Use PWM to control your Jebao DCT pump using brushless motor controller from ebay

I will be able to resume work on this Sunday night and try the different connections.

On the forward spin, I do not hear any whine, only water flow sound, but maybe that is masking the whine.

If nothing works, I will still use the ebay board for now as even the max flow on it is more than I need. If the ebay board turns out it cannot work at least the same as the stock controller, I will try to build a controller from scratch, which was how this started before I stumbled into the ebay controller.
 
ok! I'm hoping this works. I need to get it up and running this weekend due to other obligations for the next couple of weeks.
 
If you use a potentiometer, you would not know where to stop turning. Turning all the way will feed 10v to the 5v input.
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I just tested all connection combinations for the green and white ebay boards.

It boils down only to 2 unique modes. For the green board, forward spin runs 26 watts, reverse runs 37 watts. For the white board, forward runs 34 watts, reverse runs 45 watts and gets better flow than the green board. If I ground the direction pin to reverse it, it just goes from 37 to 26 or 26 to 37 watts.

The stock controller runs 34 watts, and flow is higher than the white ebay controller.

I don't think it is worth modifying the ebay boards circuits, unless I stumble into something simple to do.

I'll probably just use the white ebay board as is.

I'm going back to work on my controller project, and will look into this again, perhaps build a controller from scratch.
 
Looks like a lot of thread happened while I was out :bounce2: !

I suspect the EMF comparator is simply triggering from the noise, and its throwing the controller into a loop. It would potentially help to trace out the Jebao driver its self to see its sense circuit. Swapping some SMD caps and resistors isn't that hard.... The filtering may need to become more aggressive (larger cap, etc) or maybe more than one pole.

As for a gate-resistor, that will slow the FET down but also reduce ringing on the line (big square wave dumping into a gate capacitor is an EMI disaster). The slower the FET switches, the more energy you'll burn in it while its in an intermediate state. I don't think its truly essential here. I haven't studied the circuit enough to understand the diode use case...

Through the miracles of Amazon Prime Same-Day I will be the proud owner of a smaller DCT pump tomorrow to look at whats up with its control scheme.

For a ground-up replacement, the Allegro A4960-A looks like a great candidate - its designed for back-EMF measurements and doesn't need much external components to do it (lot is software settable). Its not going to end up costing $10, probably more like $30 to build it yourself. (because.. China)

http://www.allegromicro.com/en/Prod...ace-ICs/Brushless-DC-Motor-Drivers/A4960.aspx

I run a Vectra M1 on my tank and have a new-in-box spare, so I cracked open the controller. Its a step up from what I've been seeing in the Jebao. First off, the pump has either an inductive pickup trace or a single hall sensor (haven't checked, two wires). DRV8301 gate driver,

vectra1-1k.jpg

Full size:
http://theatr.us/images/vectra/vectra1.jpg

vectra2-1k.jpg

Full size:
http://theatr.us/images/vectra/vectra2.jpg

The main MCU is a Cortex-M4F (120MHz) (MKV31F256) http://cache.nxp.com/files/microcon...ORMAT=pdf&WT_ASSET=Documentation&fileExt=.pdf

http://www.nxp.com/products/microco...rollers-mcus-based-on-arm-cortex-m4-core:KV3x

It has a number of motor control features as well.

The BOM cost here is probably a good 2-3x the shipped-from-china cost of the eBay drivers (because.. China). The same MCU is probably used in the Vortech QD drivers (just stamp out the Freescale BLDC reference design and libraries, success).
 
Curiously, the big honking NFET is part of the MIC2587 hot swap controller:
http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/mic2587-87r.pdf

I need to trace this out some more to see if its part of the battery backup input or if the main power input is being hot swapped (likely to act as a current limit at input, nice!). You usually don't waste money on this unless it really prevents some disastrous problem.

But back to the Jebao pumps!
 
The bemf signal on the jebao board is very clean, almost textbook.
I'll get some 0603 resistors from a local store to change the circuit on the green board to make it similar to the jebao circuit and see if it makes any difference.
 
contact the seller and ask for specs and what motor controller chip is used. They can try getting it from their supplier.
 
Looks like #3 came back - was a removed item when I clicked through.

Really isn't enough information to figure it out from the listing, haven't tried googling to see if someone is using these in a project somewhere else.
 
Amazon delivered my DCT-4000 (50W controller). Looks like someone sanded out the main controller chip.

I wonder, if we were to do a new controller, why not just put it back into the same case as the existing controller. Plenty of room in here, could even re-use the little heatsink. I'm not sure how much bigger than controller thats above 50W is.
 
Just doing some basic testing using the controller. The dry pump is, as I suspected, pulling significantly less power as a whole vs one in any liquid (at the lowest speed on the controller, 2W dry, 16W wet). The current shunt on the backside of the board is likely used for this measurement.
 
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