Pentair ScreenLogic v1.0 - Setup Guide

Custom Control Drivers LLC - control your Pentair pool and spa from RTI over the network. The processor talks straight to your ScreenLogic adapter on the LAN: no cloud account, no Home Assistant, no serial cable to the panel. One driver instance controls one pool system.

What you need

This driver controls a Pentair EasyTouch or IntelliTouch pool panel through a ScreenLogic2 Protocol Adapter (Pentair part 520500). The adapter is the piece that puts the panel on your network, and it is required: the panel itself has no Ethernet port, only an RS-485 COM connection.

If you already control the pool from the Pentair ScreenLogic phone app, you have the adapter and it is already on your network. That is all this driver needs.

If you do not have one, the adapter connects to the panel's COM port either by a four-wire run or by Pentair's wireless connection kit, and then to your router by Ethernet or Wi-Fi.

IntelliCenter panels are a different system and do not use this protocol. If your pool runs on IntelliCenter, this is not the right driver.

Please read this before you buy

Pentair has shipped many panel variations across the EasyTouch and IntelliTouch families over a long period. Our development and test hardware is an EasyTouch2 4P behind a ScreenLogic2 adapter, and the driver was built against traffic captured from that live system. Where we could not test a variant directly, we implemented against the same protocol behavior every established open-source ScreenLogic project relies on. That is a sound basis, but it is not the same as us having connected to your exact panel.

So use the trial first. The driver includes a 120 minute trial. Enter the adapter's IP address, let it connect, and check that your equipment appears with the right names and that a circuit responds. You will know within a few minutes.

Need longer than two hours? Just ask. If you are waiting on site access or working through a panel we have not seen, email us and we will extend your trial. We would far rather you took the time to be certain than bought something that turns out not to suit your system.

If something does not work, tell us. Email support@customcontroldrivers.com with your panel model (the Controller Model variable reports it), your adapter firmware, and what happened. Panel-specific differences are usually a small change once we can see what the system is actually reporting.

Step 1 - set it up with two clicks

Open the driver's configuration page in Integration Designer. At the top you will see two actions:

Find My Pool System - click it. The driver calls out across your network, finds the ScreenLogic adapter and fills in its address for you. Nothing to look up, nothing to type.

Import Equipment from Pool Controller - click it next. It reads your pool controller's own circuit list and writes the real names, Pool, Spa, Pool Light, Vacuum and whatever else you have, straight into the driver's settings.

That is the whole setup. Your circuits now appear by name everywhere you program: the command pickers, the variable list and the event list. Only the circuits you actually have show up, so the lists stay short.

Leave License Key blank to run the 120 minute trial.

Added equipment at the pool later? Click Import Equipment again. Circuits you already had keep the slot they were in, so none of your existing buttons or macros are disturbed, and anything new is added after them. If you renamed a circuit yourself, the import leaves your name alone and tells you so.

If your network blocks broadcasts (some managed switches and separate VLANs do), Find My Pool System will not see the adapter. Type its address into ScreenLogic Adapter IP Address by hand, then click Import Equipment, which only needs the address.

Give the adapter a DHCP reservation in your router so its address never changes. There is no password to enter anywhere: a ScreenLogic adapter accepts a local connection from the LAN without one.

When the processor reaches the adapter, Connected turns Yes, Status Text shows the address, and Controller Model fills in with your panel, for example EasyTouch2 4P.

Step 2 - your equipment is read from the panel

On connecting, the driver asks the panel what is installed and publishes it. Everything below appears in the driver's system variables with no configuration at all:

Circuits - every circuit the panel has, with the names your installer gave them (Pool, Spa, Pool Light, Vacuum, and so on). The count is in Circuit Count.

Pool and Spa - current temperature, heat setpoint, heat mode, and whether each is heating right now. The setpoint limits the panel itself allows are reported in Pool Setpoint Minimum and Maximum.

