Gecko in.touch2 integration (Spa wireless remote control module)

I took a photo before attaching mine.

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… ordered the module for $165 on Amazon

This was a really good price, almost half price of cheapest I have been able to find.
You wouldn’t happen to have a link to that Amazon posting left to share?

I found the pricing for the Gecko in.touch2 changes seasonally. After summer, some of the online retailers drop the price to clear out their inventory for the winter.

I wound up buying mine Oct 2020 for $150 USD from one of the pool/spa supply companies. The price for the summer of 2020 was well over $200, maybe $250.

Thanks, extremely helpful.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M5K93W1

Hello, I have a question about the Gecko control. I wanted to buy that too and I have the Wayfarer Pool and I’ve been told several times that the controls only work with touch display controls is that right? The designation of the control itself would definitely fit with which the Gecko in.touch2 is compatible.

That is right. The In.touch2 works only with specific Gecko controllers. Specifically it’s the X and Y systems of the last decade.
in.touch 2 Gecko Alliance in.touch 2.

When I bought my Aquaterra spa from Costco, the documentation stated that it was not compatible with smart home controls. However, it’s working great with this integration and the gecko controller I bought on Amazon. YMMV

It seems like this integration has a large number of satisfied customers here. What would it take to get this integration added to Home Assistant core?

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So it works with my Wayfarer too. The problem I see is that either the shops that sell the pools don’t have enough expertise or they just want to sell something new. I was also told that the Geko system depends on the control panel that is installed in the pool (only with a touch panel), although it has nothing to do with that at all but with the control that is installed in the pool.

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A number of things, including

  • adherence to the HA coding standards
  • a commitment to ongoing support (which includes keeping up with HA code changes to see if it affects the integration
  • submitting a PR to github and dealing with the ensuing issues
  • submitting a documentation PR to github for .io
  • agreeing to the HA code of conduct

I’ve got this integration up and running and it’s working perfectly, but has anyone successfully changed the temp units to F other than changing it globally in your HA install? I only want the spa temp in F and not the rest of the temp values for my house.

Thanks!

Use a template. Nice thread on various solutions here Configuration Template. How To convert F to C on temperature? - #21 by jgudnas

Sorry to slide in to this thread especially as I’m still not actually an HA user! (Well I’ve installed it about 5 times and tinkered, but can’t find the inclination to move away from Node-RED which I use religiously for everything as I like it a lot.)

I started off thinking “surely I can just hook up an arduino to this thing” then the more time I spent with it, the more I realised there’s far too much time and energy to sink in to the process of decoding and debugging. I looked through the geckolib python library and decided: NOPE!

However as I’m a slight glutton for punishment, I would like to get some basic stuff up and running in Node-RED. Question for @gazoodle - I can see Gecko in.touch2 uses UDP to communicate. Have you written down any of your sniffing / debugging notes from the initial wireshark journey?

I definitely do not wish to reinvent the wheel, but I would love to get the following made in Node-RED:

  • return the full status of the spa (which I could then poll every 10 seconds, and notify when something changes e.g. pumps on
  • change set temp

If you have any basic info on sending the raw messages to do that, it would be appreciated.

Cheers

This isn’t answering your question, but an observation. I use node red in HA for my automations, mostly because the HA used to be too basic for my needs. It still is for polling RF and other more complex stuff. Wouldn’t using gazoodle’s custom component in HA while porting all of your nose red flows into the HA NR integration satisfy all needs?

That’s a sensible comment :+1: I actually set up HA with Node-RED running within at one point then decided I should either focus on working on an HA dashboard or stick to developing my dashboard in Node-RED. I agree it would be best of both worlds. I run a virtual server and so it’s just as easy to install HA and NR on separate VMs (which I have done) - just wanna keep everything in my NR dashboard. Perhaps the best option is to set this up in HA then communicate between HA and NR with MQTT or something. (e.g. so I can also use wall controllers here that support MQTT to control hot tub!)

The protocol is well documented in @gazoodle 's library code. Not sure what more you need.

Also as I understand node red you can get all ha entities into nr. You can then keep your dashboard in nr.

But writing a nodered component is not in this forum’s scope.

Thanks, I have been looking for documentation about the protocol within the github repo (in geckolib/tree/main/src/geckolib/driver/protocol) but it’s a little difficult to piece together the session communication protocol - NO idea why they opted for UDP instead of TCP for this application, seems a bit nuts, lots more work for the end clients to do!

Does anyone (besides me) shut your spa down for the coldest winter months?

If so what do you about the Gecko integration and any of your connected entities, automations, etc. ?

FYI, I ran into a problem with my Home Assistant instance yesterday which I traced down to the disconnected but still active Gecko integration. I didn’t try to dig into the code but based on my observations it seemed to leak a UDP socket once a minute, roughly when [geckolib.async_spa] Cannot get file, protocol retry count exceeded gets logged.

Ping started failing with connect: Resource temporarily unavailable because the allowable ports had been exhausted. No more DNS name resolutions could succeed either for the same reason.

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Hi Gecko Automators. My inTouch2 are on the way and I’m hopeful for a pain free experience. However, on a more general note, has anyone done any optimisation for the spa to use cheaper electricity overnight? What settings do you have. I have to say that the Gecko manufacturer documentation is less than descriptive about what each mode does.

Thanks!

Hello, so I’m using the app for the time being, it works quite well.