DIYbanter - View Single Post - Is there a HARDER to operate Digital Lamp Timer than the Intermatic DT500CL

Smitty Two

In article
,
wrote:

I was recently looking at swimming pool controlers. One company has
one that is supposed to run a pool, spa, waterfalls, lights,
conventional heaters, and solar heaters. It has a small LCD display
and about 8 buttons, only two of them are marked and those are for
temp. No specific button for even turning on the pump. All those
functions are done through the LCD display and cryptic buttons like
Aux1, Aux2, Menu, etc.

If I was in marketing or product planning and anyone brought me one of
those, I'd throw them out of my office. At least with the mechanical
wheel type it's obvious how to turn on the pool pump, which is the
most basic thing you want to do.

Electronic logic is so cheap it's basically free. You can program a
million functions into two buttons. Hardware, OTOH, has become
prohibitively expensive in the U.S., where the masses expect Wally World
prices on everything.

I spent over two hours in Home Depot perusing irrigation controllers,
and didn't find one, among several dozen, that was intuitive to program.
I did manage to program the one that I bought without reading the
instructions, but that was only through stubborn determination, a large
helping of patience, and the willingness to make 200 wrong button push
sequences in order to learn the correct ones. I would have gladly paid
five times the price for something with real dials and switches, but
those animals are virtually extinct.