Pumps - watts, RPM and, on pumps that report it, GPM. A pump that cannot report flow leaves GPM blank rather than showing a false figure.

Chlorinator - salt level, output percentage for pool and spa, and whether super chlorinate is running.

Schedules - each of the panel's schedules as readable text, for example "Pool 08:00 - 18:00 Every day".

Installed Equipment lists what the controller reports it has, for example CHLORINATOR, INTELLIBRITE, INTELLIFLO.

If your panel has more circuits than the driver's 32 slots, it says so in Last Error rather than quietly leaving the extras out.

The circuit names come from Import Equipment from Pool Controller in Step 1. If you ever want to change one, type over it in Circuit Names and the import will respect your choice from then on.

Step 3 - control it

Add a macro command step and choose Pentair ScreenLogic:

Circuit On, Circuit Off, Circuit Toggle and Set Circuit - pick the circuit from the list. Before you import, the list holds all 32 slots so you can lay out a page against any panel. After Import Equipment it holds your controller's real names and nothing else: slots your panel does not use are cleared, so a 13 circuit system shows 13 entries.

Set Pool Setpoint / Set Spa Setpoint - enter a temperature. The driver clamps it to the range the panel itself reports, so it can never ask for a value the panel will refuse.

Pool Setpoint Up / Down and Spa Setpoint Up / Down - these repeat while held, so a dealer can bind them to a rocker and ramp the setpoint.

Set Pool Heat Mode / Set Spa Heat Mode - Off, Solar, Solar Preferred or Heater. Solar and Solar Preferred only do anything if solar heating is actually installed; the Has Solar variable tells you whether the controller reports it, and the driver notes it in the log if you send a solar mode to a system without it.

Light Command - the IntelliBrite and MagicStream group commands: All On, All Off, the color modes (Party, Romance, Caribbean, American, Sunset, Royal), the fixed colors, plus Save, Recall, Next Mode and Hold.

Refresh, Reconnect and Reload Settings are under Driver, for when you want to force the issue.

Let Integration Designer build the pages for you

The driver publishes three placeable sources. Add one to a room in the Sources tree and Integration Designer can program its page from a standard template, rather than you binding every button by hand.

Pool Body and Spa Body carry the standard Climate template. The water temperature, the setpoint, the setpoint up and down commands and the Off and Heater modes all carry RTI's standard thermostat tags, and the two mode buttons carry feedback tags as well, so they show which mode the panel is actually in rather than the last one you pressed. Air temperature is tagged as the outdoor reading and serves both pages.

Pool Circuit carries the Generic Two-Way Driver template, so a circuit's on, off and toggle commands and its on/off feedback are tagged as power for the circuit you picked.

Add your Pool Circuit sources in circuit order. Integration Designer numbers multi-instance sources as they are added, so the first Pool Circuit you add is circuit 1, the second is circuit 2, and so on. Add them out of order and a templated button will drive the circuit that sits in that slot rather than the one you had in mind. Pool Body and Spa Body are not affected: they are separate fixed sources, so they cannot be mixed up.

A body's variables and commands belong to its source, so add the Pool Body or Spa Body source to a room whenever you want to reach that body, whether you are letting a template do the work or binding buttons yourself.

Three things are worth knowing before you lay a page out. A Pentair body of water heats, it does not cool, so the Cool and Auto buttons on a stock climate page have nothing behind them and are yours to delete. Solar and Solar Preferred are heat sources rather than an automatic changeover, so we left them off the templated mode buttons on purpose; they are still there as commands under Pool Heat and Spa Heat whenever you want them on a button of your own. And if the system has no spa, simply do not add the Spa Body source: the driver has no way to hide it, and its readings would sit at zero.

A note on color lights

Pentair's protocol addresses color lights as a group, not one fixture at a time. Light Command therefore applies to every color light on the system at once. That is how the pool panel and the Pentair app work too, so it is the full extent of color control available rather than a shortcut on our part.

