Simple Chlorine generator cell control??????

[airbrush]

Given all the troubles with the Aquarite and others control boards, has anyone ever developed/built/invented a simple, sort of manual control for the cell?

My thinking is an appropriate power supply, a simple on-off timer (time adjustable) connected through a flow switch to the cell. Control would be based on time only along with the flow switch interface. No readings - you would use other methods to measure salt, etc.

Any thoughts?

[PoolDoc]

My guess, the original controls were just like that. But, US marketing lives and dies by 'feature creep' and 'new and improved', even when "new" isn't "improved" at all.

One issue will be the question of how the power supply converts the low voltage AC output of the transformer into DC to power the cell -- if it's just diodes and capacitors, then you can probably bypass the board. But if it's a transistorized switching power supply, the power circuit is probably part of the same board as the control circuits, and will be hard to bypass or replace.

[PoolDoc]

This article touches on many of the issues you'd be likely to face:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched-mode_power_supply