Pool_Fill_Control V3.5.1 (2019-03-02)

Major updates to data storage using MySQL and InfluxDB and away from flat files. Please see the bottom of this readme for more updates!

Raspberry Pi / Arduino / Python / Alexa Project to automate pump management and filling of swimming pool along with tracking of various temperature and humidity sensors, smart water meters and more. Includes Flask based Web Interface and Alexa Skill.

This software is not really intended to be "plug-and-play" but rather sharing of code, hardware and sensor ideas that you can use as a starting point in your own pool management and/or home automation system. Enjoy!

While this readme is pretty specific to the code portion of the project, an in-depth writeup of the entire project from start to finish is available on Hackster.io with tons more detail and pictures! I have tried to include the different parts of the system in this readme, and over time I will expand this readme to include more about the project.

Updated Web Interface created and managed with Flask

This pool control software system was designed to automate and manage some everyday pool management tasks. It started out with just filling the pool, hence the name of the repo: pool_fill_control. It grew into far more than that and now is integrated into a variety of systems around our home. Here is a current (as of V3.5.0) list of items managed or monitored by the system:

• Pool Water Level (with auto and manual fill functions)
• Pool Water Level Sensor Temperature, Humidity & Battery Level
• Sprinkler System - Tracking Only (On or Off) using Rachio Sprinkler Controller
• Pool Temperature
• Pool Temperature Sensor Temperature, Humidity & Battery Level
• Acid Tank Level
• Pool pH & ORP
• Pool Filter PSI
• Pool Pump Parameters (GPM, RPM, Watts)
• Pool Pump Management (Start, Stop, Change Running Program)
• Pool Electrical Panel Electrical Usage
• Pool water usage during fill and overall water usage
• Pool Fill Timer while filling
• Pool filling (automatically, manually, or manually via Alexa skill)
• Alexa Skill via Flask-Ask
• Alexa readback of all system parameters
• Alexa ability to fill or stop filling pool
• Household Electrical Usage
• Household Solar Production
• Notifications via SMS, E-Mail, Pushbullet, Logging and Debug

The basic premise of the system is pretty simple. Utilizing a variety of low-power arduino clones as system "sensors" we measure the water level of the pool and check to see if the sprinklers are running. If the water is low and the sprinklers are not running, we turn on a transformer that powers a sprinkler valve and we refill the pool. Once the pool has been filled to a specific level, we shut off the water. Since we fill from our irrigation system, we need to know if the sprinklers are running. If they are, we do not have enough water pressure to run several zones at once so the system will keep checking and will refill the pool once the sprinklers are done.

Over time I added temperature monitoring, pH and ORP monitoring (but not control), Acid tank level monitoring, pool filter pressure monitoring, electrical (including solar) monitoring and pool pump management utilizing Russell Goldin's poolController Software. Because much of our house has other sensors I included monitoring of battery levels of various temperature and humidity sensors around the house that have nothing to do with the pool, but since I had the system in place to monitor and alert for these I went ahead and added them anyway. This is the same for overall power utilization and solar production.

I have also been working on adding in Alexa integration and learning how to build Alexa skills around the house. I have created a skill that allows you to query the system for all of the pool stats as well as to start and stop filling of the pool. The kids can also ask it if it is ok to go swimming and Alexa will ask them for the temperature they like the water, compare that to the current water temperature and then let them know if it is ok to go swimming. More a programming challenge than anything else. The Alexa interface is coded using the Flask-Ask python framework, but as I understand it, Flask-Ask is no longer being maintained so I may have to move to the much more difficult Pythin Alexa SDK in the future.

