Cool Product: Pool Advisor App

This is a guest post by Brian Cox. If you want to guest post on this blog, send us a message here.

Last summer we were having a pool put in, and as it was nearing completion, I was thinking of how I should keep track of how I was taking care of our pool. I’m an engineer, so I started thinking about a spreadsheet. Lame, right? Well luckily my brilliant, beautiful wife reminded me that I had been trying to think of an app to create that we could use on our Android phones. Thus, Pool Advisor was born.

Pool Advisor enables you to track all the information necessary to maintain your pool. When you test your pool you can enter results for chlorine, alkalinity, pH, and many other common tests. In the settings, you can set minimum and maximum levels for each test so you can be warned when tests are out of range. There are also settings available so you can tailor Pool Advisor to your situation, showing only the tests you use. You can view your results in a log or see them charted over time. The log results can also be exported in case you want to take to your local pool store.

Other things you can do with Pool Advisor:

• You can set reminders for testing your pool and other tasks so that you don’t forget to perform regular maintenance.
• You can keep track of the inventory of chemicals you have on hand and set warnings so you can be notified when you run low.
• You can view your chemical usage history.
• You can use US Standard units or metric units

While working on Pool Advisor, I realized that this could be extended into a tool for pool maintenance professionals to be able to enter test results and have all the history for each pool in the palm of their hands.

Pool Advisor Pro adds the ability to do everything Pool Advisor does, but for multiple pools. You can add as many pools as you need and keep the data separate for each. Reminders work a little differently than in the standard Pool Advisor. You can still set reminders for each pool, but the reminders are directed to one Notifications page so you can see all the pools needing service for the day at once.

Pool Advisor Pro also adds some other features to help a pool professional run their business

• Reporting to cover date ranges for any or all pools at once
• The ability to track inventory for each pool separately or all in one place.

Some new features in Pool Advisor that will be coming up:

• Custom fields for inventory you use
• Custom fields in the pool testing area
• Suggested corrective action after testing your pool
• Anything else you can suggest to make Pool Advisor a better app!

You can follow the progress of Pool Advisor and Pool Advisor Pro at http://pooladvisor.blogspot.com or http://www.twitter.com/pooladvisor.

Download the apps here:

Pool Advisor (https://market.android.com/details?id=rovingreptiles.pooladvisor)

Pool Advisor Pro (https://market.android.com/details?id=rovingreptiles.pooladvisorpro)

I’ve gotten to correspond with lots of interesting people from around the world with great ideas for Pool Advisor. I hope you give Pool Advisor a look and let me know how you like it and how it could be a better app for you or your business!