When you have a booster pump, what you describe as a robot is really called a pool sweep. Generally, they have a long, white hose attached between them and the quick connect on the long side of the pool at about middle. A robot generally has a power cord and integrated motors and tracks or drive wheels.

Which pool sweep you have helps as they aren't all the same. Some are gear driven, some have drive belts, and some have drive chains internally. The water from the booster drives a turbine to provide the energy to move its wheels. Some of the water is diverted for other functions such as a thruster jet, venturis that create a current underneath that shoots into a bag and picks up debris, and for backing up. These commonalities are are all designed differently.

The first order of business is to ID the sweep. If you can't get us model, it would be like asking my car is broken, not saying whats wrong (you sort of did), and not telling anyone the make and model. Lets start there.

Next, if you built the pool or not (like it was there when you bought the house), how is it you don't know how to program it? This may not be as much your fault you might think or it might be. IMHO, a pool is something the homeowner should be familiar with and have a trusted service pro when they don't.

We will try to help you here with the sweep but it sounds like you haven't found, for the long term, a trusted service company yet. That will come but will be another topic.

Scott

It's a Polaris 280. I've been assuming it is fine, since it works normally when I manually turn it on using the timeout function, but not when it comes on automatically in the am. I cannot find any evidence that the sweep should be able to be activated independently of the booster pump.

The PB was a sweet guy who did an excellent job in just about every way. But he no more understands the easytouch programming than I do. He answered my questions cheerfully, willingly, and repeatedly, but the answer was usually something like, "I dunno, I just push this button and it works." It is not at all clear to me how he was able to wire the controls with that level of sophistication, but there you have it. Our PB included one year of service with the pool, but since we are a ways out of their service area it was too far to continue with them. I would prefer to maintain the pool myself, but the control panel is defeating me.