Alexa Echo Show Display

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Our system relies on a lot of external applications and hardware. Depending on how you plan on setting up your system you may or may not need all of these applications or hardware devices. It is outside the scope of this readme to go through the installation procedures of the various software system and setup of hardware, but you can always email if you run into trouble. I am sure I might have missed something so this might not be an exhaustive list:

1. Raspberry Pi
   • The "brains" behind the operation. Our main python code runs on a Raspberry Pi Model 3 with a 65GB SD Card.
2. OpenEnergyMonitor's EmonPi
   • A RaspberryPi powered hardware device that allows for electrical and temperature monitoring as well as being a hub for the reception of all wireless sensor data. Manages storing data to MySQL for use by other systems as well as forwarding this data to other EmonCMS instances (locally or in the cloud).
3. OpenEnergyMonitor's Open Source Energy Monitoring Platform (EmonCMS)
   • This system gathers and writes various sensor data to a MySQL database for use by pool_fill_control. We utilize 433Mhz radios from our sensors and transmit our data to EmonCMS. From there we can access it from our program. This runs on our EmonPi as well as on several "backup" servers to house our environmental data.
4. LowPowerLab's MightyHat
   • MightyHat is a Raspberry Pi Hat with that makes it easy to build a compact, robust, battery backed-up gateway for the internet of things. It accepts RFM69W/HW/HCW or LoRa transceivers and acts as a power controller and UPS for the RaspberryPi. This is on the main RaspberryPi that runs our system at the pool.
5. LowPowerLab's R6 Moteino
   • The Moteino is a super-low-power Arduino clone that incorpoprates a 433Mhz FSK (RFM69HCW) transceiver which transmits data to our EmonPi.
6. Atlas Scientific pH and ORP Probes and boards
   • USB input boards and probes for pH and ORP.
7. pH and ORP Flow Cell
   • Flow cell purchased from Sunplay to house our pH and ORP sensors as well as to provide water flow sensing.
8. Elecall Stainless Steel Tank Water Level Sensor Float Switch
   • Stainless steel dual level water level sensor used to monitor the water level in the pool so we know when to refill it. Has "low" and a "high" side floats that are monitored with an EmonTH sensor.
9. MySQL
   • Used by EmonCMS as well as our pool control system to store both environmental data as well as system states and other data.
10. InfluxDB
    • Used to store temperature, humidity, pH, ORP and electrical data specifically for graphing by Grafana.
11. Grafana
    • Used to build grahing interfaces for web interface via i-frames for our web interface (pH & ORP) as well as other system graphing needs.
12. Flask
    • Python Microframework used to build the front-end web interface for our pool control project.
13. Flask-Ask
    • Alexa skills kit for Python by John Wheeler. (Will be moving away from Flask-Ask as the rumor is that John is no longer maintaining the project).
14. PoolController
    • Software written by Russell Goldin to manage Pentair pool pumps via an RS485 interface. This is how we control our pump.
15. Apache
    • Web server for both the web frontend as well as https frontend for our Alexa skills.
16. Pushbullet
    • Used as one of our notification methods.
17. pushbullet.py
    • Python client for working with PushBullet
18. Twilio
    • Used to send SMS text messages as one of our notification methods.
19. Steel Series Gauges
    • Gauges for use with our web interface.
20. DF Robot Liquid Level Sensor
    • Non-Contact liquid level sensor used to monitor the level of Acid in our holding tank. Connected to a Raspberry Pi.
21. Brultech GEM Greeneye Electrical Monitor
    • Home electrical monitoring system and dashboard. Monitors every single electrical circuit in our house and utilizes a python script to write all of the data to EmonCMS where we can use it to monitor pool system electrical load, solar production and household electrical usage.

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EmonCMS software EmonPi Hub and EmonTH sensors comprise the core of our sensor monitoring capabilities!

We utilize the EmonPi as our wireless hub:

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Revision History

V2.4 now includes 5 different system status LEDs. These include:

• Sprinklers Running (BLUE)
• Pool Pump Running (YELLOW) (requires some type of external power monitor)
• System OK (GREEN)
• System ERROR (RED)
• Pool Filling (BLUE)
  
  

V2.5 (2016-06-04)

• Added additional DPDT switch that physically breaks power to the sprinkler fill valve as well as sets notifications, resets the fill relay (if in use) and logs the event.
• Added additional LED for the above switch to show when we have manually cut off power to our sprinkler fill valve.
• Centralized all Pushbullet notifications
• Various bug fixes

V2.6 (2016-06-05)

• Code Optimization
• Bug Fixes
• Added Watchdog support - if no watchdog notification every 70 seconds, script restarts

V2.7 (2016-06-11) - Added Atlas Scientific pH and ORP probes to system. They are, for now, just logging to log file (logger.info).

