Poorly Dressed: You’re Getting a Little Too Real For Me, Shirt

Definitely a statement on the effort we will go through in order to avoid … well … a little effort…

Popping a pill certainly seems easy until you realize that modern medicine is *way* more primitive than we like to believe.

While the pill you pop or the treatment you undergo will likely grossly get you toward you goal, we are not yet in the era of individualized medicine. So how far it takes you, whether something else would do a better job or what side effects you will experience are things that can’t be known until you embark on the journey. Congratulations! You are now a beta tester!

FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments

via Poorly Dressed: You’re Getting a Little Too Real For Me, Shirt.

Zodiac iAqualink Concern, Issues and Suggestions

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

WIN!: Hacked IRL: Fishy Fishy NO MORE

Truly this represents what is happening as people become educated, take advantage of technology and push their corrupt theocracies off of their thrones.

In my mind there is still a HUGE question mark about whether the Arab spring will have truly long lasting effects or if the people in those countries will allow themselves to become enslaved yet again by use of their own belief systems.

FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments

via WIN!: Hacked IRL: Fishy Fishy NO MORE.