cool project. I’ve been toying with some ideas about managing my pool water levels.
some thoughts:
1) I presume your pool has an overflow drain, so that excess rainfall will dump water (and chlorine) out of your pool. My pool can only take about a half inch of rainfall before it dumps. So, increasing the height of the overflow and decreasing the normal level of the pool can save water. And holding off filling the pool if the weather predicts rain is another way of saving.
2) I gave up on liquid chlorine (too harsh on my wife’s skin; the conditioner chemicals making the water hard, smell, and not liking to have harsh chemicals around the yard), and when to a chlorine generator/salt pool system. We love it. The power supply to the salt generator is way over priced, so there is an opportunity for a DIY/open source project to drive a salt cell with a power supply/controller.
3) I’ve saved a ton of money by running my pool filter pump at lower speed for a longer time, and shifting the filtration cycle to lower time-of-use rates. Smarter control of the pool speed can really help. Pentair variable speed pumps have a digital interface gadget that you turn on the pump at four different speeds with 4 different 24AC signals. So an AC OS board could control the pump without messing with 220V wiring. They can also be controlled with an RS 485 protocol, but this would require some reverse engineering to figure out their codes.
So, the OS hardware is very close to what’s needed to manage a pool system 🙂
I’m interested to hear how you progress.