My Dolphin: Now I'm getting rid of it

That is helpful Hzz.

One issue I also found annoying about my Aquabot (regular model) was that the tracks would slip out of their place, which would then stretch them even more before you noticed to push them back. With more stretching, then they would be even more likely to do it again, and the tracks would get looser all the time and more problematic, long before they ever should have worn out. I had the old model with the floats on it compared to the new floating cable, which were really bad for being eaten and then damaging the aquabot if you weren't there.

One thing good about pool rover plus was it did have the floating cord they all have now, but it also didn't have any tracks to eat the cord or to stretch or break. As posted by me elsewhere, the problem was with coverage on an oval pool. If I thought it would cover my new pool, which is more rectangular in shape (but larger and with inlet for wide set of steps that might be a problem), I might get it again. My pool rover plus never broke, but I had it a short time before washed away in Katrina. On an oval pool, it was bad. No matter how long I fiddled with the cycles, it always ended up cyling in same spot. It relies on somethign like a "y-turn," which relies upon the pool rover goign straight in 1 direction, and turning in the other. In oval pool (with stright sides), the pool wall curve would make it also curve, throwing it off, and it would do same exact path over and over once it got to the deep end.

The tracks haven't been a problem for me,yet.

You are right that they do slip out occasionally,but not too often on mine and I am still on my original tracks after 7 years.

Actually, everything is original on my Aquabot except the black socket on the power supply which cracked this year. Part was only $9.00

I think luck has something to do with it!

Of course I sent back the power supply and the remote to Smart Pool. I KNOW it's working perfectly--after all you plug it in and the motor runs....Right?

Well, apparently Smartpool think so. Speed on a DC motor is very dependant on the voltage of the power supply ( I'm not sure it is DC )

Yeah, according to Smart Pool my unit is working perfectly. According to CarlD, Smart Pool is full of it.

On your Turbo, HZZ, did you have the regular tracks or the ones that are bigger, that you only see on some Turbos, I think "H" models or something like that. Aqua products charges more for the bigger track ones, but some seller was telling me the regular tracks (which is what I have on regular Aquabot) stay on better. Anybody have an opinion on that. I'm semi-tempted just pick up a refurbished Turbo since you can get them for about $500 on ebay.

As far as I know, I have the regular tracks. I certainly didn't pay any extra for the tracks and I don't recall it being an "H" model.

Well, the Blue Diamond arrived last night and the jury is still out on this thing. Somethings are upsetting but OK--the foam brushes are hard and look messed up--they just have to soak up water. The brown stains also concerned me but they test them in water in Israel, then they have to dry out and there can be mold or other stuff:

http://home.earthlink.net/~dashmanc/...ler%20%231.jpg

The chipped clip below the port may get it replaced. In the water, the brushes got big and soft.

It didn't seem to want to climb the walls consistently, but they tell me it only does it on the 1st, 3rd and 7th time it hits a wall. Again, that makes sense.

They tell me with my pool to be VERY wary of wear on the liner just above the bottom of the pool--where the unit bumps into the wall--they don't recommend this usually for an A/G pool, especially round or oval. Mine is rectangular so it's more what the unit is designed for--they'll get back to me.

But MOST disturbing is that 5 minutes after being dropped in the pool last night it got jammed under the ladder. This morning I left it to go eat breakfast it was jammed again. It shuts down, which is good, but the pool wasn't clean yet, which is bad.

Here's the ladder it can't negotiate:

http://home.earthlink.net/~dashmanc/...pEndHopper.jpg

So, the jury is still out and it may be going back really, really soon!

Meanwhile, Maytronics and Smart Pool have gone silent on me.

CarlD,
Did you notice any scratches on your liner from the Dolphin. I have 6-8" scratches around the end on the bottom. Looks like where the Dolphin runs along the side (oval) against the wall. Thought it maybe pieces flakes of Kooldeck in the pool? Disturbing none the less.

CarlD,

Thanks for the review so far, i would agree looking at the pics the less than new looking condition would have me concerned. Of course if it works no worrys. But for that kind of money i would think it would be in shiny new condition even if it was water tested.

Best of luck hope it works out for you!!

R

The pads are just fine. My Blue Pearl has similar sort of pads - two big ones rather than 4 small ones and they are rock hard when dry, but get nice and soft and spongie in the water quickly.

