Got tired of the junky jebao wavemaker controllers and all the clutter from having 4 pumps on the tank. I also wanted better control over wave patterns and intensity throughout the day. So I decided to make a wiring harness to allow me to use the 0-10v variable ports to control the jebaos and completely bypass the jebao controllers altogether.
I did some testing with a volt meter and figured out which wires did what. So there is a 24v power wire (tan), a ground (blue), and a 0-5v variable (yellow). The controller on its lowest setting produces 2.8v, at its highest setting it produces 4.9v.
I then used a network cable to plug into the variable speed port on my apex. I played around with profile settings until I figured out what percentage gave me 2.8v (27%) and what percentage gave me 4.9v (48%). This gave me a starting range for programming.
I know from looking at their adapters you can buy, that 1 power supply can run 2 pumps. So I took 1 power supply, and cut off the end. I spliced the red power wire to the tan wire on each pump. I then spliced the black ground wire to the ground on the network cable, and then to the blue wire on each pump. Finally, I spliced the yellow wire on the pumps to the variable output wires on my network cable coming from the apex. Everything was soldered and adhesive heat shrink was applied for water resistance.
Once I had that done and everything plugged in, I played around with intensity percentage until I found the lowest percent that would still turn the pump on (8%).
I decided I will probably use 10% as my minimum threshold, and 48% as my maximum threshold.
Now it is just a matter of writing all the profiles I want to create. I did run a few test profiles before calling it a night. Everything appears to be working perfectly. I have 4 pumps total. So I made 2 harnesses that both run 2 pumps each. Each individual pump is controllable. I thought about piggy backing 2 pumps so as not to use up all my variable ports, but I like the idea of independent control over each pump so thats what I decided on.
Overall it wasn't too bad of a project, and would have only cost me a network cable, but I decided to add in some extra 3 way connectors closer to the pump heads to make taking them out of the tank for maintenance easier. I don't remember what I paid for the connectors, they were cheap on ebay or Amazon. They look almost identical to the stock Jebao connectors but are slightly different.
I also could have just cut the connector off the controller instead of buying the extra connectors, but doing it this way allows me to sell the controllers, or keep one around incase my apex craps out on me.
Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to answer them. Going to bed now, and tomorrow ill tackle all the programming.
I did some testing with a volt meter and figured out which wires did what. So there is a 24v power wire (tan), a ground (blue), and a 0-5v variable (yellow). The controller on its lowest setting produces 2.8v, at its highest setting it produces 4.9v.
I then used a network cable to plug into the variable speed port on my apex. I played around with profile settings until I figured out what percentage gave me 2.8v (27%) and what percentage gave me 4.9v (48%). This gave me a starting range for programming.
I know from looking at their adapters you can buy, that 1 power supply can run 2 pumps. So I took 1 power supply, and cut off the end. I spliced the red power wire to the tan wire on each pump. I then spliced the black ground wire to the ground on the network cable, and then to the blue wire on each pump. Finally, I spliced the yellow wire on the pumps to the variable output wires on my network cable coming from the apex. Everything was soldered and adhesive heat shrink was applied for water resistance.
Once I had that done and everything plugged in, I played around with intensity percentage until I found the lowest percent that would still turn the pump on (8%).
I decided I will probably use 10% as my minimum threshold, and 48% as my maximum threshold.
Now it is just a matter of writing all the profiles I want to create. I did run a few test profiles before calling it a night. Everything appears to be working perfectly. I have 4 pumps total. So I made 2 harnesses that both run 2 pumps each. Each individual pump is controllable. I thought about piggy backing 2 pumps so as not to use up all my variable ports, but I like the idea of independent control over each pump so thats what I decided on.
Overall it wasn't too bad of a project, and would have only cost me a network cable, but I decided to add in some extra 3 way connectors closer to the pump heads to make taking them out of the tank for maintenance easier. I don't remember what I paid for the connectors, they were cheap on ebay or Amazon. They look almost identical to the stock Jebao connectors but are slightly different.
I also could have just cut the connector off the controller instead of buying the extra connectors, but doing it this way allows me to sell the controllers, or keep one around incase my apex craps out on me.
Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to answer them. Going to bed now, and tomorrow ill tackle all the programming.
