For years, swimming pool automation has largely centered on one basic proposition: giving homeowners and professionals an easier way to control equipment. Pumps could be scheduled, heaters adjusted, lights activated and features operated remotely.

Jandy’s next-generation AquaLink EDGE platform is being developed around a broader idea. Instead of treating automation simply as a control system, Fluidra is looking at a future where equipment, sensors and software are interconnected, constantly producing information about how a pool and its components are actually performing.

Alongside AquaLink EDGE, Fluidra is developing trackr iO, a software platform designed to connect that information with the operational side of a pool business.

“The biggest difference here is that current automation in the market just focuses on mainly the convenience of getting things turned on and off,” said Jeremy Young, Director of Product Marketing for Automation at Fluidra. “With this automation system, we were able to start from the ground up, and we’re building an ecosystem of automation and equipment working together, focusing on the data that the equipment produces and other sensors produce.”

For pool professionals, that evolution potentially reaches well beyond convenience. More connected equipment could mean better diagnostics, predictive maintenance, and a shorter learning curve for technicians entering the field.

Making Automation Easier to Work With

One of the first problems Fluidra set out to address was complexity.

Automation systems have become increasingly capable, but that capability can create a steeper learning curve for installers and service technicians. Young said that can be particularly noticeable in seasonal markets, where some professionals may interact with automation less frequently.

“As a professional, it can be very difficult to set a system up,” Young said. “You even see a lot of professionals that maybe avoid automation because of that.”

AquaLink EDGE attempts to streamline installation and programming by consolidating setup functions and making the interface more intuitive. Fluidra is also developing the ability to save configurations as templates that could eventually be loaded onto other pools.

The system supports legacy Jandy equipment while providing the foundation for a new generation of connected products, including SpeedSet Plus, enhancements to the Infinite Color platform and future water-care and heating products.

Hearing What Pool Pros Really Wanted

One of the most immediately noticeable changes for technicians is physical: AquaLink EDGE includes a five-inch display inside the enclosure.

That decision came directly from field feedback.

“Pool professionals want to get in and out of the backyard,” Young said. “They don’t want to mess with their phone. They don’t want to mess with the internet or anything like that, and they need access to the whole system.”

The system also isn’t dependent on a cloud connection for its primary functionality. Processing occurs locally at the hardware, allowing technicians and homeowners to continue operating the pool when internet connectivity is unavailable.

Fluidra found through its research that smartphone control alone wasn’t necessarily what consumers wanted either. Young said more than 70% of consumers surveyed wanted a dedicated interface inside the home. Consequently, every EDGE system includes a 10-inch indoor display.

For vacation rentals or homes with frequent guests, that provides another practical benefit. Temporary users don’t necessarily need to download an app or receive account access simply to operate the pool.

Connectivity has also been modernized. EDGE supports 5 GHz Wi-Fi and is optimized for mesh networks, while pairing with the app can be completed by scanning a QR code.

Those improvements address how professionals interact with automation at an individual pool. The larger implications begin when information from that pool can follow the technician back to the office.

Connecting the Equipment Pad to the Business

That is where trackr iO enters the picture.

Fluidra is developing trackr iO as a software layer capable of receiving information from connected equipment and turning it into something a pool company can act upon.

“With EDGE we can give you the status, how things are going,” explained Orlando Gadea, Vice President of Global Digital Marketing and Customer Experience for Fluidra. “With trackr iO, we let you actually take actions.”

A low-pH condition, equipment fault or other issue could eventually become more than an alert. It could initiate a workflow that allows a company to schedule a visit, assign a technician and address the problem.

One future integration Young described illustrates how closely the two platforms could eventually interact. A technician arriving for weekly service might have the EDGE enclosure display automatically optimized around the work order in trackr iO. Work performed at the equipment pad could then be synchronized back to the software rather than requiring the technician to operate one system and separately document the same tasks in another.

Empowering Proactive Rather Than Reactive Response

The more consequential use case involves what happens after the technician leaves.

A pump might stop operating Tuesday after the pool was serviced Monday. Today, the company may not discover the problem until the homeowner notices deteriorating water conditions or the technician returns the following week.

“With EDGE and trackr iO, when the pump stops working, you’ll be the first one to know it,” Gadea said. “You’ll see in your dashboard, ‘The pump in this home is down. Do you want me to schedule a repair job?’”

That begins to shift pool service from a purely scheduled model toward one increasingly informed by the actual condition of the pool and its equipment.

The amount of information available should increase as the equipment itself becomes smarter. Existing Jandy equipment can provide certain fault and diagnostic information, while next-generation products are being designed to generate considerably more operating data.

Young pointed to SpeedSet Plus as an example, saying those pumps will contribute 28 data points to Fluidra’s data bank.

That creates an opportunity to understand not only when equipment has failed, but how equipment is performing in the field before failure occurs.

Young said the information could eventually support predictive maintenance, helping forecast when service, maintenance or replacement may be necessary. Usage data could also inform recommendations around circulation schedules and chemical consumption.

“The magic happens when you turn this data into information that actually can be acted upon to drive a smarter business,” Gadea said.