V2.8 (2016-06-13)

• Updated how the pH and ORP probes are read.
• Added ability to log to one or more Emoncms servers, locally or remote

V2.9 (2016-06-18)

• Eliminated alerting.py file, added contents to pooldb.py file.
• Added a lot of DEBUG printing to STDOUT if DEBUG == 1 is set.
• Moved pool_level and pump_running_watts table defs to pooldb.py so that you do not have to modify table definitions in main script.
• Added in temperature compensation function for pH readings if you have a pool water temp probe. Configuration is done in pooldb.py

V3.0 (2016-09-04)

• Added additional relay to control sprinkler transformer so it is not running 24x7.
• Added new function to control both relays.
• Added addition debug and logging messages.
  

V3.1 (2016-10-08)

• Added new sensor checking function to check that our temp and pool level sensors are responding as required and included notifications if they exceed a certain number of timeouts or their battery voltage drops too low. Also updated pool fill to stop automatically if we lose communication with with our pool level sensor.

• Updated pool_fill() to include calls to differnt functions to streamline that particular function. Also cuts down on a couple of global variables. Need to continue to clean this up as I go through and optimize the code.

• Changed the way we get the pool level. We used to have a 0 or a 1 programmed to be sent directly from the sensor. We would then make a decision to fill the pool based on the reading from the sensor. Now I output the actual resistance from the sensor to the database and using these values we can change the level of when we want to fill the pool within pooldb.py instead of having to physically reflash the pool_level arduino sensor.

V3.2 (Unpublished)

V3.3.03.01 (2018-02-22)

• Major rewrite of code. Instead of a very large, nearly monolithic threaded application, I rewrote the code into various parts. The first part is a threaded application that does nothing more than to watch for physical button presses on the pool control console and does an action based on what button has been pressed. The second part is a cron based application that does all of the sensor checking and data gathering and fills the pool when necessary.

• Flask web frontend (V1) completed. Basic implementation of a Flask framework and web frontend that allows viewing of all of the pool parameters like temperature, pool water level, pH, Orp, pump watts in use, battery conditions for the various sensors and more. It also allows for the manual filling of the pool as well as the stopping of an automatic fill that is already running. Includes ability to toggle all notifications (email, sms & pushbullet) as well as debug and logging setting via the web interface.

• Added Acid level sensor and associated functions to watch the acid level in tank and notify us when the acid level get too low.

• Added email and twilio (SMS) notifications to pushbullet. Requires (free) pushbullet an/or paid Twilio account.

  
  

V3.3.05 (2018-02-27)

• Added pump control of Pentair Intelliflo VF pump. MAJOR thanks to Russell Goldin (russ.goldin@gmail.com) for his amazing work on the Pentair RS-485 control software needed for my system to be able to talk to and control my pump. You can check out his github HERE.
• Updated templates/index.html to add pump status and controls to web interface
• Updated main code to include start/stop and system checks for pump control
• Added ability to start and stop pump control software from web interface.
• Added House Main power watts, total watts in use and Solar production to web interface. Eventually this will allow me to control my pump based on solar output instead of just ON & OFF.
• Minor logging and bug fixes

V3.4 (2018-03-16)

• Started the process to pull functions into their own modules. Started with get_ph.py and get_orp.py but will be doing more of this as I move forward just to clean up the code and separate out various functions.
• Built in the ability to toggle (via the web interface) notifications based on various systems (pump control, fill, DB errors, time outs, etc) so that you can fine tune the types of notifications that you get on a regular basis.
• Rewrote the get_ph and get_orp functions to clean up serial utilization and take care of some weird data errors. Also they can be called as standalone scripts or via the main pool_control_master.py.
• Rewrote temperature correction for pH and now allow pH recording less temperature correction if there is no water temp probe on the system. This will result in slightly inaccurate pH, but it is better than nothing.
• Updated web interface to add pH and ORP active gauges.
• Updated web interface Pump GPM so that if the pump control is offline the gauge will now read "0" instead of "31" which is what the pump reports even thought is is off.
• Cleaned up the code in the web interface. Still more to do here.

