Thoughts on upgrading to newer Hayward Omnilogic Firmware

[uwquigman]

Hi all,

I've had my omnilogic for a couple of years now and just upgraded it last Summer and just saw there was a new firmware released back in April 2020.

I'm currently on 3.1.2-b34977 and I was wondering what are the enhancements with the newer version? I'm interested in these comments from Hayward as I've struggled a bit with keeping my chlorine generation steady:

"More robust control capabilities for features like chlorination, heating, salt readings and more"

Thanks for your help!

 

[ajw22]

I think @PoolBrews have looked into it.

 

[PoolBrews]

April 2020? The last firmware update released that I know of was R3.2 released in 12/2019.

R3.2 added a number of new features, several that make me recommend to moving to the latest version as soon as possible:

1. Touch Screen Calibration: Pressing the boot screen for ten seconds during power up enters touch calibration mode. Under previous versions of firmware, if your calibration gets to the point where you can't use the screen, there is no easy way to correct the issue short of a factory reset or a touchscreen replacement.
2. Low Salt Chlorination: Added a Low Salt configuration that lowers the alarm threshold for low salt operations down to 800ppm. (HLBASE only). This allows the cell to continue to run in lower salt concentrations - not sure how much I like this as the cell has to work really hard when salt drops that low.
3. Schedule - Heat and Chlorination: Schedules can now enable/disable Heaters and Chlorination as part of the schedule. This one was huge for me. The scheduling did not work for heaters or chlorinators properly in previous versions. Although I could set the heater to heat to a given temp for a period of time, I couldn't actually tell it to NOT heat outside of the scheduled times. I live to run my heater later in the morning when it's getting warm out. Much more efficient than in the middle of the night. I found that my heater only takes about an hour to raise the pool temp 4 degrees in mid morning, but takes nearly 3 hours when done between midnight and 6am. I also like to run my filter 24x7, but only run my salt cell during the day when the sun is hitting the pool. I couldn't do that before R3.2.
4. Omni Direct: Direct access to change light modes for UCL and Omni Direct in Service Mode. Omni Direct was added in R3.1, but it works much better in R3.2. I haven't had any sync issues with my lights since R3.2.
5. Default Startup Speeds for Valves: Added ability to associate VS filter speeds to valve positions. This is pretty cool! If you have a valve position for, say, a waterfall or a spa, and want a specific pump speed for it, you can just set it so the system changes the speed whenever the valve moves to that position.
6. Pool Cover Interlock Scaleback: Added ability to associate filter speed, heater set point, and chlorination percentage to the pool cover closed interlock. For those of you that have an integrated pool cover, this lets you have your system set specific settings based on whether the cover is closed or not.

There is more, but I have found R3.2 to be far more stable than previous releases. I have found that when you upgrade to R3.2, it's a good idea to delete existing schedules and re-create them. I had schedules that didn't kick in for 24 hours, and one that never turned on when it was supposed to. After playing for several days, I called Hayward and they recommended re-creating the schedules. No issues after I did this.

 

[uwquigman]

Thank you so much for this....I saw some issues from others that upgraded but after reading your review I'm going for it!!! Thanks so much again!