I created an App to control pool equipment with smartphone

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho

CraigMW said:
kodiak1120 said:
rdhetrick said:
This looks like a project I would really enjoy!! Thanks for posting it!!

Are your pump motors 120v or 240v? Have you bypassed the intermatic timers altogether and use the Raspberry Pi to control the on/off time everyday?
Click to expand...

Hi... the pumps are 120v, but the relays can switch up to 16A at 240v, so either way it would work. Good question on the timers... I haven't actually decided yet. When I first set out on this project, my plan was to bypass the intermatic timers entirely and use a javascript interface so I could set the on/off times via my webapp. I've since backed off of that idea since I'm kind of favoring the simplicity of the intermatic timers. I may end up just splitting the line from the main breaker and running one of the hots to the timer and one to a relay... that way I could still use the timers, but I could manually turn the pumps off and on from my phone if I wanted (like when you just want to run the pumps for a little while in the evening after adding chlorine or if you have a water feature hooked up to a return jet). Right now the pumps are not hooked up to the relays.

Kevin
Click to expand...


You could indeed switch a 240V pump with those relays, but I would think there would be a safety issue with SPST relays. For 240V, you combine two 120V hots, and only one side would be switched by the relay. This would mean that the unswitched side would be at 120V over neutral/ground. This would certainly be a safety issue if anyone were to contact one of those hot wires when they thought the system was "off." It would be better to use a DPST relay so that both hot legs would be disconnected from the pump, heater, etc.

BTW, what a very cool system. I had thought about doing this myself a couple of years ago, but didn't want to have to do all of the hardware work. With an RPi and one of these relay boards, it is amazing to see what can now be done. Now to just throw in some sort of flow meter, pressure sensors, pH and ORP sensors and you could truly have a Trouble Free Pool!
Click to expand...

Craig,

Good point on the 240v issue... that hadn't occurred to me. According to the specs on my main pool pump, the amps exceed the max on the relays, so I can't go that route. I'm thinking of hooking the extra two relays into (1) my landscape lighting and (2) my water feature, so I can turn them off and on with my phone. The landscape lighting would probably be less useful, but the water feature would be nice so I could turn it off when I'm not outside (as opposed to running it 24/7, like I do now).

Kevin
 
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho

vinper said:
great ,now im gonna need an I phone. I'm handy but the rasberry wiring part gets me . looks like clean simple build . can we get a diagram of the rasberry wiring connections ?
Click to expand...

Thanks... I don't have a wiring diagram, but the relay board just plugs into the Raspberry Pi via the ribbon cable from the GPIO terminals. The 120v wiring is just running the hot wire from what ever you want to switch in one side of one of the relays and out the other side. You are basically just inserting the relay in the line of whatever you want to control.

Kevin
 
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho

artie11 said:
Great Job... I'm about to do the same... However i'm going to use arduino and then bring that into the Pi for the inputs... As I want the Temp/Flo Sensors and the ph sensors.. there's already a ton for android and the code exists so I wouldn't end up rewriting for pi.

I like your simple relay setup... I'll have a look for a multi relay board like that.. could be really useful.
Click to expand...

Thanks... I was looking into incorporating a temp. sensor that I could see from my phone, but I've gotten distracted doing other things... Also, I never was able to figure out exactly how to make a wireless, floating sensor work with the Raspberry Pi. It would be pretty easy to use a wired temp. sensor, but then I'd have to somehow run the wire into my pool. Maybe down the road I'll get back on it. If you've made any progress on yours, let me know... I'd love to check it out.

Kevin
 
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho

artie11 said:
Great Job... I'm about to do the same... However i'm going to use arduino and then bring that into the Pi for the inputs... As I want the Temp/Flo Sensors and the ph sensors..
Click to expand...

What do you need the arduino for that you can't do directly with the Pi? Note that you can get temp using the Dallas/maxim one-wire sensors interfaced directly to the Pi's serial interface. The only thing you might need is a simple/cheep serial A->D converter if you absolutely must directly read an analog voltage.

For temp sensors, I have a thermo-well plumbed into the suction side of plumbing that measures the water temp after the pool pump has run for a few minutes. Good enough for what I'm trying to do.

BTW -- if you want to roll your own relays, I posted my relay control circuit on my automation page: foobert-s-bleach-pump-automation-t67702.


What I'm looking for is someway to control a variable speed pump directly from the serial interface (RS-485?) of the pump without buying the manufacturer's automation system.
 
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho

peterdaly said:
I have been considering a project like this to replace my Hayward OnCommand.

Can you point to the relays you used? Product name or url?
Click to expand...

