Balboa GL8000 Mach 3

[stefsng]

Great project – thank you for sharing!

Hi everyone,
First of all, thank you for this impressive project! I own a spa running on a Balboa GL8000M3, so I was very excited to give this a try.

At first, I mistakenly tried to flash the firmware using the Arduino IDE. After some trial and error, I succeeded using VS Code with PlatformIO – much better!
Another early mistake was attempting to connect via my ioBroker MQTT setup. This caused some odd behavior on the ML700 topside panel. Eventually, I switched to Home Assistant, which I installed in parallel via Docker on my Linux host. That setup worked much better.

I'm really impressed that I can already control the spa lights and pumps 1 and 2 and changing the temperature. My spa actually has three pumps plus an air blower, but those additional components are not yet recognized.
It seems like reading or setting the time doesn't work yet, and what would be especially useful to me – setting the filter cycles – also appears unsupported so far.

If I understand correctly, I should analyze the raw data received from the system to find out what parts of the code I’d need to adapt.
One thing that caught my attention: commands are not always sent reliably. For example, when I try to change the speed level of a 2-speed pump, it sometimes turns off instead of switching levels. I wonder if this could be related to the infamous "Pin 5" signal?
Additionally, I noticed that switching between modes (Sleep / Standard / Economy) does not work reliably either – sometimes the mode doesn't change at all, or the panel shows inconsistent states afterwards.

Thanks again for your work and for the learning experience – I now have a much better understanding of RS485 to TTL and Wi-Fi bridging.
Maybe in the future, I’ll try to adapt your code to support my third pump and the air blower.

One final thought: My GL8000 board has another "remote" connector, and I read that there used to be ADCM splitter/hub boards available, along with a "Menu Panel Transceiver" and PC software called Spa Control Dashboard. I couldn't find any of those parts on eBay, but they might offer a more direct and reliable interface with the main controller instead of emulating the topside panel.
Has anyone here experimented with this type of setup?

Thanks again, and looking forward to hearing your insights!

Best regards,
Stefan