As far as getting caught on the ladder I used to have that problem with my Polaris. What I did was get a couple of sections of 2" (or maybe it was 1.5" - I forget) PVC pipe and I cut out a section of the pipe longitudinally that was maybe an inch or an inch and a half wide so I could force the pvc pipe over the verticle sections of the ladder. This made it a smaller opening between the ladder edge and the pool wall so the cleaner would not get stuck in there.

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Originally Posted by cleancloths

The pads are just fine. My Blue Pearl has similar sort of pads - two big ones rather than 4 small ones and they are rock hard when dry, but get nice and soft and spongie in the water quickly.

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Yeah, they did that on mine too. As I said, I was less concerned--first, there was a notice wrapped around them saying expect them to be hard and let it soak in the pool for a few minutes before the first run. The brown concerned me but, while ugly, it's not critical.

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As far as getting caught on the ladder I used to have that problem with my Polaris. What I did was get a couple of sections of 2" (or maybe it was 1.5" - I forget) PVC pipe and I cut out a section of the pipe longitudinally that was maybe an inch or an inch and a half wide so I could force the pvc pipe over the verticle sections of the ladder. This made it a smaller opening between the ladder edge and the pool wall so the cleaner would not get stuck in there.

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What a GREAT IDEA! I have plenty of 1.5" stock--and with a cap glued to the bottom to keep from scratching the liner...WOW! That could really work well! Form a picket! Completely different from the barrier I had in mind. Maybe bungee them to the ladder, too. Easy!

THANK YOU!

BTW, has anybody got any experience with a Diamond in a vinyl pool with perfectly vertical walls? Is there abrasion on the liner where the unit turns to climb the wall?

And a slight correction Carl. The Blue Diamond is made in the USA. ;) Maytronics' stuff is made in Israel. Please keep your opinions coming as you see them happen.

This morning the guy at the AquaTron International service center (for Blue Diamond) told me that the Blue Diamond is made in Israel.

Maybe HE'S wrong, but that's what he told me.

I'm, of course, aware that Maytronics is in Israel (on some kibbutz over there).

The brown stains on the brushes should come off after a few cleanings, as far as wearing on the liner goes, it happened it 2 spots in my pool . nothing major, just a drop of rubbed off pattern, no noticle difference in texture or strength in those areas.It is a great a great cleaner, I'm on my third season.

Is there some Israeli swimming pool cleaner mafia going on here or what? ;)

Carl,

Good luck on the Blue Diamond. I have had an Aquabot Turbo for 3 years now and love it. If it gets stuck somewhere, it will back up in a minute and keep on cleaning. If you send your Diamond back, I highly recommend the Aquabot Turbo. Their customer service is fabulous as well.

Right now, I pulled out the ladder and it seems to be working just fine. I cut one "picket" to clip on the ladder but it doesn't help--it tried to climb the vertical 1.5" PVC! I think with 2 it will work better--or a cheap 1/2" wrench hung nearby to loosen the two ladder bolts.

It has a weird pattern of only climbing the walls every ood number of times. But if that's how it's designed, that's how it's designed.

An Israeli mafia for pool cleaners? Apparently that's the fact. But that's NOTHING next to the Taiwan mafia that makes EVERY motherboard in every PC in the world--all in a strip about 10 miles long and a few miles wide.

I got my Dolphin back from a SmartPool repair depot. Put it in the water in the shallow end, and after a pass or two, it settled in the deep end and there it stayed. I tried ths thing for two days and it never came close to covering the whole pool. Just went back and forth across the width of the pool in the deep section.

I got the O.K. to return it and it is going back Monday.

I talked to a couple of guys at the pool store who have Dolphins and they love 'em. Oh well ...

-Jim

All these Dolphin problems are starting to sound like they have a problem in the microprocessor that they claim controls these beasts. I wonder if they go a batch of bad chips?

It sure sounds like a bad microprocessor or a bad batch of ROM chips, doesn't it.

I'm sorry to hear the Smart Pool keeps sending people's Dolphins back without fixing the problems, claiming they are fixed.

Meanwhile I haven't heard from MayTronics in Israel. I will send the reference to this thread along and let THEM see what they think!

But I WISH I could catch a break..:(

The Blue Diamond works perfectly if I loosen the 2 bolts and pop the ladder out. I tried using just one picket on the ladder but that didn't work--I need to have 2 but I havent cut the 2nd yet.

So I let it run during the night with the ladder out. This morning I'm coiling up the cable--and there's a slash in it! Luckily it's not all the way through the insulation, just the surface, but it means when it came up the wall it gobbled the cable and damaged it! D*** thing is BRAND NEW!!!!! The cable does NOT uncoil as smoothly as the Dolphin's and does not get straight the way the Dolphin's does, and isn't as tough or as hard-shelled. The Dolphin NEVER did this.

