Has anyone controlled a dc pump with apex

[John08007]

I just picked up a current usa dc return pump. I would love to control it via my 0-10v apex. There currently is not any way to do this. I know there is a jabao and icecap gyre interface available. Seems like all of these pumps have 3 wires, would assume power, ground ams some sorta sensing wire. I can't see it being too hard for someone with electrical knowledge to do this. I would think even the jabao controller would work except that it wouldn't handle the needed current for a larger pump.

Has anyone investigated these? Have any knowledge on how they work?

 

[theatrus]

Seems like all of these pumps have 3 wires, would assume power, ground ams some sorta sensing wire.

Are you talking about from the actual pump to the controller box? If so, then no, its a three phase AC signal, wired directly to three phases of the motor (most are the brushless DC permanent magnet type)

The basic principle is the same for all of them: back EMF sensing, three phase trapezoidal waveform driver.

However, the peculiarities and details means its hard to make a universal plug and play driver since the motor construction plays an integral part of the motor driver design and tuning.

I tried years ago to make a universal driver based on an https://www.allegromicro.com/en/products/motor-drivers/bldc-drivers/a4960 but it was... not very universal. It would be possible to use a MCU (and lots of designs exist for this), but you're still stuck with a lot of per motor model tuning to get it to run optimally. Perhaps something like https://odriverobotics.com/ may work for control assuming you can tune the motor constants.

 

[John08007]

Wow, this complicates things. I was thinking that something could easily be built to replace the controller, plug the power supply into it and 0-10v and control it. I was thinking it was some sorta pwm with the 3rd wire acting as a tachometer. I know my icecap gyre knew if the pump was jammed, maybe it was monitoring the amps to determine this.

 

[theatrus]

Wow, this complicates things. I was thinking that something could easily be built to replace the controller, plug the power supply into it and 0-10v and control it. I was thinking it was some sorta pwm with the 3rd wire acting as a tachometer. I know my icecap gyre knew if the pump was jammed, maybe it was monitoring the amps to determine this.

It may be limiting total current, but it absolutely knows the motor position relative to the three poles + velocity, as it needs to track that actually advance the motor.

For a DIY approach, I’ve always contended it’s much easier to hack the driver control box. The speed control potentiometer on the driver can probably be trivially substituted for a 0-10V signal with nothing more than some resistors.

 

[John08007]

It may be limiting total current, but it absolutely knows the motor position relative to the three poles + velocity, as it needs to track that actually advance the motor.

For a DIY approach, I’ve always contended it’s much easier to hack the driver control box. The speed control potentiometer on the driver can probably be trivially substituted for a 0-10V signal with nothing more than some resistors.

Today I thought that I could replace the pot in my control box with a digital pot controlled by my apex, sure there is a lot more electronics needed between the two but a posabile way forward