Check Your Smartphone If Your Pool Is Ready For Swimming
Love the idea of swimming in a fresh pool on a hot summer day, but
don’t like the idea of swimming in something over-chlorinated or
possibly full of bacteria? There’s a new Bluetooth-enabled pool
maintenance sensor called pHin that will check the chemicals and tell you when the pool is ready for you to take that plunge.
The oblong-shaped pHin device continuously monitors a pool’s water chemistry and then tells you on a smartphone app when it’s safe to get in.
All you have to do is plop pHin into the water and add a few
water-soluble packets that come with the device, according to your pools
needs.
Other automatic pool chemical systems can cost around $500 to $1,200 to install. Sutro’s connected pool chemical system will also monitor the pool on your smartphone for
$229 if you pre-order. However, pHin comes with a subscription service
that starts at $149 for three months. The premeasured, color-coded
chemical pods show up at your door, ready to drop into the pool, just
like you would with a Tide pod, as needed.
pHin co-founder Justin Miller, who previously worked for Comcast,
came up with the idea for a connected pool chemical monitoring system
last summer while barbecuing in a neighbor’s backyard.
“I was looking at the pool,
and the Internet of Things was on my mind because of what I was working
on for Comcast Xfinity Home,” Miller said. “Pool and hot tub
owners spend a great deal of time taking water samples, testing the
chemistry, comparing to a color chart, calculating the amount of
chemicals needed. It’s a complicated process. I realized I could take out the complication with a connected pool device.”
That same neighbor with the pool, Mark Janes, became Miller’s
business partner and the two started the ConnectedYard, a startup that
aims to create Bluetooth-enabled hardware devices to monitor things in
your backyard, beginning with the pool.
Backed with about $200,000 in seed by Tandem Capital, pHin is the
first product from the startup. And pools are likely a good place to
start for the connected backyard. Pool season is just starting to heat
up, and there are more than 21 million people
with pools or hot tubs across in the U.S. Miller estimates that about
75 percent of these pool and hot tub owners perform the maintenance
themselves.
The connected part also makes it pretty easy for an owner. You don’t
have to check physically if the pool is ready; you just pull up an app
on your smartphone to test the pool temperature, PH, chlorine,
alkalinity, water hardness and cyanuric acid. The app will also tell you
when to add more pods to the pool when needed.
Should you need more than just some pods, pHin offers on-demand pool
cleaners or a pump repair person who will show up and take care of your
pool or hot tub for a fee.
pHin is only available to order on the website for now, and won’t
ship until the first part of 2016, though Miller said he was in talks
with several physical stores and hot tub manufacturers who may be able
to offer the device and service for purchase in the future.
Courtesy: TechCrunch
