Smarter Swimming Pool

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21

Just turning on and off the heater. Temp is set on the heater or the pool (easytouch) controller.

But this works fine as we don’t change the temp setpoint and this allows me to enable or disable heat with automations or remotely.

For example I just enabled heat as we plan to swim this afternoon and I know the pool will be warm by then.

22

What are you guys using to control the pump motors? I tried Solid State Relays but on my Cleaner pump they are not doing the job. Also my pumps are 240VAC.

23

I am using a Aeon Labs heavy duty switch. Been working great for 2 years.

24

GE/Jasco has a 240V/40A outdoor ZWave module. I am using this. It works well and has a local manual over-ride switch as well.

25

Hello. I remember this post about swimming-pool automation, and I would like to show my actual project raspipool

1 Like
26

Thank you @exxamalte.
I’ve just implemented your way of managing the pool pump.
I use a sonoff pow r2 (currently with the original firmware and the SonoffLAN custom component).

Are you still working on it ? Can we contribute to your Github repo ?

1 Like
27

I haven’t made any major changes recently. If you think there are improvements that could be useful for others, feel free to contribute to my GitHub repo.

28

Ok some quick ideas to work on:

  • Dedicated repo for HACS integration
  • Computing daily duration using some parameter (temperature or pool/pump characterstics). I’ve already drafted a python module for that: https://github.com/oncleben31/pypool-pump
  • Having the possibility to choose between different templates of daily schedule
  • Support anti freezing scenario during off season.

What do you think ? Any other ideas by readers of this thread ?

2 Likes
29

Good ideas.

I personally don’t use HACS, so I’d leave that to someone else.
The different templates are a great idea. Luckily I live in a place where it never freezes. However I do live in a place where the local councils restricts the hours I can run the pump, i.e. not overnight. And, I’ve never finished the idea to run the pump based on solar power production and weather forecast.

I’d also be very interested if anyone else has some ideas?

30

Cool.
What have you in mind when you write you want to take into account the weather forecast ? What type of weather parameter could influence the pool pump ?

31

I was always hoping to run the pool pump on solar electricity as much as possible. My idea was to define certain parameters like for example pump must run between 6-8 hours per day, and 50 hours per week in average, etc. and the controller then uses current solar electricity production, state of the sun, sunrise/sunset, season, current and forecasted cloudiness or rain and maybe historical data to make a decision at what time to best run the pump. For example, if it’s cloudy in the morning but clear sky forecast in the afternoon, the pump should run in the afternoon instead. But if there is even more clouds forecast for the afternoon, the pump should start earlier.
I’ve made a few attempts in the past, but this problem quickly becomes very complex.

32

I can manage to make a dedicated repo for HACS and facilitate collaboration.
But I’m not confortable to host this and bee seen as the main owner instead of you.
I see different options:

  • You don’t care and it is simple this way. Let’s fork it.
  • I can host and I give you some right to let you modify or manage PR
  • you start a new repo and you give me some rights to modify or manage PR
  • We create an organization like “ha-pool” and we add any motivated contributor to maintain and improve this custom component.

Have you a preference ?

33

Sorry for the late reply. I saw that you have created a repository in the meantime, that’s perfectly fine with me. Please let me know if there are particular areas where you could use some help.

One thing I have neglected in my custom component are unit tests which would be very useful to have for example when more variations of pump control are implemented or more external parameters and sensors can influence the pump schedule.

34

Hello,

So I’ve started a repository compatible with HACS and using the blueprint template which allows to have an autonomous development environment with VSC.
I’ve a dedicated release for HACS and a branch with your code integrated (with minor updates).

Warning for the ones who will use it. I don’t recommend to use my repo yet because as my expectations are quite different it will be difficult to maintain exxamalte algorithm working during fine tuning of my version of the algorithms.
A potential merge of the two approaches will be done in the future but no strong commitment on that.

So if you are interested by the exxamalte approach and using HACS, you can:

  • use my repository in HACS but only the dedicated release: exxamalte_v0.0.1
  • Or fork my repo to be protected of any breaking change I will probably push in a near future.

With my approach, I will implement an automatic computation of the daily filtering duration based on the water pool temperature. And I will implement a filtering schedule based on “solar noon” to filter during the hottest hours in the day.

3 Likes