Hi,

It's called a Pelican Pi Relay Board...

http://www.recantha.co.uk/blog/?p=1963

Works really well with the Raspberry Pi. On the software side, I used WebIOPi, which basically gives you a generic web interface that allows you to switch the GPIO terminals (and hence, the relays) off and on. After everything is up and running, you just customize the interface with some HTML and CSS edits. It's actually not that complicated.

Kevin
 
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho

foobert said:
artie11 said:
Great Job... I'm about to do the same... However i'm going to use arduino and then bring that into the Pi for the inputs... As I want the Temp/Flo Sensors and the ph sensors..
Click to expand...

What do you need the arduino for that you can't do directly with the Pi? Note that you can get temp using the Dallas/maxim one-wire sensors interfaced directly to the Pi's serial interface. The only thing you might need is a simple/cheep serial A->D converter if you absolutely must directly read an analog voltage.

For temp sensors, I have a thermo-well plumbed into the suction side of plumbing that measures the water temp after the pool pump has run for a few minutes. Good enough for what I'm trying to do.

BTW -- if you want to roll your own relays, I posted my relay control circuit on my automation page: foobert-s-bleach-pump-automation-t67702.


What I'm looking for is someway to control a variable speed pump directly from the serial interface (RS-485?) of the pump without buying the manufacturer's automation system.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea and I had considered it myself, but I wasn't sure how accurate the temp reading would be from inside the plumbing. My pump is right next to where my RP is located, so I could just run a wire from the pump/plumbing to the RB.

Kevin
 
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho

foobert said:
What I'm looking for is someway to control a variable speed pump directly from the serial interface (RS-485?) of the pump without buying the manufacturer's automation system.
Click to expand...

You could certainly do this if you knew something about the underlying protocol used by the pump. None of the major VS/VF pump makers publish their communications protocol (likely for potential liability issues). You would thus have to reverse engineer the protocol for each brand of pump you have. This is not impossible with an RS485 bridge and snooper software, but tricky. Interfacing an RPi or Arduino to RS485 would not be difficult.
 
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho

Yup, that's the process. :goodjob:

I don't currently own a VS pump, but, I'd sure be inclined to buy one if someone has already done the work on decoding the interface :party:

When it comes time to remodel my pool, I'll probably just go with a 2-speed pump and call it "good enough".
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho

foobert said:
What I'm looking for is someway to control a variable speed pump directly from the serial interface (RS-485?) of the pump without buying the manufacturer's automation system.
Click to expand...

Too bad this thread died off so long ago. This is exactly what I am trying to do. I got a deal on a Hayward Super Pump VS when my old pump died, and the speed /timer settings are fairly simple. I would love to use my RPi to control the pump/heater, but the skills required to decode the pump interface are a little out of my reach. I'm ok with the RPi/Linux stuff.

All I want to do is add another step at the end of each speed - say 750 rpm/15 minute "cool down" to any speed selected on the pump. Similar to the "Primer" that runs at the beginning of all speeds. That way if the heater is on, the flow control at 750 RPM will shut it off before the water stops flowing to allow it to cool down.
 
FWIW, here's how I added a temperature sensor to my pool
Adding a temp sensor

A DS18B20 should be pretty easy to interface to a Pi, but never tried it.

Interesting idea about having a timer in addition to the automation hardware. Every once in a while, my pool stuff stops working, and I need to reset it. I either need an automatic monitor, or add a simple timer back in so I don't have to worry about it.

Also I have a hayward variable speed pump that I control with 3 relays. If all the relays are open, pump is off, and then you close the relays in various combinations to set different speeds, using the relays as a binary counter where 1 is the lowest speed and 7 is the highest speed. You can program the pump to set the 7 speeds to whatever you want them to be. Not sure about other pumps, but this has been working well with my hayward.

Randy
 
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho

kodiak1120 said:
Craig,

Good point on the 240v issue... that hadn't occurred to me. According to the specs on my main pool pump, the amps exceed the max on the relays, so I can't go that route. I'm thinking of hooking the extra two relays into (1) my landscape lighting and (2) my water feature, so I can turn them off and on with my phone. The landscape lighting would probably be less useful, but the water feature would be nice so I could turn it off when I'm not outside (as opposed to running it 24/7, like I do now).

Kevin
Click to expand...

You could have the relay control a contactor
 
At this point I would settle for controlling my Hayward SuperPump on/off and speeds from the control interface and a phone app/webpage.

I found a SuperPump guide buried in the docs that came with the pump.



If I could figure out how to fit 2 pics into my 250k limit (???) I would post the guides...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply