The Demise (sort of) of the Pool Controller.

Once upon a time I was controlled by my swimming pool controller a Goldline P4. It was an expensive piece of hardware that I got when the pool was originally installed. That thing was said to be the pinnacle of pool control, but in about 20 minutes of working with it I saw shortcomings that were a bit annoying. But, I kept using and working with it. 

At that point I started trying to overcome the various short comings. I install an RF remote control from the manufacturer that turned out to have limited range and was constantly having to be moved to another spot to communicate with the pool. I broke into the control system and set up my own input to the communication protocol between the pool components <Link>. I installed a fancy variable speed DC motor trying to save on power, the list went on and on and on. Search for swimming pool here on the blog to see how much work went into trying to control that device.

That's why the first line says, "controlled by."

Well, the expensive variable speed motor was a bust and got replaced by a two speed pump <Link>. The much touted chlorinator got turned off and only used to keep the pipes connected. Basically, all the frills and fluff that I succumbed to were removed and I was back to a basic pool that has a chlorine float and periodic shocks because all that fancy hardware just didn't work on high calcium well water and climate extremes of the desert. So, one day I asked myself, "Self, why are you putting up with this controller?"

The immediate answer was that if I replaced it with something else, how would I get the 24 volt power I needed and the high current relays that ran the motor and lights? When I discussed this with a friend, he looked at me like I was stupid and said, you have those already in that controller. A light went on, and a journey began.

Above is the architectural drawing of what I wound up implementing to solve all the annoyances of the Goldline controller. I just gave up on controlling the controller and disconnected its relays from the big board inside; I would use them myself some other way. The 24vac supply in the controller would provide the power for the pool valves, all I had to do was come up with a way to connect them. Plus, using Zigbee kept me from having to dig trenches or cut wall board. In my previous post I mentioned that I have an extensive Zigbee network that has a router right inside the wall where the device was going. Heck, Zigbee keeps the devices off wifi, and is really fault tolerant. Perfect way to go.  

Well, the answer was obvious to me, use a couple of those Zigbee relay devices and connect them through Zigbee2mqtt into Home Assistant where I could create dashboards, automations, etc. to my heart's content. 

I started off getting the relay devices; I used two different ones because I had one type on hand from some experiments I ran a year or two ago, and I ordered another one with a temperature sensor in it to get the water temperature. 

Now, I needed a box to put the stuff in because this was going to be outside in the sun and rain. That's a big deal in Arizona because the sun will rot almost anything over time. Plus, there had to be protection from the rodents that infest the desert. It certainly wouldn't do for a pack rat to steal all the shiny things and take them home to its den.

I picked this enclosure on Temu. It turns out they have a big selection of this kind of enclosure, and the price was way less that something similar from Home Depot. Now, how to arrange the stuff on the side of the house where the pool equipment is? I came up with this because it is really simple and wound up high enough that I wasn't sitting on the ground to work on it.

Just try to get into that you packrat !! 

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Now, to put the parts and pieces into the box, wire it up and see if it generates magic smoke or actually works.

Plenty of room for more stuff

The beauty of a nice enclosure is that it hides the wires inside where no one knows how sloppy one is when a project is getting near to the 'live stage, you're all excited to try it out and just slap things together. Someday I'll get back to it and organize the wires better (yea, right). I did realize that I was missing something though. Yes, all the planning and ordering and waiting and I still forgot something. In the Arduino mega that this was replacing, I had the air temperature and a contact sensor for my septic tank level switch. Shucks, that means I have to look into those.

I got an Xiao ESP32C6 from Seeed Studio along with it's little expansion board, an 18B20 out of a box of them I have from something I never completed and made my very first Zigbee sensor. It has two sensors exposed in it one for the temperature and the other for the septic tank float contacts. This was a coding experience that I had never done before and was a bit of a challenge. But I got it going and even have the tiny little display scrolling with updates that I seldom look at. 

Yes, someday, I'll clean up the wiring...

A note on using the 18B20: Yes it's waterproof, and you can actually drop it into water and it will work just fine. However, how do you keep it in place? If the water is flowing, how do you keep it from leaking? If you're putting it into an environment where shiny stuff gets stolen by packrats, how do you protect it? The answer, Thermowells. 

I used them in two places for this project. One is in the picture above; it sticks out the bottom of the box in the shade to measure the air temperature, and the other is inserted into the pool water flow to measure the water temperature when the pool motor is running. 

This works great to keep leaks from driving me nuts and the rats from stealing the sensor. They solve a lot of mounting problems, and the threads allow commercial piping to work. Take a closer look at the way I did that. The T fitting and the plug are standard PVC fittings I picked up at ACE Hardware. I just threaded the thermowell into the hole with a little teflon tape. Leak free seal against the water pressure of the pool pump. I wish I had known about them years ago. Now about the wrapping I have on the wires. This stuff is new to me, and an attempt to keep the various rodents (squirrels, rabbits, rats, mice, etc) from tearing the wires apart. 

It claims it keeps cats from chewing the wires. I don't worry about cats (except the occasional bobcat or mountain lion), but I'm trying this to keep the rodents out. So far so good (months) because it's wire that wraps around the various cables exposed outside the boxes and conduit. I picked it up on Amazon. A warning though, wear gloves when you put it on, the wires can be damaging to fingertips.

But what about power to the new stuff? Well, there's 24VAC, 120VAC, probably 5VDC somewhere in the Goldline; I didn't use any of those. Instead, I used a tried and true technique (to me anyway). I used a small cell phone charger.

These little things cost roughly a dollar (US), and work fine for low current applications. They won't fast charge a cell phone, but they supply enough 5vdc to power this kind of electronics. Plus, you can get cables to adapt them to any device you happen to have. I plugged one of these into a plug on the side of the Goldline, ran it up into the new enclosure, and the split the power to each of the devices according to whatever kind of plug it had. In case you haven't run into that idea yet, there are USB power (not data) cables that split into two or more other plugs. Using the appropriate adapter, you can power anything, and not have a special buck converter. These little plugs have a wide input range 90-250, and actually work. I have them all over the place. I bought ten of them a few years back, and just used the last of them on another project (another 10 on order right now). I mean a power supply for a dollar?? Heck, I've used them to get 5vdc from a 240vac circuit and it held up well. Yes, occasionally they fail, but for a dollar, I don't care. 

Well, I had it physically constructed, and had wired the little relays in the left Zigbee relay controller to the big relays in the Goldline controller, and the right Zigbee relay controller handled the 24vac valves, so let's join this thing to Z2M and see what happens. Basically, it worked really well. Some of the usual messing around with naming the various Home Assistant devices and entities and then some dashboard work, and I had a control system for my pool that could do any darn thing I wanted. 

Victory !!

Now, if I was to do this over again with a new house, and a new pool, I would never even think about all the bells and whistles that I originally suckered into. A basic two speed motor, and some Zigbee devices hooked into Home Assistant would be all I need. Hayward could just find some other dude to sell their expensive, limited, failure prone hardware to. 

(Note: If you’re wondering why the septic sensor isn't live yet, let’s just say while I was moving gravel, I gave the local packrats a clear shot at the wires. They took it. Round one goes to the rodents.)

The little zigbee sensor using the ESPC6 was a great little project that you might be interested in; details on that project are upcoming. Stay tuned.