 3 on the power supply are for the weekly timer. You select 1, 2, or 3 then hit reset to activate the timer to have the robot run every day, ever other day, or every third day for a week.

The robot will still try to climb the walls in floor only because it needs to sense where the wall is and the "floor only" mode is more of a basin cleaning mode, so it will get the first foot of the walls or so.

If it's having trouble getting traction on the walls I'd recommend manually brushing the walls to ensure there isn't any sort of invisible algae slick that may be keeping it from climbing. Also if the water temps are too cold it will have trouble climbing.