Anyone Swapped / Upgraded Jebao Dp-4 Pumps?

[MoKan Reefer]

I looked around on the internet and searched on here with pretty much no luck on this question.

So like the title title says, has anyone ever just swapped out the stock pumps altogether but still used the boards?

I bought a used Jebao Dp-4 a bit ago for a really good price.

Come to find out, first, Jebao sends the pumps from the factory with the roller mechanisms in them backwards (look at the manual then look at the stock heads) the flat piece should be towards the inside of the pump not the outside. Changing this greatly improves the pumps not constantly getting stuck and the motor shaft spinning without moving the rollers.

I'm not a fan of the cheap pumps themselves in these units but like the units themselves so I'm thinking about swapping them out and upgrading the pumps to some 12v Kamoer KDTS pumps (should be a direct swap considering the jebaos are also 12v). I figure the pump heads may be larger on the Kamoers but I can always swap the guts into a different housing all the same.

The reason I'm going to use the KDTS models is simple, I can get them at ~$20 each after shipping even and second, I can use 2 dosing tubes in those heads (one on the top, one on bottom) and move the same amount of liquid 2 different directions at the same time without worries of using 2 pumps and them not being in sync.

The first 3 heads will still be being used for the tropic marin balling system as they are currently but I can use 2 dosing tubes in the 4th for timed small water changes daily with one tube moving old tank water out and the other moving fresh saltwater in using a single pump without any worries of moving too much either way.

I'm going to be ordering the replacement pumps in the next few days either way. I just figured I'd see if anyone else had thought to just upgrade the pumps in these units. I'll update once I receive the kamoers and hopefully if all goes well, give others another option for these pumps.

 

[shwareefer]

It will work. You could hook just about anything 12v to the leads (within amperage requirements) and it will have no choice but to do as the 'brain' tells it. I think it's a good idea, especially the double tube heads. If you do it, post a follow up.

 

[MoKan Reefer]

That I'm going to. I figured it should work without a hitch even if I have to put everything in a new case being that the kamoer heads are larger. Just couldn't find anything here on through Google where anyone else had done so.

I've actually been in contact with a Kamoer rep for awhile now since I'd originally planned to build my own dosing system. After realizing this jebao had the same thing I'd planned to build I figured I might as well just use it. Plus if I feel like expanding all I have to do is get the Dp-4s unit and an RJ45 ethernet cable to have access to 8 which I'll do the same thing with.

 

[shwareefer]

There's some youtube videos but mostly mods where people move the doser head panel to the top of the box instead of the side so the controls and heads are together and makes mounting the whole thing more intuitive. Not a whole lot going on inside there...

 

[MoKan Reefer]

There's some youtube videos but mostly mods where people move the doser head panel to the top of the box instead of the side so the controls and heads are together and makes mounting the whole thing more intuitive. Not a whole lot going on inside there...

Those are the videos I'd found also when I first got the unit and started having issues with the rollers in the heads sticking just in calibrating the pumps. Otherwise there were just programming tutorials. I'd not been able to find a thing about swapping pumps other than for the factory replacements.

There's definitely not much going on inside but interestingly enough there are a few things that peaked my curiosity.

They obviously use the same boards for all their units and the ATI 6 head unit because there's actually 6 spots on the board for dc driver connector. There's also a TTL/UART type 4 pin serial port for programming and communications. So I would guess it wouldn't take much to plug a Bluetooth or wifi port controller like those used with Arduino to make it wireless. And depending on the programming and encryption if any it may be possible to expand programming to add the remaining 2 dc motor driver ports on the main board making the master controller 6 pumps which if one were to still add the slave unit, there would be a super cheap 10 pump dosing system.

(I get most would never need 10 dosing pumps but it would still be an interesting possible lol)

 

[shwareefer]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was arduino based programming. Any ATmega in there?

 

[MoKan Reefer]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if it was arduino based programming. Any ATmega in there?

Surfed the web for the answer to that. After finding just about any pictures I could of the main board from Google images, it's sadly/surprising not Arduino based.

According to this pic it looks to be STC (STCMicro Technology Co.) which solely manufactures 8051 (51 system microcontrollers) microchips and does make some of the arduino microcontroller chips though but most likely it's written in C and not Arduino capable but I with a bit more searching I found this on the arduino forum:
https://forum.arduino.cc/t/stc-12c5a16ad-programming-with-arduino/493282It gives a lot of useful information about how to find the information to reprogram STC chips.
So it's definitely possible to reprogram the stock chips on these boards but STC chips come with an embedded bootloader so they have to be programmable by their software which is free and public domain but way over my head so it looks like I'll stick with the unit(s) the way it is lol.

 

[Coxey81]

I looked around on the internet and searched on here with pretty much no luck on this question.

So like the title title says, has anyone ever just swapped out the stock pumps altogether but still used the boards?

I bought a used Jebao Dp-4 a bit ago for a really good price.

Come to find out, first, Jebao sends the pumps from the factory with the roller mechanisms in them backwards (look at the manual then look at the stock heads) the flat piece should be towards the inside of the pump not the outside. Changing this greatly improves the pumps not constantly getting stuck and the motor shaft spinning without moving the rollers.

I'm not a fan of the cheap pumps themselves in these units but like the units themselves so I'm thinking about swapping them out and upgrading the pumps to some 12v Kamoer KDTS pumps (should be a direct swap considering the jebaos are also 12v). I figure the pump heads may be larger on the Kamoers but I can always swap the guts into a different housing all the same.

The reason I'm going to use the KDTS models is simple, I can get them at ~$20 each after shipping even and second, I can use 2 dosing tubes in those heads (one on the top, one on bottom) and move the same amount of liquid 2 different directions at the same time without worries of using 2 pumps and them not being in sync.

The first 3 heads will still be being used for the tropic marin balling system as they are currently but I can use 2 dosing tubes in the 4th for timed small water changes daily with one tube moving old tank water out and the other moving fresh saltwater in using a single pump without any worries of moving too much either way.

I'm going to be ordering the replacement pumps in the next few days either way. I just figured I'd see if anyone else had thought to just upgrade the pumps in these units. I'll update once I receive the kamoers and hopefully if all goes well, give others another option for these pumps.

Did you ever try the different pump heads? How did it go? Thanks

 

[kabal2]

any updates?

 

[gman107]

Anything ?

 

[asome_one]

Jebao found him....

 

[asome_one]

Update for this. The kaomer NKP-DC-S10B 12v peristaltic motor works fine. Simple as resoldering the motor. Just don't lose the original dosing head mounting screws. The ones that come with the new head aren't long enough. This leads me to believe it'll work with any 12v pumps. The programming doesn't care.

The specific pump head I listed will require some modification of the mounting bracket as it is too wide to fit 4 heads side by side.