Individual light circuits still switch on and off independently with Circuit On and Circuit Off. Each circuit's Is A Light variable tells you which ones are color capable.

Schedules are read only in this version

The driver reads the panel's schedules and publishes them as text so you can display them, but it does not write them. That is deliberate. A schedule write is the one operation that can disturb how a customer's pool actually runs when nobody is watching it, and we would rather ship without it than ship it unproven. Set schedules at the panel or in the Pentair app; the driver will show what you set.

Feedback and events

Feedback is live. The driver registers with the adapter once and the adapter then reports every change as it happens, including changes made from the Pentair app, from a wired panel, or by a schedule firing. RTI stays in step without asking. A slow background refresh runs underneath purely to notice if the connection has gone quiet.

Pump readings and chlorinator values are the exception: the pool system does not announce those, so the driver re-reads them every minute. Everything else arrives the moment it changes.

There are events for everything worth automating, and they fire only on a real change, never when the driver starts up. Use them to drive feedback, notifications and macros:

Each circuit turning On and Off, by name.

Pool and Spa Heating Started / Stopped, so a panel can show the heater actually firing rather than just the mode you asked for.

Alert Raised / Cleared - the pool controller's own alert. This is the one to put on a banner or send as a notification.

Freeze Protection Started / Cleared.

Pool, Spa and Cleaner Delay Started / Cleared - equipment will not respond while a delay is running, so a macro that waits for the delay to clear behaves far better than one that keeps retrying.

Chlorinator Started / Stopped and Super Chlorinate Started / Stopped.

Each pump Started / Stopped.

Schedule Changed At The Panel - fires when somebody edits a schedule at the pool, so a display can refresh itself.

Controller Ready, Controller In Service Mode, Equipment Discovered, Connected and Disconnected.

Water chemistry

If an IntelliChem controller is fitted, the driver publishes pH, ORP, their setpoints, saturation index and calcium hardness, and IntelliChem Fitted turns Yes.

If there is no IntelliChem, those readings stay blank on purpose. A Pentair panel reports chemistry fields whether or not the hardware exists, and with none fitted they all read zero. Publishing that would show a pH of 0.00 on your panel and send somebody looking for a problem that is not there, so the driver only surfaces them when the equipment is actually present.

Salt level from the chlorinator is separate and appears in Salt Level PPM whenever a chlorinator is fitted.

Troubleshooting

Connected stays No: read Last Error first, it names the specific cause. Check the adapter's IP is correct and current (use a DHCP reservation), that the adapter is powered and on the network, and that nothing isolates it from the processor. If the pool is reachable from the Pentair app on the same network but not from the driver, the address is the first thing to re-check.

It connects and then drops straight away: the driver reports the adapter accepting the connection but not completing the login. That usually means something else on the network is answering on that address, so confirm the IP really is the ScreenLogic adapter.

Circuit names look wrong or generic: the names come from the panel, so they are whatever was set at installation. Change them at the panel or in the Pentair app and press Refresh.

A command does nothing: check Connected is Yes and License Status is not reporting an expired trial. Commands are refused while disconnected and the reason is written to Last Error.

Nothing appears in the System Log: errors always appear. If you see errors but no progress detail, raise Debug Level in this driver's Driver Settings from Low to High. Also check the per-driver message filter on the XP Diagnostics System Log page, which controls which drivers you are listening to and can clear itself on a project download. Live status is always in the driver's System Variables, which are never filtered, so that is the place to look when the log is not cooperating.

A driver setting change seems ignored: Driver Settings live in the project, so the processor does not see a change until you download the project to it. The driver restarts on download and picks the new value up automatically.

License and support

The driver includes a 120 minute trial per processor. The trial clock keeps its place across reboots and re-sends, so it does not restart when the driver reloads. Each new version of the driver starts a fresh trial, so you can always re-evaluate after an update. Paste your key from customcontroldrivers.com into License Key to license this processor (one license covers the driver on that processor). Support: support@customcontroldrivers.com