Polaris P955 Reversing and Flipping over

[80degrees]

Hello,

I am having an issue with my Polaris 9550 where it is deciding it wants to go backwards and then flip over. Over and over again.

I believe the issue that is triggering it is the beach area safeguard where it will reverse itself to attempt to remain in the pool. I do not have a beach area, so all it does is reverse and flip over way too much.

I tried using the remote to guide it manually and it still decides to go in reverse despite the remote input telling it otherwise, which makes me believe that this beach area fail-safe is being triggered. What I don't understand is what triggers the reversing.

I saw an old post here where someone had changed the circuit board and control unit, but neither had an effect on the problem.

Polaris 9550 Sport Troubleshooting Help

My Polaris 9550 sport has not worked properly for about 9 months now. It starts a cleaning cycle ok, but after one or two times of climbing the wall, reversing down, and turning to start another forward swath, it stalls out for about 5 seconds, then starts driving backwards until it goes up the...

www.troublefreepool.com

That must mean that the beach area failsafe must be triggered elsewhere? The main propeller motor was not replaced in that thread, so perhaps the beach failsafe works by checking the propeller motor resistance (different resistance in and out of water) ?

The filter basket is clean.

Over the years I have had the robot open and fixed so many things but now it feels like this is the final boss of Polaris robot problems. Normally I enjoy a challenge but this is ridiculous.

Has anyone seen this before and have a fix? I wish there was some way to disable the failsafe, but that is probably impossible to know.

 

[ajw22]

Welcome to TFP.

The future of mankind is toiling at fixing robots that are supposed to make our life easier.

I will keep my pool brush and net to clean my pool rather then become the robot fixit guy.

 

[80degrees]

lol thanks! TFP has been the best resource i've found by far for helping to understand pools, especially pool chemistry, over the past few years.

brush and net are great but with so many leaves, dirt, etc, from a large tree, the bot is very useful. the obvious answer will be to just get a new bot, and i probably will get a dolphin.

but, the polaris is otherwise fine, it lifts up out of the pool, all the motors work, everything appears normal, except for the random reversing. i've grown rather fond of the bot, and normally i like a challenge, but this new behavior is baffling.

if anyone else is having the same problem, it seems that if i select to only clean the walls, it flips over a lot less, and the bottom still gets clean enough, but it is far from ideal

 

[80degrees]

wanted to follow up with what I have found. issue is very likely due to the propeller motor.

in the manual, it states "The Polaris robotic cleaner includes a safety feature that automatically stops the cleaner if it is powered on but not submerged in water. For pools equipped with a beach area, this safety feature is programmed to drive the cleaner in reverse and back into the pool when the impeller is out of the water."

this indicates that the reversing behavior is tied to the propeller somehow. and its true, it does know when it is out of the water. this can be tested by simply starting up the robot out of the water. after a couple of spin cycles on the prop, it will display ERR:8 which translates to "Cleaner is turned on and running out of water."

so whats the fix? buy a new prop motor probably. is that what I did? no.

before buying a motor I thought hey, lets open up the existing motor and see if by looking at it I can confirm if anything is truly busted.

upon opening it up, all its components seemed very simple, yet very dirty. so I gave it a good cleaning following the instructions of many youtube videos describing how to clean the "commutator" of an electric motor armature

after I put it back together from all the careful sanding and cleaning of the commutator and brushes, the robot soon began working as expected, it did go in reverse a lot at first startup, but i suspect since I sanded the brushes flat they needed to re-form to the curve of the motor

for me, this is was not a permanent fix. after many cycles i have noticed the robot goes in reverse probably more often than it should, and still flips over a lot, especially so with the ultrafine basket. but it is MUCH better than before. i suspect that something is probably wrong with the motor windings.

in the end, i'll probably buy a dolphin soon since the polaris is about 7 or 8 years old at this point, but i bet if i bought a brand new motor it would work like new again (until something else breaks).