The power supply stores UNDER the Diamond--How stupid is THAT??? and isn't nearly as sealed as the Dolphin's. For a device that costs a lot more, some more thought should have gone into parts of it.

But it works. Still, how come I can't catch a break???:eek:

It wasn't too long ago that the quality (of all things!) of the Mercedes automobile was at a low point because of faulty and/or unreliable electronics components.

The process controller on my Sharp microwave goes out about every 9 to 12 months.

Ahhh, electronics ... can't live with 'em and can't live without 'em.

-Jim

I still don't think these things have anything more than abosolute minimal procesing on board.

It doesn't add up. If it could calcualte it's path real well it could finish a 16 x 32 pool in less than an hour. The guys that make know it's dumb. That's why the program goes to 8 hours.

It's barely got any more brains than a Kreepy Krawly

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Originally Posted by cheshamjim

It wasn't too long ago that the quality (of all things!) of the Mercedes automobile was at a low point because of faulty and/or unreliable electronics components.

The process controller on my Sharp microwave goes out about every 9 to 12 months.

Ahhh, electronics ... can't live with 'em and can't live without 'em.

-Jim

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Jeez, Jim.

Don't even get me STARTED on Mercedes and THEIR quality control! To charge what they charge for the unreliable crap they put out is the new definition of that fine old Yiddish word: CHUTZPAH!

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Originally Posted by brent.roberts

I still don't think these things have anything more than abosolute minimal procesing on board.

It doesn't add up. If it could calcualte it's path real well it could finish a 16 x 32 pool in less than an hour. The guys that make know it's dumb. That's why the program goes to 8 hours.

It's barely got any more brains than a Kreepy Krawly

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Brent,

If it moved that fast to do an 18 x 36 pool, walls and all in an hour, it seems like it would move so fast that it would just fan the dirt instead of picking it up.

Carl, some of the issues you pointed out with the BD are exactly what I was concerned about. Honestly from the website pictures it just doesn't look to have the quality of the Dolphin (especially from an ergonomics perspective). That is not to say the Dolphin is rock solid but it seems to be a better package when looking at the PS, unit and cart together. To me the cart of the BD looks cheap, the power supply even cheaper all while costing $500 more than the Dolphin. The fact that your "new" unit looked used when you opened it doesn't sound promising either. The brushes are supposed to be state of the art and resist staining etc so they should have been spotless when you opened it. The fact that the cord already has a slash in it concerns me as well.

Honestly, from what you have stated so far and the fact that you have to remove your ladder to get it to work, it just doesn't sound like it's worth $500 more.

Dissappointing as I was prepared to buy one..........

I can't argue with that. It's a lot faster than the Dolphin, but there are a lot of "hits" on it that bother me.

Right now, though, it has one BIG, all-encompassing advantage....IT WORKS!!!!

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Originally Posted by VOLDADDY

Brent,

If it moved that fast to do an 18 x 36 pool, walls and all in an hour, it seems like it would move so fast that it would just fan the dirt instead of picking it up.

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It goes 50 feet a minute. That's about a length of the pool a minute. If it only covered a 1 foot wide path, it would be done in well under an hour.

But of course it does not have the brains that the advertizing alludes to, in fact it is random just like a Kreepy Krawly. I sure smells like false advertizing to me.

CarlD,
I'm on my third season with the BD remote, it is an awesome machine.It cleans my 25 X40 , 30K gallon vinyl pool in an hour .I've never had the cord eaten by the machine , but I do have some tangling of the cord , which happened as well with the Dolphin Dynamic I tested in the whole 3 days I tried it !! .AS far as the Power supply being stored under the machine, I agree while it's not the optimum place for it , I've never had a failure with it, in fact i left it out this past winter by the pool , uncovered , and just got a drop of rust by the two screws holding the connector where the cord goes.The machine goes around the pool much quickler than the Dolphins , and the factr that randomly they turn and go in a total opposite direction, really gets the pool clean, it doesn't miss a spot.As far as climbing the walls , mine was the first year model of the BD remote, it only goes up the wall on the 7th time it hits it, it WILL START to go up the wall/floor angle, realize it's on a wall and come right down, if you hit the "program" button on the remote , then it climbs each time it hits the wall.

