Battery backup on apex

[five.five-six]

looking for a cost effective means of battery backup for my Apex Classic. I have a tunze 6105.50 safety connector connected to a 12V 18AH battery on a trickle charger for power outages. the problem is that if my Apex classic loses power the 0-10V port shuts my 6105 stream off. .

Currently I have the 6105.500 connected to my 1073.05 return pump and that pump disconnected from the Apex so at least I get some flow in the case of an outage but it’s far less than 1 of the 6105’s would do and I have lost the ability to control my return pump which isn’t that big of a deal.

So how do I keep the 0-10V ports alive in a power outage?

 

[corey01]

whats cost effective to you? just curious. you could always put your apex unit itself on a UPS. probably have to make sure its a true sine wave unit though. and those can be slightly pricey. if your gonna start playing DIY you could buy an exhausted unit for pretty cheap and then hook up a deep cycle marine battery to it. I assume you have the tunze plugged into a wall outlet and being controlled by the apex unit? that way it would know when it wasn't receiving power from the wall and switch over?

 

[Luno]

I've made this and used successfully for years.

http://atj.net.au/marineaquaria/backup_power.html

Only differences were a pure sinewave inverter and bigger batteries

 

[five.five-six]

Not really interested in doing a ups, too much loss in the inverters and too much space under the stand. Too much salt air for the electronics. I have a few spare 1500VA units I could use but all I really want to do is keep the apex head on so it doesn’t shut off the 6105. The old AC line could be backed up with a 9V battery.

 

[corey01]

the tunze gets its controls from a 0-10v digital signal from the apex right? could you splice a 9v battery terminal into the connection so if something happened you could just place a simple battery on the connection and it spin up the tunze? im not sure where the other end of the connection goes into the apex itself but I would imagine there would be some kind of feedback protection.

 

[five.five-six]

Right, when the 0-10 goes to 0 the controllable pump stops.

 

[corey01]

looking into this now. the trick seems to simply find the proper component to what you need to do. idk how tech savvy you are. but quickly looking there seems to be signal generators on simple pcb's for 30 dollars.
id think finding a digital potentiometer with external power like used in controlling led stepping and wiring it into your line and setting it up to draw power from the tunze backup would likely work, so once the tunze backup realizes there is no power and turns on it also auto starts the signal of what speeds to run at. more looking and testing needs to be involved. as I dont have an apex or a tunze. but I will look into it some more.

 

[five.five-six]

I've made this and used successfully for years.

http://atj.net.au/marineaquaria/backup_power.html

Only differences were a pure sinewave inverter and bigger batteries

It’s kind of funny, in bold red it says to contact a licenced electrician. Now, from the colors of wires used it was clearly built in Europe so I can’t say for sure but in the US that’s not something a licensed electrician does. It’s electronics, not electrical. A licensed electrician is trained to install and maintain listed appliances equiptment and fixtures in a manner consistent with the NEC, UBC NFPA and the local AHJ. That battery backup is none of those.

Looks like a fun project though. Just don’t be this guy:

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

I'm not too familiar with the Apex, but if you can power the Apex without powering the outlets it controls, then a simply 9v solution like you mentioned might work.

For a bit more of an elegant solution, what you could do is have your deep cycle battery supply the Apex ONLY when the utility power fails. You would need an AC DPDT relay and to wire your Apex to the common output. Have the Apex's power brick supply the NO pole, and have the battery supply power to the NC pole. Because the relay is AC, when your power is on, the coil will be energized. In this case, power will come from NO pole, which in this case is the Apex power brick. In the event of an outage, the coil de-energizes and power flows through the NC pole (in this case, from the battery). It sounds like the Apex expects 9VDC, so you'd have to get some sort of DC/DC step down converter to transform the battery's voltage into 9VDC, but those are only a few dollars on Ebay.

This sort of configuration would keep the Apex head running as long as there was battery power remaining. As soon as the outage ends, the AC will energize the coil and the relay will start sending power from the brick back to the Apex again. Depending on the speed of the relay, the Apex may shut down and come back online if the interruption of power lasts long enough. However, I've found that my electronics usually don't turn of from such a short interruption.

 

[five.five-six]

Normally the apex head isn’t powered by your standard dw all transformer. It’s a slightly differant approach that reduces the number of things to plug into the wall by 1. The head is powered through the controll cable from the EB8, the controlled power strip.

I'm not too familiar with the Apex, but if you can power the Apex without powering the outlets it controls, then a simply 9v solution like you mentioned might work.

For a bit more of an elegant solution, what you could do is have your deep cycle battery supply the Apex ONLY when the utility power fails. You would need an AC DPDT relay and to wire your Apex to the common output. Have the Apex's power brick supply the NO pole, and have the battery supply power to the NC pole. Because the relay is AC, when your power is on, the coil will be energized. In this case, power will come from NO pole, which in this case is the Apex power brick. In the event of an outage, the coil de-energizes and power flows through the NC pole (in this case, from the battery). It sounds like the Apex expects 9VDC, so you'd have to get some sort of DC/DC step down converter to transform the battery's voltage into 9VDC, but those are only a few dollars on Ebay.

This sort of configuration would keep the Apex head running as long as there was battery power remaining. As soon as the outage ends, the AC will energize the coil and the relay will start sending power from the brick back to the Apex again. Depending on the speed of the relay, the Apex may shut down and come back online if the interruption of power lasts long enough. However, I've found that my electronics usually don't turn of from such a short interruption.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Normally the apex head isn’t powered by your standard dw all transformer. It’s a slightly differant approach that reduces the number of things to plug into the wall by 1. The head is powered through the controll cable from the EB8, the controlled power strip.

