PoolSense: set to change the face of pool maintenance forever
Technews Industry Guide: Industrial Internet of Things & Industry 4.0
News
The automatic pool cleaner changed the face of pool cleaning forever, but maintaining the quality of the water has remained a difficult and expensive task. PoolSense is about to change this. An unobtrusive device that floats in the pool and regularly samples and transmits the quality of the water now delivers simple dosing instructions to an app running on the user’s smartphone. It is a simple and effective solution to an age-old problem, designed to save pool owners both time and money.
The technology
The PoolSense device continuously measures temperature, pH and oxidation reduction potential (ORP), and regularly transmits this data to the cloud. From there, the data is continuously run through a self-learning algorithm that effectively understands how each pool responds to the addition of chemicals as requested by the app. This allows continuous refinement of the decisions around just how much acid and chlorine must be added to keep water condition optimal at all times.
Dave Wibberley, managing director of Adroit Technologies and a founding member of PoolSesnse designer Pro Automation, explains: “The Internet of Things, combined with low power networks like Sigfox, has enabled this development. We could finally get to a price point that makes a device like PoolSense affordable to everyone who owns a pool. In the future, it will not be a ‘nice to have’ device for techies, but we believe every pool owner will have one. It pays for itself through the cost saving on chemicals, and takes away the hassle of manual measurements and the guesswork associated with the quantity of each chemical that must be added to maintain a perfect pool all year round.”
Pro Automation technical lead Heinrich Heesen adds: “The IoT and cloud computing allowed us to tackle the problem on a large scale and develop a better understanding of the chemistry and performance required for a cost-effective solution. A system like this requires a multi-disciplinary approach and the efficiency of the Sigfox network allowed us to add a global communication capability and still meet the design criteria for a 2-year (minimum) operating life for this innovative new instrument.”
The product has won accolades from the Innovation Hub and also made the finals of the 2018 MTN IoT Awards, which take place in September. For further reading please go to: https://www.dataweek.co.za/62170n
For more information contact Kevin Herbert, Pro Automation, +27 82 605 8260, [email protected], www.poolsense.net
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