Thanks, Rescue, but I did find that out. The wall-climbing program is in the manual, but the 7th go I got from the svc ctr.

I don't see anyway but pulling out the ladder each time.

I do have to say it got the pool sparkling. I was swimming laps this AM and the water was cleaner than it's ever been. They tell me I can use my extra Dolphin bags in it two. They are multiple layered and if they work, I suspect they'll catch more stuff.

My understanding is that the Blue Diamond (and Pearl) use a bag that is rated at 2 microns while the Dolphin has a 20 microns bag. Thus, the water is going to look much cleaner with the BD/BP as many tiny particles that scatter light are being removed with the BD/BP.

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Originally Posted by cleancloths

My understanding is that the Blue Diamond (and Pearl) use a bag that is rated at 2 microns while the Dolphin has a 20 microns bag. Thus, the water is going to look much cleaner with the BD/BP as many tiny particles that scatter light are being removed with the BD/BP.

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Hard to believe. The BD bag is a thin, single layer. The Dolphin bag is triple layered.

I've been pretty amazed at the fine stuff the Dophin bag picks up. Just a brown haze in the cloth.

If I'd had this last year I likley would not have changed the sand filter for a DE.

Just so everyone else following this thread knows. I send a message to Maytronics in Isreal directly and challenged them to join this discussion.

While they may be monitoring it, they did not respond to me and have not made any comment here.

That was about a week ago.

Pretty poor.

The thickness of the bag has very little to do with the micron rating. You can have paper thin filters with very low ratings while a thick burlap bag would have a very high micron rating. Maytronics states that they filter down to 20 microns will the Blue Diamond and Blue Pearl claim filtration down to 2 microns.

Carl

If the Blue Diamond can accept the filter of the Dolhin, the fit should also work the other way, so those of us with Dolphins might get better filtering with the Blue Diamond filter.

Could you try that for to see if it is workable ?

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Originally Posted by brent.roberts

Just so everyone else following this thread knows. I send a message to Maytronics in Isreal directly and challenged them to join this discussion.

While they may be monitoring it, they did not respond to me and have not made any comment here.

That was about a week ago.

Pretty poor.

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Just to be fair to Maytronics: They HAVE been in touch with me, I sent them this link, and they tried and were UNABLE to access the thread.

I sent them a text ver of the thread up through yesterday morning.

Brent, I think they should have responded to your eMail, but if you don't have an actual repair issue with Smart Pool you can reference, I can understand it being low priority with them.

Or else they felt that since they were in touch with me, that was all that was needed. I don't know--I do not know what they were thinking but they ASSURE me they are all over Smart Pool like stink on a skunk.

Question for Brent: The Dolphin I sent back was the Diagnostic model, very basic with no user programmability or joystick. I don't think it could teach itself anything.

Those models that are supposed to be self programming -- wouldn't they have to have somekind of encoders and/or sensors to acquire data?

-Jim

About the only thing I think they could do is have a level switch that started a timer when they went up a wall. A simple program on a chip could capture the time it took between hitting walls and figure out something about the pool lenghth and width.

From observing mine all that the timing would do would be to tell it how long to spend going in each direction so it had some time when it hit the surface to creep along the waterline ... doing 2 things. First it would actually be scrubbing the waterline a bit and secondly repositioning it for a reverse run across a new section of bottom. I have notice that mine does not spend a lot of time scrubbing walls at each end of a run. Almost all the scrubbing at waterline and creeping along, is at the same end of the cycle. This ends up with the thing actually going around the pool in the same direction in each cycle. When you take it out to clean it and reverse the handle, it goes around the other way. Not very sophisticated "robotics" but it kinda works. It does generate a random pattern that eventually, in like 6 hours, covers the bottom of a traditional 16x32 pool. But if it was real smart it could cover that area in less than an hour.

There appears to me to be no encoders. No idle wheel that senses that it has hit an obstruction. It might sense current draw on the motor when it hits an obstruction but that seems unlikely. It might also sense that it has not gone up a wall in a while and know it has hit an obstruction. I think Carl reported that his Diamond did that when it hung up on his ladder.

By the way I have never challenged the Dolphin with a ladder. Took the ladder out and left it out. Neither Kreepy Krawly, nor Barracuda, nor Polaris ATV could work with the ladder in.

Why do you want to get rid of me http://www.lisasimmonds.com/Gallery/dolphin%20smile.JPG

:D ... Sorry bad joke :p

I have a ladder....Dolphin seems to have no problems with it.

I am beginning to think I am lucky....