Smart pool monitor pHin

I just became aware of this I like what it does not thrilled with the price and the fact that they want a 99 dollar yearly subscription.

anyone have any experience with this device?

Tagging @mike.maxwell - weren't you all looking into an integration when pHin at one point of time?

Or was that Phyn? I get the two confused all the time.

not me, sorry.

For the price of that plus the annual monitoring charge, I'd rather invest in a full automation system that dispenses the chemical for me. Long-term it would end up cheaper

the annual fee is a killer

Sorry, my mistake. It was @bravenel ....

Must be nothing came of it.

pHin is a hayward product. I can only assume based on what I've seen from conversations surrounding their prologic and omnilogic products, that the api documentation is available as long as you sign an NDA and don't publish anything relating to it. Although they do seem to be loosening the strings on the omnilogic side and have been allowing a small group work towards an integration that will first need to be approved by Hayward. My guess is that will be the first system we see integrated into any home automation platform.

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They were recently on the Home:On Podcast talking about it.

I too am not thrilled with the $99 subscription. I could maybe over look it if I could get access to the API and integrate it into HE. But I don’t want to fork the money to find out I can’t or that it’s limited.

I'm looking at water guru. Would like integration. Any idea if it could be done?

They don’t advertise an api so hard to say

For that price I would get an older Neptune Systems Apex Classic or their current model. Used ones show up on eBay often enough and they come with Temp and pH sensors, plus you could add more in.

Did anyone find if an API exists?

I checked around a bit but have not seen any sign of a public API for it. They must have SOMETHING it is reporting to and pulling data from but they are not talking about it (like most companies nowadays unfortunately).

Going to email them and ask... although the "email us" link at the bottom of their page does not have a populated email field, so I am sending it as a support request on their webform.

Curious, did they reply?

As of 5/26/2021 @ 6:52am EST... nope. No reply. I checked my junk mail and spam folders just in case.

Any reply from them? Wondering if there is a local api via tcp.

I would actually buy one of those to try out (even though I think it is over priced) if it had a published API of some kind to use for 3rd party integrations.

But no API = no sale for me.

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No response from them at all. So my response for people would still be to get a used Neptune Systems Apex and whatever probes you want for that. Little more "messy" but it works on it's own, can control stuff as needed (with outlets), and can be monitored by Hubitat.

Has anyone ordered one of these and attempted to reverse engineer the app? I may get one. Coupon code POOLFUN will take $75 off until end of aug. consumables run $50 for 6 months (if you get the 3 pack for $50).

At risk of sounding flippant, I would think that a solid grasp of pool chemistry would be a prerequisite to trying to "automate" something that can be very stable with the right gear. I would spend money on a salt water generator, rather than "automation" gear that may not survive the (inevitable) shutdown of the start-up's "cloud servers" when they fail to get bought by Google, and fail to attract a third round of funding.

I have one of these beasties. It breaks salt down into Chlorine, with water pumped over electrodes after the filter. With this in place, the pool needs at most monthly intervention to tweak pH (I add some 20 Mule Team Borax) and I do a brief "shock" of the pool to bring the free chlorine level up to about 10 ppm for a few days in late July, just to nip any hot-weather algae in the bud.

My CYA level is 60 to 70, and I set this as early as possible with "stabilizer", my salt level is tested by the local pool store, as test strips are wildly unreliable (but the salt never goes away as water evaporates and is added, so only draining the pool can reduce salt - backwashing the sand filter has no significant effect). I do pH checks and Free Chlorine/Combined Chlorine tests every other day, but they simply do not vary enough to worry about it. My Free Chlorine stays between 4 and 7, my combine chlorine never exceeds 0.5 (shells from the safflower and sunflower bird feeders get blown in the pool), and the pH varies from 7.2 to 7.8 as I add Borax to raise the level, and "acid rain" slowly lowers it.

Yes, I could instrument the pool, and work up a set of automation rules to vary the hours that the filter pump and the salt-water generator run based upon readings, but the built-in timers on both the pump and the generator are sufficient, and they autonomously "do their thing", and the pool stays "in spec" all by itself. Of course, we have no kids in the pool, so the "biological load" presented by bathers is negligible.

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