New pool construction - what would you do?

I just ordered an Autelis for Hayward. I am a little skeptical because it looks brand new (no posts in the forum), but I found some posts on various pool forums that their pool automation stuff is solid and they offer good support. Hopefully the posts weren’t all employees. :slight_smile: Not sure how long it will take me to get it hooked into the vera. Frankly I will be pretty pleased with just having the default web interface for remote control.

I have the Autelis module for my Jandy PDA and I have no regrets. Works great and Autelis has responded at any questions I had.

There is some limitation with mine (PDA) vrs like the full blown Jandy where you can use the HTTP Get commands

(Welcome to autelis.com)

so I can’t integrate with Vera like I wanted to.

[quote=“rayp, post:22, topic:180382”]I have the Autelis module for my Jandy PDA and I have no regrets. Works great and Autelis has responded at any questions I had.

There is some limitation with mine (PDA) vrs like the full blown Jandy where you can use the HTTP Get commands

(Welcome to autelis.com)

so I can’t integrate with Vera like I wanted to.[/quote]

I scrapped my broken PDA and changed it out for a iAqualink upgrade kit. Might be an option for you.

Yeah I looked into that closely, but didn’t like the fact that everything is routed through a server. I wanted something that was hosted locally.
I prefer to keep my home automation ‘in-house’ as much as possible. I really only wanted to remotely start my spa and adjust the heat, and possibly turn off something if needed…oh and get away from having to use that crappy $300 remote needed to program the system!

Maybe down the road a little I might upgrade a bit if my existing pool controller dies (it’s going on 7 years old now) or I want reporting on pump status/water temps to my home automation interface.

Yea I figured why change the broken 300.00 remote vs. upgrading the board and all plus adding remote capabilites for 400.00

Our board was old and didn’t have variable speed pump capabilities and I have since added a Smart JVA also which the old board wasn’t capable of.

So it was a full upgrade. Only problem is no Vera integration and I don’t want to spend several hundred more on a Autelis just to add a one or two functions.

Not sure if this would help, it was beyond my skills, but I was trying to use a Raspberry Pi that I had bought and a USB/RS485 (about $60 total)
Since your iAqualink would now support the Http get commands that I linked earlier, you might be able to use a Raspberry Pi rather than the $300 Autelis.

Like I said, beyond my skills right now, but maybe it might help others.

If this was the case I could send the Http command with Vera already and wouldn’t need a Pi or Autelis.

Do you have any info to support how I can us Http commands with iAqualink?

I don’t because I was never able to get the thing working on my Raspberry Pi, but with the Autelis (or RPi) it’s the link between the RS485 aquabus and TCP.
Like I said it got over my head but maybe someone on here might have some ideas. With the Autelis PDA version I was only able to query a couple things and get a response. With the iAqualink chip there is a whole host of things you can do (but you would still need the RS485 serial bus connection as far as I know to pick the message off the aquabus) but the TCP/IP link would otherwise be through Zodiac -which uses the four wires aquabus to talk to interface host where your antenna plugs in to the power center (I am guessing it’s much the same way the Honeywell talks with their thermostats, in which this guy was able to reverse engineer ( Brad's Thermostat Control Button ) talking to the thermostat.

There might be something in this posting that might help you (Control your Jandy equipment from your PC with a $15 adapter | Trouble Free Pool) to get a piece of hardware to talk on the Aquabus, but otherwise I don’t know. I have also attached the serial command that Jandy uses.

Sorry, I know that isn’t the direct help you were asking about, but it was all I was able to get before parking the project due to time and just going with the Autelis module.

Edit: just noticed this post over here http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,23922.0.html so I will just tag along to see what fun/trouble I can get into with the RPi…lol

I received my Autelis for Hayward and had a rocky start. The wiring diagram on the case was incorrect. Once that was fixed the software had a lot of bugs. I have to give credit to their tech support though because they worked right through the issues very quickly. I felt a bit like a alpha/ beta tester, but after 6 firmware versions, it is working solid. There are a few limitations because of how Hayward has the controls set up, but I am pretty pleased with the end result.

I really appreciate mda’s code for integration with vera. I modified the variable mapping to fit Hayward and it works very nicely. Status updates between the two are within a couple of seconds. Some features aren’t available in vera like adjusting the heater set point for example, but you can toggle the heater mode, turning it off and on manually. I don’t mess with the set point very often, so no big deal. You can still use the Autelis app to adjust this and other things if you want as the app is still in the Vera/ISY firmware.

[quote=“DeltaNu1142, post:4, topic:180382”]Yes–those are the sorts of ideas I was looking for. The pool I’d be getting is concrete, but with the height of the water table in this area, it may still be important.

Everything I’ve found out (which isn’t much) about the Hayward equipment is that it’s incompatible with Z-wave. The best I could hope for is to be able to connect relays to the pool controls to put Z-waveable contacts in parallel with the Hayward stuff–although that would probably confuse the crap out of the Hayward controls.[/quote]

I am looking for construction of the swimming pool at my house.

Here’s a link to a site that may get you started on your way. Don’t rely too much on Vera and get comfortable with the idea of doing the job correctly with another piece of hardware and telling Vera what it needs to know. I’d be happy to help guide you along, as I’ve already been where you are. That said, my pool is now run by a Raspberry Pi 3 and the data pathway to and from my installation of Homeassistant is by private MQTT server. My Vera really doesn’t do all that much these days…