V3.4.6 (2018-09-23)

• Rewrote all notification functions including logging, debug, sms, email, and pushbullet. (notifications.py)
• Integrated InfluxDB for reading and writing various temperature, power and pH/Orp data points.
• Added ability to toggle automatic pool fill function via the web interface.
• Added pool pH and ORP graphs to bottom of web interface via Grafana and InfluxDB.
• Continued code cleanup as I learn more about python and better ways of doing things!

V3.5.0 (2019-02-16)

• Renamed project files _db.py to identify new database functionality.
• Rewrote code to remove reading system status and other information from flat files - now using MySQL instead. This solved an occasional error where I would get a file lock problem on the flat file causing the system to crash.
• Removed all database functions from main code and created a use_database.py function to manage database calls systemwide.
• Reworked code that tracks how many gallons of water have been added to the pool to fix an error in water tracking. See reset_gallon_stop_meter().
• Added Alexa skill.
• Added code to integrate with Alexa's ability to fill or stop filling pool.
• Added code to integrate with Alexa's ability to tell us all of our system information.
• Added code to integrate Alexa with web interface so you can tell if pool fill was called automatically, manually or by Alexa.
• Added additional sensors to monitoring:
  • Garage & Attic Temperature Sensor Battery Voltage
  • Pool Temp and Pool Level Temperature & Humidity for sensor boxes (sealed & waterproof) to monitor internal temps and humidity and alert me when they go over a specified value.
• Cleaned up sensor testing/checking code. Prevents pool fill if level sensor has timed out (for obvious reasons).
• Switched to local MySQL database as opposed to cloud based MySQL install.
• Starting the process of docstring integration into my code.
• Removed eTape for water level, replaced it with dual level float and rewrote Arduino (emonTH) sketch as well as updated code that reads the actual pool level for starting and stopping water.
• Added several functions for internal testing, noted as such in code.
• Consolidated get_pump_rpm(), get_pump_gpm(), get_pump_watts() into a single function get_pump_data(key) where key is rpm, gpm or watts. Works only when pumpControl software is active, otherwise we zero out rpm and gpm and derive watts from separate (Greeneye) electrical moniting system.
• Added web interface ability to force a system reset if necessary.
• Starting the process of looking at every single global variable to see if I can rewrite my code to eliminate as many of them as possible.
• Updated notifications_db.py to include a flask specific logging function log_flask().
• Added sensor timeout LEDs on Pool Temp and Pool Level sensors. If they timeout, a Red flashing LED shows up on the face of the gauges until the timeout is over.

V3.5.1 (2019-03-02)

• Reworked logging (again)!
• Added additional error checking for logging.

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Author

Richard J. Sears - richardjsears@gmail.com - The RS Technical Group, Inc.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the MIT License for details

Acknowledgments

While there are a lot of people that deserve acknowledgments because they wrote amazing code, these folks went out of their way to help me out on this project and I want to call them out:

• Russell Goldin (tagyoureit) - Thank you for all the extra time you spent helping to get my pool pump under control of my software.

• Felix over at LowPowerLabs - Not only did Felix design the Moteinos that I use throughout my project, but he (and others in the LPL forums) put up with all of my questions trying to understand how to get the most out of my battery life.

• The great community over at Openenergymonitor.org including @Paul, @Robert.Wall and @TrystanLea (among others).

• My Amazing and loving family! My wonderful wife and kids who put up with all of my coding and automation projects and who encourage me in all things. Without them this project would not be possible and I will still be filling our pool with a hose.

• And last but not least, my brother James who is a continual source of inspiration to me and to others. Everyone should have a brother as awesome as mine!