2011 Hot Springs Grandee control retrofit

[Mike79]

Newbie here. My LCD display on my 2011 Grander went blank. I've done this reading, it's an Orca and I know to replace the whole thing with an Eagle control.

Here's my thing. I'm vindictive. I am irritated at the prospect of spending over a thousand for what was clearly a case of planned obsolescence. 

Therefore, I was wondering if anyone knows of a alternative retrofit kit. Ultimately the heater and pumps run on current. How the current gets there is the job of the controller, which doesn't have to be Watkins. Bottom line is Watkins lost my trust with this. 

[ratchett]

1 hour ago, Mike79 said:

I am irritated at the prospect of spending over a thousand for what was clearly a case of planned obsolescence. 

Actually that wouldn't be correct - it wasn't planned obsolecense - I believe Hotspring's objective to retain a catalog of replacement parts for Highlife spas up to 25 years old.   To keep a very long story short, your Orca board was made by a third party manufacturer for Watkins/Hotspring.   About a decade ago, Watkins and customers/dealers were hit blindsided when that company went out of business, taking their proprietary information with them.  This royally screwed everyone, including the manufacturer who had minimal inventory and old stock to support existing customers - they were forced to build a new replacement control board from scratch, and unfortunately the two systems cannot communicate with each other due to the proprietary software on the old system.

By this point, all new-old-stock inventory has been sold out and people with your generation of Hotspring hot tubs got screwed leaving a bad impression about the brand overall (which is valid - Hotspring should have some sort of discount program for spa owners of that spa generation)

So yes, it sucks - but this was out of Watkins control.  This is one reason why Hotspring spas use so many proprietary parts - the more they make in-house, the less reliant they are on third parties to continue supplying parts. 

2 hours ago, Mike79 said:

Therefore, I was wondering if anyone knows of a alternative retrofit kit. Ultimately the heater and pumps run on current.

Well, if it's just the topside LCD you have a few different options.   Very often I find people selling or giving away free Hotspring hot tubs in the local classifieds (Because they are leaking or broken due to freeze damage) - you can possibly salavage a replacement part from a tub in your local classifieds (offer the seller $50 to salvage that part), or some people salvage parts from hot tub junk yards (which are apparently a thing) - you might be able to score a replacement part that way if you call around.

Alternatively, if you dig deep enough into this, I believe someone else was in your exact same shoes a few years back and published their progress (on this forum I believe).   I think that person was able to determine that his LCD screen had failed and the system worked otherwise, so he dug in and extracted the LCD screen then looked up part numbers - if my memory is correct, he discovered it was a cheap LCD screen also commonly used in a few HP PDA devices from the early 2000's, he was able to replace the screen and fire up the controller without any problems.   I understand that may be out of your technical realm, but if you find the part numbers - you might be able to buy a replacement LCD screen then take it to a professional electronics repair-shop which could de-solder and replace the screen for way less than the cost to replace the entire controller - naturally I'm sure they wouldn't guarantee their work on something like this - but if the topside controller is shot already - why not take a chance and try to fix it for less than $200