For pool professionals, that’s an important distinction. Another dashboard full of raw data isn’t necessarily useful. Knowing which pools need attention, what’s wrong, and what a technician is likely to encounter when arriving is.

Taking Some of the Tribal Knowledge Out of Service

Perhaps one of the more significant implications of increasingly connected equipment is its potential to reduce the learning curve for educating new technicians.

Experienced pool techs often diagnose problems quickly because they’ve seen the same symptoms hundreds of times. Newer technicians don’t have that accumulated experience. Much of their learning curve consists of developing it.

Connected equipment can begin putting some of that knowledge directly in their hands.

“I think that we’re going to be increasingly empowering pool pros to understand what’s happening with less tribal knowledge,” Young said.

He offered electrical troubleshooting as an example.

“Instead of having to pull a voltmeter out and measure what the voltage is, these products can tell you: What’s the voltage coming in? What’s the transformer stepping it down to? Where in the safety loop is it being broken?”

The significance isn’t that every repair becomes automatic. On difficult service calls, a technician still needs to understand the equipment and interpret what is happening. The difference is that the system can provide hard data that narrows the possibilities and removes some of the guesswork.

Young described the technology as an assistant that can help technicians reach a solution faster.

Speed Loading The Training Process

That has ramifications for onboarding as well.

Talent remains a persistent challenge for pool service companies. Experienced technicians are difficult to replace, while bringing a new employee up to speed can take considerable time.

“It’s really hard to attract and retain talent,” Gadea said. “Having these kinds of platforms simplifies so much of the process that it lets you ramp up talent much faster.”

Better diagnostics don’t replace training, but they can remove some of the friction involved in getting a technician productive. Instead of relying entirely on another employee to explain what happened at a particular pool six months ago, service history and equipment data can increasingly provide that context.

The same data could eventually help extend equipment life. If operating trends reveal a developing problem before a component fails completely, maintenance can potentially happen earlier. Rather than treating equipment as healthy until the moment it produces an error code or stops working, service companies could begin recognizing deterioration as it develops.

That’s where predictive maintenance becomes particularly interesting for pool professionals. It changes the conversation from responding to failure toward understanding equipment behavior in the wild.

From Scheduled Service Toward Predictive Maintenance

The broader question is how much that information eventually changes the service model itself.

Gadea sees machine learning and increasingly detailed equipment data pushing the industry toward more predictive maintenance. Fluidra is already exploring concepts internally around what it calls the “positive pool” — understanding how a pool should operate at peak performance and comparing actual conditions against that model.

Young sees an equally significant change occurring in how service companies allocate labor.

Today, route service is largely rigid. Technicians visit pools on predetermined days because physically inspecting the pool is often the only reliable way to know its condition.

Connected equipment creates the possibility of making that schedule more dynamic.

“If the pool doesn’t need service this week, that can free a resource up to go do something else and generate business elsewhere because the pool’s being taken care of right now,” Young said.

The reverse is equally important. If conditions change Wednesday at a pool normally serviced Monday, the company can potentially respond Wednesday rather than discovering the problem five days later.

That doesn’t mean weekly pool service simply disappears. Chemistry, debris removal and physical inspection still require boots on the ground. What changes is the amount of information available to determine where those boots should go and when.

Gadea believes those efficiencies could eventually allow companies to service considerably larger portfolios with the same workforce, suggesting that a business managing approximately 400 pools could potentially expand toward 600 or 700 as connected hardware and software improve efficiency.

The Future of the AquaLink Ecosystem

AquaLink EDGE itself will coexist with AquaLink RS during the transition. Young described Edge as Fluidra’s premium automation platform, with AquaLink RS continuing in the midrange and TCX serving the entry level while EDGE expands into additional price points and applications. PDA, meanwhile, is planned to be phased out.

Fluidra is also building Edge around continued software development. Future capabilities discussed include automatic management of high and low water levels, pool-cover integration, reusable setup templates and a “Be Ready At” function that could allow homeowners to specify when they want the pool ready and let the system determine what needs to happen beforehand.

Young said customers could eventually expect two or three updates annually as new features and equipment capabilities are introduced.

What makes the direction of AquaLink EDGE and trackr iO noteworthy isn’t simply another generation of automation controls. It’s the prospect of equipment becoming a more active source of operational intelligence.

For service companies, that could mean knowing more about how equipment is actually performing across hundreds of backyards, identifying problems earlier, reducing diagnostic guesswork, and making years of accumulated technician knowledge easier to transfer to the next employee.

Young said his years visiting thousands of pools and training professionals helped shape that philosophy.

“If education’s not the solution, then the product’s probably the problem,” he said.

If connected equipment can become easier to install, easier to diagnose, and increasingly capable of explaining its own condition, the next generation of pool automation may ultimately have as much impact on the people servicing pools as it does on the homeowners using them.

Ready to take a deeper dive?

Want to hear more about where pool automation and connected equipment are headed? Listen to our full conversation with Jeremy Young and Orlando Gadea as they dig deeper into AquaLink EDGE, trackr iO, predictive maintenance, smarter diagnostics, and what these technologies could mean for the future of pool service.

Listen to the full episode of the Pool Magazine Podcast.