Pentair Intellicenter firmware 3.002

[WinManx2000]

Bugs are when a feature is not functioning as specified.

Implementing a temperature delta for freeze protection is a new feature request.

Pentair designers were simpleminded when they specified how Freeze Protection should work.

Pentair designers do not appear to own and maintain pools and use their own products. If they did the short comings should be obvious to them as it is to their customers.

Uhh....... in what world does freeze protection cycling on and off every 10 seconds constitute requesting a new feature? The old easytouch ran pumps for quite a period of time until the system was sure the freeze event was over. Turning a pump on and off every 10 seconds causes equipment damage. It should not be a feature request to not damage equipment. Pumps, seals, motors, the windings of the motors, the relays to start, are all over stressed in this scenario.

To be clear, no one is asking for some odd temperature delta. If freeze protection activates, make the Dang thing run for 20m or so and check the temperature again. Its not rocket science.

For reference, i took this video on 2.xx firmware but it does the same thing on 3.002. Note how 35F turns on protection, and 36F turns it off. This shows that the protection is tied directly to a temperature sensor without any dead band built in. Proper control would be something like ON=35F, OFF=37F. Again, not rocket science.

 

[WinManx2000]

Interesting, WinManx. Something similar must have happened to me-- my pool equipment is right behind my bed on the opposite of the exterior wall. I wokeup to some funky noises coming from my pool equipment. Loud humming. stop. loud humming. stop. I picked up my phone and had an alert from pentair saying my pump is over voltage and to call an electrician or pool pro or something like that. My first thought was it was unable to prime for some weird reason (based on the on, off, on off). There's no reason that pump would lose prime unless it developed a leak overnight. I do have that pump set to "never prime". So what I did in the app was turn on the high speed function for max RPM (to prime, in case it lost prime). Everything seems fine since then. I got another message from pentair saying the fault has been cleared. Same temperature as yours 35, 36, 35, 37.

I still have no idea what really happened, though.

Possibly something. For further awareness, I have 3 pumps. They all kick on and off as displayed in my video. 1 is a VSF pump, 1 is a standard on/off feature pump, and 1 is a cleaner booster pump.

I think my work around is going to be when I know it freezes, I am just going to adjust the sensor temperature to something like 20F until I know it is no longer freezing. This will force the freeze protection not to be stupid and just stay active all the time.

 

[Chaser918]

Found a critical bug with freeze protection on 3.002 FYI. Here’s what I sent to Pentair:

This is bug is experienced with a power outage.

I have the IntelliCenter running my pool equipment with firmware 3.002. I have two feature valves that freeze protection is turned on for. Works great normally.

If a power outages is experienced when the system is in freeze protection and the power returns after the outage, the system moves these valves into their home (non freeze protected) modes but the panel will erroneously show that the valves are powered and in freeze protection when they physically are not.

Rebooting the panel fixes the issue, the valves will then cycle to their freeze protected positions.

I have been able to duplicate this issue reliably by “simulating” a power outage. Please fix asap!!!!

 

[poolfusq]

I found a small bug in 3.002 too (may be present in prior firmwares, I haven't tried). My system was in freeze mode, no problem. I adjusted the RPMs in the advanced setting menu of one of the features. For some reason, this caused the current, freeze protection mode RPM to be ignored, and instead the system adhered to the RPMs of each particular circuit that was being rotated around. Weird. This may be a feature actually and not a bug (in one of my two pump's case, certainly-- one pump is shared with floor cleaner and deck jets (don't want in ground floor cleaner RPMs sent to deck jets b/c then deck jets shoot over my house).

 

[poolfusq]

@WinManx2000 I've confirmed my problem isn't the same as yours. My pump was making loud humming noises at 25 degrees (ie nothing to do with on/off cycling), and I rec'd another voltage alert from the app. I think my pump is just dying. I hope it makes it through this freeze. There's no capacitor to replace in this IntelliFlo VSFs!

 

[colonelkirby]

re. the posts about rapid transitions from freeze to non-freeze mode.

What I found out in my situation was this. My Whisperlo single speed sheers pump would trigger on in freeze mode and it apparently caused the ambient temperature rise to go out of non-freeze mode for the IntelliCenter. This is problematic until its really cold. I believe the temperature sensor needs to re-located away from that pump. It was literally hanging down right next to the Whispeflo.

 

[poolfusq]

Well-- this is no good. Freeze mode is not going by freeze mode RPMs but rather another circuit's RPMs (no the schedule isn't on for it). I changed the RPMs by 50 to make it "reboot". The pump shuts off, comes back on, and now its the freeze mode RPM. Why???????????

 

[dmk]

I finally took the plunge and updated to 3.002 yesterday. Some comments below.

The multi expansion panel bug that reared its head in 2.026 is gone

Most of the other bugs that appeared in 2.006 and 2.017 appear to have been fixed.

Integration with Control4 via the official driver was a little scary and required two reboots of the IntelliCenter and one reboot of Control4 to start working properly but has been rock solid for 24 hours now.

I haven’t tested multiple IntelliBrite lights yet to see if the problems (with large numbers of such lights over multiple panels) from v1 and v2 are still present as I converted these to generic lights in Pentair a few weeks ago (as reported elsewhere) and moved the colour control from Pentair to Control4 to get stability.

I noticed this a few days later. At first glance it looked to be working fine with temps and status of circuits showing in C4 but I couldn’t turn my SPA on a few days later until I rebooted Director.

 

[mzuniga]

Hey guys. I updated yesterday and njsPC is not working anymore. Intellicenter is apparently recognized as Intellitouch. I thought the update was compatible with njsPC. Have I made a mistake? Thanks!

 

[ajw22]

Hey guys. I updated yesterday and njsPC is not working anymore. Intellicenter is apparently recognized as Intellitouch. I thought the update was compatible with njsPC. Have I made a mistake? Thanks!

Best to open a discussion or issue (either one will do) on the Github repo.

You can revert the IntelliCenter back to the prior version.

@rstrouse