Want to setup nodejs-poolController to do some automation - lots of questions!

TroubleFreePat

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Jun 5, 2013
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I love dabbling with home automation and am using home assistant. I'm in IT, but very green with this stuff. So I will have lots of questions (Just scratching the surface for now.)

Have never messed with a Raspberry Pi (I'm a Windows guy, sorry!) But looks like this is the way. I'll figure it out, eventually. Want to be able to control my SWG, pump and heater. For now, I actually want to start with my heater because I simply want to see the current temp on my phone! Small steps.

I found some posts here and there that talk about which Pi to get. Some recommend the 3 as it puts off less heat and has plenty of horsepower to do what's needed here. This will be living outside in an IP65 enclosure, so heat is a concern. Am I shooting myself in the foot going with an "old" Pi?

Beyond the Pi and power adapter, looks like I need a USB to RS485. Was going to grab the Industrial RS 485 that's recommended on the nodejs site.

Anything else I'm missing just to start playing?
 
I run it on a Raspberry PI 2 and it performs quite well. It lives outdoors as well, I mounted mine in the low voltage area of my EasyTouch 8 which is in full sun most of the day. Heat has not been an issue.

Have you come across this thread yet? Lots of good information in here.

 
I did, thanks. I'm looking to that as THE manual I'm going by.

Reached out to a techie friend and he had an RPi 3 B+ sitting on the shelf gathering dust, so just installing the OS on it now to start messing with it.
 
I ran it with it with a pi3 for years. Upgraded to a 4 recently. Just wanted to do more and have it start up faster.

If you want to control a heater you will most likely need a relay board to operate the fireman switch. Get the 8 relay board from Sequentmicrosystems. It has a RS-485 port on the board.