After discussing the issue with Milone I decided that the cost to replace it and potentially suffer the same problem was not worth the cost of replacement. UPDATE: Unfortunately for some reason, my Milone eTape suffered from getting water inside the actual jacket and failed. Milone would be happy to create a specific sized unit for me as well since none of their sizes would fit where I wanted to place it. I started to doing research and came along a company that manufactured a liquid tape measure that changed resistance as the level of the water (or other liquid) went up or down.

A way to fill the pool once the water was low.

A way to measure the level of the water.

Initially, I figured I needed to be able to do two things:

I figured with a Raspberry Pi and a normal sprinkler valve, I would be in business! I purchased another Pi (I use them all over the place for various projects) and laid out what I wanted it to do. Now that the physical plant was installed and operational, I thought it would be nice to be able to fill the pool without having to get the hose out all of the time. We also got our kitchen back which ended up being my workshop for the project. There was no other automation beyond those things.Įventually, we got everything figured out. (My family says I chose it because I am a pilot and liked the name!) This system would allow me to convert the pool to a saltwater pool and handle some of the management, mainly running the saltwater generator when necessary and pumping acid to manage the pH. I opted for a management system called the Autopilot. Pretty much everything had to go.Įarly on I had decided to incorporate some automation into the new pool system. Needless to say, all of that concrete and those pool lines had to be replaced in order for the project to move forward. We were hit with a few setbacks, one of which was when they installed the fence they poured concrete around the lines going from the filter system to the pool. Something needed to be done and that is when my son's and I decided to overhaul the entire pool system and write our own code to run it all. While our pool was now looking crystal clear, the problem remained that the system running the pool was way old and out of date.

Pool electrical control panel