Mmm that could be problematic then. I have an RKL and it operates the same way, you power the controller by powering the power bar. The downside to this is my controller runs my heater. So if I give my controller power in an outage, I give the heater power, which runs down my battery in pretty short order.

You could use the relay in a similar manner to power the 0v-10v control line. You'd just hook the common pole to your Tunze, have the NO pole come from the Apex, have the NC pole come from the battery. On failure, the relay closes and the battery powers the 0v-10v control line on the Tunze. When the power comes back on, the relay opens and power flows from the controller again. You'd again need some sort of step-down to take the 12v from the battery down to the 10v the Tunze expects. But that could also work.

 

[corey01]

about the best I have come up with so far is a Buckpuck led driver with integrated 5k pot that does 0-5v signal change. wondering if that would top out at 50% but that might still work depending on how its done.
3023-D-E-350P

but once again this is all speculative. as there may be incompatibilities and I cannot test this.

 

[GK3]

Normally the apex head isn’t powered by your standard dw all transformer. It’s a slightly differant approach that reduces the number of things to plug into the wall by 1. The head is powered through the controll cable from the EB8, the controlled power strip.

Not sure what Apex this thread is about, but the newest has a DC input on it such that if the EB8 losses power, the apex brains will still work. So if you took a look at what the input on this was, you could connect it to your current battery backup and thus the 10v signal would remain. (Assuming you are using the apex head unit controls and not a module).

9V battery approach should work, just not sure how much current it would draw and thus how long that battery would last in a power outage. You are also going to have to splice into the apex lines, and also have diodes and probably a switch in line such that you aren’t pushing 10v to the battery and the battery isn’t pushing power back on the apex. My guess is this would take more testing and circuitry before it was working right. It is not a just a simple hookup.

 

[five.five-six]

Optimumly I would just connect the Apex classic supplemental power port directly to the fused output of my 18AH battery but the charging voltage on that battery is over 13 volts and I don't intend on finding out if that’s enough to blow up the apex the hard way. Also, I understand that the the supplemental power port will power the apex if you don’t have an EB8 according to the documentation but it does not say if it will power the Apex if an EB8 is connected.

 

[GK3]

Optimumly I would just connect the Apex classic supplemental power port directly to the fused output of my 18AH battery but the charging voltage on that battery is over 13 volts and I don't intend on finding out if that’s enough to blow up the apex the hard way. Also, I understand that the the supplemental power port will power the apex if you don’t have an EB8 according to the documentation but it does not say if it will power the Apex if an EB8 is connected.

It definitely will if the EB8 is connected. A very popular thing to do with the apex is to put that part in battery backup and then write a statement in your alarm that says if EB8 off then alarm on. This way you are immediately notified if you are running your tank on battery backup.

No, I would absolutely not hook the apex to battery directly with the trickle charger in line.
I’d consult apex about this, I’ve found their customer support pretty helpful. I can tell you however that most car batteries and wall warts that say 12VDC are usually closer to 13. Definitely talk to apex about this part.

Good luck.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Optimumly I would just connect the Apex classic supplemental power port directly to the fused output of my 18AH battery but the charging voltage on that battery is over 13 volts and I don't intend on finding out if that’s enough to blow up the apex the hard way. Also, I understand that the the supplemental power port will power the apex if you don’t have an EB8 according to the documentation but it does not say if it will power the Apex if an EB8 is connected.

You certainly can do that. You just need to step the battery voltage down to 9VDC before putting it into the Apex. I think you mentioned the supplemental power port takes 9VDC. Something like this between your battery and the Apex would work just fine.

 

[five.five-six]

It definitely will if the EB8 is connected. A very popular thing to do with the apex is to put that part in battery backup and then write a statement in your alarm that says if EB8 off then alarm on. This way you are immediately notified if you are running your tank on battery backup.

No, I would absolutely not hook the apex to battery directly with the trickle charger in line.
I’d consult apex about this, I’ve found their customer support pretty helpful. I can tell you however that most car batteries and wall warts that say 12VDC are usually closer to 13. Definitely talk to apex about this part.

Good luck.

Float voltage on sealed led acid batteries commonly used in intrusion systems and desktop UPSs is 14.2 volts. That’s what I’m using.

 

[Luno]

It’s kind of funny, in bold red it says to contact a licenced electrician. Now, from the colors of wires used it was clearly built in Europe so I can’t say for sure but in the US that’s not something a licensed electrician does. It’s electronics, not electrical. A licensed electrician is trained to install and maintain listed appliances equiptment and fixtures in a manner consistent with the NEC, UBC NFPA and the local AHJ. That battery backup is none of those.

Your point does make a lot of sense. Haha it's Australian also btw. I guess covering his butt incase someone zaps themselves.

 

[don_chuwish]

To keep the Apex alive during a power outage you have to have at least one of the EB8s connected to a UPS. In order to enable alerting about the power outage, you then connect the optional 12V power supply to a wall plug.
https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/12v-power-supply-neptune-systems.html
Slides-from-the-Apex-Power-Monitoring-and-Management-presentation-given-at-MACNA2013

In my case, I have everything except one Tunze 6055 shut off, and the 6055 goes down to 35%.

Turn things off:
If Power Apex Off 000 Then OFF

Reference a profile for 6055 power level:
If Power Apex Off 000 Then 6055_35

- D

 

[JROD79]

You could run lines out to a solar module that would trickle charge your battery bank. You would need a few batteries to make up for your autonomy needed to run the pumps over night. Then they would automatically start charging agian at day break