It’s pretty difficult to find a contact email address for Zodiac USA. All I can find on their site is one of those moderately useful forms. So I’m going to post this message here on my blog and then send them a link.
Dear Zodiac,
As the new owner of an iAqualink I have come across a few items that I felt should be brought to your attention.
Concern:
Android Application does not reflect current conditions and ignores Service mode
The Android version of the iAqualink application does not refresh at reasonable intervals. If I log into the application hours or days after my last logon, the information from the previous login is still being displayed. Information such as which devices are on and what the temperatures are should be refreshed, certainly after a new login, but they should also be refreshed with much greater regularity than is happening now.
There is a dangerous side effect to this. Since the device does not check the current system status at reasonable intervals, it is possible to be logged into the Android iAqualink application, manually put your system into “Service” mode and continue to start and stop pumps and manipulate the system as if it was still in “Auto” mode. I recently demonstrated this to Adam of “Pool Tech” (6/5/2012) and he indicated he was going to bring this to your attention due to obvious safety concerns.
My Issues:
Can you program my lights for me?
On 5/29/2012 I spoke with Denise in your customer support area. My iAqualink was installed as part of a new pool installation and the lights that had been installed are Fiberstar’s “Pal Treo” LED lights. Unfortunately these are not among the 4 lighting systems already supported by iAqualink. I am able to get some use of my lights by selecting “Jandy LED Watercolors” which will change my lights to something other than the default color, but of course the colors in the PAL Treo system do not line up at all with the Jandy LED Watercolor system. This is something that would require a programming change on the Zodiac side to implement (or my suggestion below). Denise was to check with your developers and get back to me. It’s now 6/15/2012 and I’ve not heard back from her. I would like an answer on this.
You can choose your light color when explicitly turning on the lights but not for any programmed mode.
If you select Lights (at least as it’s set up on my system and verified by Pool Tech) as part of a “One Touch Setting” you do not have the option to select the color that comes up. Certainly for different “moods” one would like to have the option to choose a color other than the initial start up color.
Similarly, when setting the “Dusk” settings for the lights there are no provisions to select a color when choosing your light device. This needs to be corrected.
Suggestions:
Allow a DIY lighting setting so that consumers can set up their lights themselves
My experience here is somewhat limited, but a common theme among light systems seems to be that you turn on your light switch and then you flick the switch off then on again to cycle through the offered lighting options. An interface that allows you to specify how many of these options there are, plus the colors that result from these off/on cycles might make the iAqualink system compatible with more lighting systems while reducing the overhead for keeping up with them.
Retain Pool Temperature information when the filter pump is not on
Just like on a weather page, provided you indicate the time for which the reading is current, it would be very useful to me to be able to see my temperature at a glance without needing to turn on my pump system and wait for the water to cycle long enough to get an accurate reading. The temperature will not be exact but since you can see how old it is you can decide for yourself if you need to force a more accurate reading. Since the system is on at least once a day I will always be somewhat in the ballpark and to me this is much more useful than a BLANK reading.
Allow me to change labels for Temp1 and Temp2
It took me a while to figure out that Temp2 was my pool temperature. I’d like to be able to just change the label so that this is obvious to my wife.
Yours Sincerely,
Marc Bourassa
We have addressed your issues with the IAqualink with Zodiac and they are aware of this issue and are working on fixes for these issues to get it solved as soon as possible. As soon as we receive any more information we will make you aware of it as well.
I received news regarding the “Service Mode” issue above and a customer service response to the rest of my message. Here are the details: http://marc-bourassa.com/2012/06/22/zodiac-iaqualink-items-response-from-zodiac
I have my landscape lights set up through iaqualink. I’m trying to set up Southey turn on at dusk. However, I live in Atlanta and there’s no setting for Atlanta. Can it be downloaded?
@Jon – I just used the “Eastern” time zone setting (for my pool lights to come on at dusk) and that was sufficient for my needs.
Hello, Was curious if there were any updates to the situation regarding the Fiberstar lights. I too have an iAqualink system and the Pool builder used the lights from Fiberstar. Not compatible with the programs used for lighting on the i aqua link remote app. If there is a solution tat is known could you share please…
Thanks in advance
@Rich – Rich – I have found Jandy to be somewhat less than responsive or enthusiastic about dealing directly with the customer.
To be fair they did eventually come back to me with the fact that they cannot support every lighting system out there. And even I have to admit that there are *very* few folks who would actually take advantage of a DIY offering to program your own lighting system into the iAqualink interface without generating a boatload of support issues for Jandy.
My solution was two-fold:
1) change the default start color for the Pal Treo (by FiverStars) – I used this document to help: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s16/sh/75018f26-0eb1-4bd5-88f2-52d57ede77ad/4b07be1ebf744b710bdee73a77da4442
2) I mapped the lighting color options in a document. Since the Pal Treo has less options than the “Jandy LED WaterColors” setting I’m using you have all the Pal Treo options and then start to loop through them again. I’ve got them documented (for myself so it’s not really detailed) here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s16/sh/edc8dacb-20c4-44ea-8304-3418c69eed24/220a97bc382aa28d4823f22e322e433c
On two occasions work on my standby generator caused the circuit breaker to trip on my pool system. The iAqualink App indicated the pool filter pump was on when it was actually off. Have others experienced a false reading and is there a fix?
@Cliff – I admit I haven’t come across this issue before, but I’ll surely be inspecting the pool pumps more frequently now in the colder months.
I don’t believe there is any way for iAqualink alone to know anything more than whether it has set the relay to ON or OFF.
If you have the Aquapure system also attached, then they have a flow sensor available to them that can be used to validate that the pool pump is actually doing something when it has been enabled.
I can picture plenty of scenarios with valves supporting spas, waterfalls and the like that might mean the pump output might bypass the Aquapure, but it would make a lot of sense to me to have it as an option to alert you that the pump is not running when it has been activated.