My WaterGuru Sense testing

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TroubleFreePat

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Jun 5, 2013
191
Philadelphia, PA
Surface
Fiberglass
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
I bit the bullet and purchased a WaterGuru Sense for daily testing. I have an auto-cover and SWG, so it actually makes balancing chlorine difficult, I feel. There are days we won't swim, so we don't open the cover. Thus the SWG is generating chlorine that's not really getting used up since we're not swimming and not exposed to the sun. Other days we'll have the pool open all day. And I need to remember to adjust the SWG accordingly.

So I thought this might help me a bit to make sure I don't forget to adjust the SWG one way or the other. Others have been messing with the WaterGuru and had positive results for basic daily monitoring, so I thought I'd give it a try. Plus I like seeing charts and graphs!

Anyway, my first impressions - unit was packaged nicely and arrived pretty quick. I ordered the unit itself, the square to round skimmer cover adapter and two extra cassettes. Haven't seen the extra cassettes yet, and the square to round adapter just arrive today, a few days after the Sense itself.

6 C batteries (Supposed to last six months are do show status on the app) were included. No "instructions" in the box - on the inside of the box lid, it just says, "Get started. Download the SENSE app." On my iPhone, I couldn't find an app named "SENSE" that corresponded to the unit. I did find a WaterGuru app. It walks you through installing the batteries and cartridge and "getting started." There's a few videos you can elect to watch right in the app as well that help. All-in-all, good stuff.

Square to round skimmer adapter doesn't sit quite right for me. The adapter they sent (Which is nothing more than a plain square adapter CNCed with a hole in the middle) has some extra plastic nubs on the bottom that don't work. I'll file those down, once I decide to keep the unit. For now, it just wobbles a bit.

Placed the unit in the pool, app found it, entered my wireless password, done. Install was very quick and easy.

Now - if you plan to purchase and use the unit - a recommendation. Do NOT place the unit in the pool (And possibly don't put the batteries in it) until you're ready for it to take a reading. My pump comes on at 11am. I dropped the unit in the pool around 9am. Shortly thereafter, it took a reading - with no water flow. Seems odd - I would think the logic would set it to ONLY take a reading if there is flow. I manually set the unit to read at noon each day, so we'll see what it does. Wonder if I'll get a double reading today.

One question I do have is how often is the water temp updated? I'm HOPING it's pretty real-time or at least hourly. I'm hoping it's not once a day when a test is run. If it is, should be a design change there. We'll see.

Once I get a good reading with water flow, I'll compare chlorine and ph to my own testing and update.
 
I asked about the water temp and they said it only measures when the tests are run and only can be run with tests.

The square lid was something I actually made myself with the CNC router at my job since they didn’t offer it when I got it last year. I sent photos in to them and like to think I gave them the idea for it. :)
 
I just got one of these also. I'm reserving judgement until I have a bit more experience with it, but so far my experiences are that:

- it's missed a few days (one day there was no report at all, and two days where it reported temp and flow, but not FC and Ph)
- I've had a number of days where it's said my water flow is "really low" < 1.0 even though I know it's been fine
- the PH measurement seems to be consistently high as compared to my test kit
- the FC measurement so far seems to be low, but has also varied somewhat largely from day to day (more than my test kit measurements show)

The suggestion from Water Guru about the days of missed tests was to re-seat the chem pad cassette. As far as I can tell the cassette itself doesn't really lock into place, even though its supposed too. That might be causing some of the problem.

On my end, since I'm not using this to replace my test kit testing, I don't care whether its measurements are accurate or not, just that they're self consistent., and are reliable enough so that I can tell if something requires attention. So far the rather large fluctuation in its measurements have been disappointing. But I just re seated the cassette again so we'll see if that makes a difference.
 
Just checked on my status - iPhone app still only shows my test from when I first dropped it in with no flow. My the webapp in my browser shows another test completed at 12:10pm with flow.

Someone else mentioned it on another post here as well - would be nice to see the ACTUAL numbers on the webapp page. See a marker somewhere between 2 and 5 for chrlorine is eh. Either put the actual number with the marker or give the number when you hold your mouse over it.
 
The iPhone app has been updated in the past year to show actual numbers.

Also, one side of the device dangling in the skimmer is meant to be facing the pool in order to get a good reading on the flow, I think. This isn't always easy, mind, as it likes to shift a little once in the water due to the natural skimmer flow.
 
TroubleFreePat said:
Someone else mentioned it on another post here as well - would be nice to see the ACTUAL numbers on the webapp page. See a marker somewhere between 2 and 5 for chrlorine is eh. Either put the actual number with the marker or give the number when you hold your mouse over it.
Click to expand...

Assuming I understand your comment, the APP itself only reports the numerical value for the current day. But if you look at the top of the historical display to the side of the date you should see a "<" (left arrow). If you press on that it will move the display to the previous day and display the numerical value for that day. Once you've moved to an earlier date (than the current date) you'll also get a ">" (right arrow) on the other side of the date to move the displayed date forward.

Note: the above is for the iPhone app.. I haven't tried the Droid version.
 
IceShadow said:
The iPhone app has been updated in the past year to show actual numbers.

Also, one side of the device dangling in the skimmer is meant to be facing the pool in order to get a good reading on the flow, I think. This isn't always easy, mind, as it likes to shift a little once in the water due to the natural skimmer flow.
Click to expand...

FWIW.. What they told me was: "Flow readings are in comparison to what we test in the lab. Just think of them as sufficient or not sufficient. We have tested units in many orientations. The best is when the cassette is facing away from the pool directly. "
 

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TroubleFreePat said:
Someone else mentioned it on another post here as well - would be nice to see the ACTUAL numbers on the webapp page. See a marker somewhere between 2 and 5 for chrlorine is eh. Either put the actual number with the marker or give the number when you hold your mouse over it.
Click to expand...

When you say "webapp" are you talking about what you see on a webpage/browser? If so, if you go down to the "pool readings" section, you can hover your mouse over it and it will show the number (see attached screenshot...red circle is where the mouse is hovering). Also, my cassette does "click" when inserted, so that might be an issue you are having.

I have had this now for 6'ish months (maybe a little longer?) and the batteries do indeed last a long time; I still have 39% left. I have had daily readings since I purchased it.

The numbers are pretty darn close to what I get with my TF-100. It's accurate enough that I am doing the TF-100 test only every 2 weeks or so. No issues, so far.
 

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