DIY 12V Koralia Controller

[Flybynight]

Ya that is for the 110 volt powerheads. I have the 12v which are really 16 ish volt AC!!


I found 2 AC power supplies lastnight and hooked the 12 v ac up first and it would run it but it would not move much water so the next one was a 24 volt so I hooked it up and turned it on for just a sec cause I was scared haha. It ran fine and was moving water and turned it off and on about 10 times. After that I was going to leave it hooked up for 20 or so mins and check on it every min or so and forgot about it and came back to find the power supply cooked but the powerhead was fine!!

So I need to find a 16 v ac supply that can handle more amps.

 

[boatbuilder]

Most of these projects focus on in-tank powerheads: 12V koralias are cheap, but "hard" to control (this is the only instance of a DIY controller for them that I'm aware of.) Tunze stream powerheads are more expensive, but require only a 0-8v DC signal to control, so it's pretty straightforward.

For an external "inline" pump (i.e. on a closed loop) there's not much out there in the small size range. Your best bet might be a DC pump intended to run on a solar panel for pond fountains, or a DC bilge pump - but it will be hit or miss to find one that's saltwater safe. If you need a large pump, the easiest solution is probably to swap a 3-phase AC motor on a large wet end (one of the Reeflo pumps for example) and then use a VFD to drive it.

Been there, done that! (3ph w/ VFD that is) prototype worked great too! Made the motor to pump adapter out of wood, now need to get a machine shop to fab something out of aluminum for a permanent installation. Will give out model numbers of equipment used and pix to those who ask.

 

[Flybynight]

Looks Like I am going to be getting tunze so I can control them with my AC3!

 

[Carletto73]

Hi,
have you any news about driving koralia 12V whit a controller diy?

Here in Italy we haven't information about carapteristic of this motor.

All the best

Carlo

 

[mabviper]

Hey Carlo,

This project has been on hiatus for some time now. I'm busy with graduate school but I'll be finished soon. I haven't given up on the project but I just don't have the time at the moment.

If you have any questions about the motor or the controller, I'll try to answer them ^^

Alex

 

[Carletto73]

Thank you mabviper,
I am an electronic engineering I am ready to make the hardware but I don't know nothing about motor.

How can change the direction?

In your video the pump start in not linear mode. Are you able to start this motor linearly?

All the best

Carlo

 

[mabviper]

Hey Carlo,

It took me a while to figure out what kind of motor it uses. I still don't really know what it's called. I think the stator consists of 2 pairs of poles, 1 pair is provided by the AC current and the other pair provided by permanent magnets. The magnetic force of the permanent magnets seems to be weaker than the electromagnetic force created by the phase windings. The rotor has a single pair of poles. I don't have a lot of experience with specialty motors like this one but it uses both induction and synchronous motor techniques.

As you can imagine from this setup, when you turn it on, the motor will have no way of setting its direction of rotation. However, if it rotates the wrong way, the prop should hit the powerhead housing and it'll correct itself. This is all speculation anyways. The motor can have an auxiliary windings to create a split-phase. If it does then it should always turn the right way upon startup.

I don't quite understand what you mean by linear mode. If you meant starting from 0 rpm to maximum rpm, my control algorithm can do that. I got lazy in the video but i can reprogram the system on the go to alter its rpm.

Alex

 

[Carletto73]

Thank you mabviper,
congratulation for your development of this project. I think that you are alone. Certainly
in Europe. About "linear mode" you have identify the point (sotty for my english).

I am happy that you can control the speed.

About the direction must be possible to command clockwise rotation and anticlockwise. This is to create a professional wave maker.

To change the rotation maybe it is possible changing the duty cicle from starting (when the frequency is low) or drinving momentarly in DC the motor befor to starting with ac modulation

 

[BZOFIQ]

I can't believe this is abandoned.

We need this controller so that it can be controlled with 1-10V control output provided by the APEX. Come on guys!

 

[Garage1217]

Watching this old thread with interest

 

[rpp]

any news?

 

[WindowMaker]

out of curiosity, forgive me if I sound dumb here, do the wavemaker systems simply tell a pump to turn on and off, which alternates from left to right side of the tank, or is there more to it?

 

[jrapp13]

The wavemakers this thread is about vary the speed of the pumps in addition to alternating. However, op was one of the first to design a control circuit for the newer 12v koralia controllable pumps. He isnt finished yet.

 

[yaksaredabomb]

I am a EE with sporadic spare time, and may try to implement this on a TI MSP 430 Value Line microcontroller. Any of you interested should check out their Launchpad ($4.30 USD) to see if it would be any fun for you. It runs up to 16GHz so - though I'd likely do most of it in software vs the OP's hardware - there's a chance it could handle the load and still achieve a respectable carrier frequency.

I've already developed a (crude) control and monitoring system for my tank with one of these and it wasn't too bad. Right now the system has 6 inputs from float switches, 2 push button inputs (add 5 min to pump off time, reset), and 4 outputs (return pump, ATO pump, skimmer pump, alarm). Slow going though since I don't have an oscilloscope and glitches can be hard to work out. I'm a little paranoid about glitches, too, given that they can do anything from shutting the return pump down to dumping my entire ATO reservoir to sounding random alarms in the middle of the night for no reason. It's been stable for a few weeks now, with only one issue really, so I have had to take a break from programming and protoboarding for awhile to attend to all that I was neglecting haha.

Anyhow, the progress here had been very good - most importantly the discovery of the apparent required format of the power signal. Without a scope, pump, and controller I wouldn't have wanted to risk hardware trying to figure that out. Invaluable!

Thanks to the OP and evilc66 on nano-reef for your work so far! Hope you have a chance to revisit it soon! I'm not sure when (if) I'll be able to haha but it looks like a fun challenge.

 

[miamiaquarium]

does this work for any koralia that runs in 12v

 

[yaksaredabomb]

Hey Carlo,

It took me a while to figure out what kind of motor it uses. I still don't really know what it's called. I think the stator consists of 2 pairs of poles, 1 pair is provided by the AC current and the other pair provided by permanent magnets. The magnetic force of the permanent magnets seems to be weaker than the electromagnetic force created by the phase windings. The rotor has a single pair of poles. I don't have a lot of experience with specialty motors like this one but it uses both induction and synchronous motor techniques.

As you can imagine from this setup, when you turn it on, the motor will have no way of setting its direction of rotation. However, if it rotates the wrong way, the prop should hit the powerhead housing and it'll correct itself. This is all speculation anyways. The motor can have an auxiliary windings to create a split-phase. If it does then it should always turn the right way upon startup.

I don't quite understand what you mean by linear mode. If you meant starting from 0 rpm to maximum rpm, my control algorithm can do that. I got lazy in the video but i can reprogram the system on the go to alter its rpm.

Alex

Hey Alex, it's been quite some time now - any update? Do you have any drawings or charts of the waveform you were using, or best idea of how to power and control the motor?

I finally bought one of these pumps and it's in the mail now, so it's been quite some time for me too. Can't believe it was 2012 when I first came across your thread! At any rate maybe I'll finally play around with one of the motors myself haha.

Jacob