Jebao wp40

The last group buy on socalireef I bought 2 of the wp40's. immediately I realized that they were extremely over powered with a limited way to control the max output. It only has 3 choices for speed, High, Medium, and Low. Low being way too fast for smaller tanks.

Not even an hour after opening the box I already had the driver torn apart running preliminary checks with the oscilloscope wondering how I can keep the driver and just add a way to limit the max speed of the motor.

Looking through all my electronic components that I have left over from the other pumps I made for a big named reefing company that will remain nameless. I had everything I needed in the garage to make this thing happen.

I now can control the max speed of the jebao (regardless of the 25 or the 40) with a simple turn of a knob.

Once I get things buttoned up I will post pictured. My family is wanting my help in the kitchen with the decorating sugar cookies... Got to go.

More to come...

Ok here's the video. I tried to keep the video short, I managed to keep it under 3 minutes but I didn't get to show everything that I wanted.

I didn't turn the pumps up to full throttle, they were roughly at 50% when the water started plashing out.

Awesome, looking forward to mod my wp25!

The cost might deter some people, because it will cost about $10 for parts... but after things settle with the holidays I will provide more info. It's a simple 24v PWM.

Can't wait to see the mod!!! It would be nice to dial back the power.

Here's a quick pic of it all buttoned up. see anything different? I will post a video tomorrow.

What do you have plugged in the light sensor hole?

nothing. i used that area to put the pot. If you are asking because the sensor light is on, that's because that amber led is more of a program output, indicating that output power dropped below a certain threshold. The program that is written into the chip can't be accessed by anything I have, and even if I could get into it there's probably protections preventing any changes to be made to the parameters.  The way this "bolt on" works is it changes the input voltage to the board via PWM. All the electronics operate on 5v, meaning that there's a linear voltage regulator that takes the input voltage (in this case 24v) and converts it to a steady 5v. As long as the bolt on doesn't drop below 5v then the electronics works without any problems. the only thing that is changed by adding the bolt on is that it lowers the amount of supplied voltage to the pump itself.

All this does is use a 24v PWM to control the input voltage to the motor but doesn't interfere with the program portion of the WP driver.

It's the simplest way to do it without abandoning the entire driver and using an arduino (or something similar)to create your own driver. which at that point you can program just about any scenario you wanted.

Where's the video?

video is up, check out the second post

sisterlimonpot wrote:Ok here's the video. I tried to keep the video short, I managed to keep it under 3 minutes but I didn't get to show everything that I wanted.

I didn't turn the pumps up to full throttle, they were roughly at 50% when the water started plashing out.

Can you do this to a wp25? and if so how much will you charge?

Will this mod have any effect on slowing the "else " reef mode? Maybe a demo on how to do this mod at the next meeting.

It slows the else mode without effecting the randomness of the mode.

I can demo it at the next meeting but making one is a bit more complicated and can't be done during a meeting.

Thank you for sharing.. that's coo.

Jimmy I purchased 2 extra controllers you could mod and put up for sale haha

haha. pm's have been rolling in, and what I came up with, is that I will make these for paid members at cost. I just have to do a little research to see what it cost for everyting. and then see if members are still interested.

So how do you like them? Are you willing to drop your MP's?

no. for the sole purpose of I already have them. honestly for the price these things are great. else mode is the preferred way of controlling them. the only question is how long do they last. they're a bit noisy but all in all if you were willing to buy tunze's then consider these instead and save money.

I was thinking more on the line of a wp25 for a frag tank?

as long as thr frag tank is big enough and have enough real estate then yes.

As I described previously, this is just a 24v PWM. And I knew that people were going to want these but they were going to be too difficult for the common hobbyist to do on their own. I offered to make these at cost for club members. So I started to research prices of everything that I needed. Which was going to be around $15

Through some more research I found that there was already a PWM that could be picked up through ebay for $5.50 with free shipping. Link provided here. Not only does these have great potential, the plugs work with the jebao driver. Win win right? Not quite. This 5-24v PWM will drop the output voltage lower than what the jebao driver uses, which can damage the circuits and possibly corrupt its programming. BTW, I’m not aware of a reset process for the drivers.

Jebao driver uses a linier voltage regulator to take a portion of the 24v input and convert it to 5v to power the circuit components. And the good thing about linier vr’s is that they are capable of working in a range of input voltages and still maintains a steady 5v output. Which is why these dimmers (when used in the proper range) aren’t going to cause problems to the driver.  The downside to linier vr’s is that they can’t output 5v if the input voltage is less than 5v.

These led dimmers drop the output voltage below 5v. The easiest way to do this is to not allow the dimmer to drop below that 5v threshold. And I did that by simply changing the range in which the potentiometer (control knob) worked. A pot is just a variable resistor which changes the resistant value by a turn of the knob. All you have to do is add a resistor in series of the wiper terminal.

This process is fairly simple. I took lots of pics (some are not focused and for that I apologize)  

Here we go:

Getting into the case isn’t tough, just remove the 2 screws and pull everything apart like so:







Use a flat head screw driver and pry the know knob off:


Remove the nut:






Now comes the fun part, using side cutters, cut the center terminal of the pot:


Remove the remaining part of the terminal that is still attached to the board. For this you are going to have to use a soldering iron:





This step is optional, I used this de-solder to remove the excess solder from the hole, making it easier to add the resistor later:




You can see how the hole is exposed ready to accept a resistor:


Drop a 1M Ω (1000K Ω) ¼ watt resistor which you can pick up at any radioshack. Direction of the resistor doesn’t matter:


Now just solder the resistor in where you made the opening and trim the excess:




Put it all back together and plug everything in and now you have a PWM that will work with the jebao driver.

Now if this is still out of your comfort zone you can choose not to add the resistor and keep in mind not to turn the knob below the 5v threshold.  

Also I want to add this disclaimer. Given that these are only $5 components and jebao’s are fairly cheap as well, it leads me to speculate that there isn’t too much quality control and it’s quite possible that every driver may be effected in different ways as well as every dimmer may have different variations and values within the outputs. Keeping that in mind attempt this at your own risk.

Very nice step by step instructions!

nice write up, im deff gonna try this. will this work on the other size pumps or just the wp40?

as of right now all the drivers are the same.

dwolson2 wrote:I was thinking more on the line of a wp25 for a frag tank?

I'm running a WP25 on a 60 gallon 48"x24"x12 and the flow can be a little too much. Else mode is great but would like to turn it down a bit. Wave 1 turned all the way down it good as long as you place the power head low in the tank. I don't have any sand in the tank due to the fact I think it would be a sand storm.