Anybody washing without soap?

[Robert Deliën]

Hi,

Is anybody else washing without cleaning agent? I have removed the cartridge two weeks ago and again I have an occasional water sensor error. I'm continuing the experiment until water sensor errors appear more frequently. But for now it seems confirmed that the water sensor really depends on some soap the break the surface tension of the water.

Cheers!

[patrick]

In the box I replaced the LED in, I'm washing with a cartridge full of
water, and a small amount of dish soap. I've had absolutely no errors
since replacing the LED.

Does the cat genie always dispense soap? Is there a rinse cycle?

[Sonagi]

Hi. I ran the catgenie for about two weeks without any detergent. I
didn't get any water sensor error during this time but progressively
noticed that granules started to stink more.

Now, I am running catgenie now with 30% plant based dish washing
liquid + 30% oxyclean + 40% tap water using a aquarium air line
connected to the cartridge + plastic one-gallon juice bottle. My
custom cleaning solution (version 1) has better odor control, better
cleaning performance, but produce more soapy water for the toilet
(which is actually nice as the bubbles cover up the odor from the
toilet better). As stated earlier, it would be nice to have more
detergent dispensed in future versions, so I can dilute the solution
further and have less detergent residue as cold water isn't optimal
for washing off the detergent.

I guess you are still waiting for your catgenie cpu boxes to be fixed
before you start on your next beta version.
How is that going?

Peace

[Robert Deliën]

On Aug 8, 2010, at 19:45, patrick wrote:
> In the box I replaced the LED in, I'm washing with a cartridge full of
> water, and a small amount of dish soap. I've had absolutely no errors
> since replacing the LED.

Now that's good news!

> Does the cat genie always dispense soap? Is there a rinse cycle?

Yes, it dispenses soap exactly the way the original firmware does, so also a little squirt during the drying part. We may want to get rid of that.

It does not dispense soap during a scoop-only cycle.

[Robert Deliën]

On Aug 8, 2010, at 22:21, Sonagi wrote:

> Hi. I ran the catgenie for about two weeks without any detergent. I
> didn't get any water sensor error during this time but progressively
> noticed that granules started to stink more.

Aha. We got our processing units back a little more than a week ago and I have pulled the cartridge from the CatGenius since then. The errors mostly resolve themselves, because the program waits for the error to clear, which eventually happens.

> Now, I am running catgenie now with 30% plant based dish washing
> liquid + 30% oxyclean + 40% tap water using a aquarium air line
> connected to the cartridge + plastic one-gallon juice bottle. My
> custom cleaning solution (version 1) has better odor control, better
> cleaning performance, but produce more soapy water for the toilet
> (which is actually nice as the bubbles cover up the odor from the
> toilet better). As stated earlier, it would be nice to have more
> detergent dispensed in future versions, so I can dilute the solution
> further and have less detergent residue as cold water isn't optimal
> for washing off the detergent.

I agree; The standard firmware disposes quite a lot of agent, and that 3 times. So that will be 3 parameters to configure.

>
> I guess you are still waiting for your catgenie cpu boxes to be fixed
> before you start on your next beta version.
> How is that going?

I got the units back, recently. But it's mid-summer here, so motivation to _not_ sit in the sun with a drink and coding at the kitchen table instead is rather low ;-). But no worries, the project is very much alive.

I'm still considering to make this project Open Source (not GPL). I'm also starting to develop a cartridge-simulator, which I think is an easier to sell product.

Cheers!