Intova Nova Wide Angle Mod

[bevansmw]

Ok, so I got a Intova Nova WA from a friend at work to modify after he saw the other lights that I've modified so far. This one seems to have some potential, there is an easy mod once you get it open to just swap the Q3 that they use in it with an XR-E R2, which I plan to do with the original driver/heatsink that the light has.

However I think it has more potential than that, being an aluminum case and all, the driver doesn't provide much current at 700mA so I'm going to try to change that... here is what I intend to do.

1) Drill out tube slightly so it fits a single 18650 Li-Ion cell

2) Fit a CREE XP-G R5 LED inside with a 4x AMC 7135 driver


So far I have a good plan, I'm not going to mess with the original heatsink/driver that the light comes with except for swapping the Q3 for an R2. I have an extra pill from a reflector that fits perfectly inside in place of the stock one. Additionally I have a ground down copper pill from a reflector that will work to extend the pill deeper inside and house a reed switch.

To make the driver work I'm thinking I'm going to heat up a 16mm board I have that I'm not using to get all the SMT components to drop off. Then I'm going to mount a reed switch inside of the pill that handles 1.5A constant current that I've already identified.

Should work like this...

1) Drill out top of the ground down copper pill to allow connection

2) Solder blank board to the bottom of the ground down pill

3) Drill a hole in the empty board and solder one end of the reed to the positive pad on the bottom of it with a spring on top of this

4) Properly position the reed inside the ground down copper pill so the magnetic switch activates it on and off

5) Solder the other end of the reed to the positive pad of the AMC 7135 driver that will be soldered into the other pill

6) Solder the two pills together end to end

7) Drill out the body to fit a single 18650


That should do it... I wish they would've made the body just slightly bigger inside, it already almost fits a single 18650 but is just maybe 1-2mm too small in I.D. to fit.


Probably be a while, but this is something I'll get to play with

Some pics of the disassembled light are below, I got this one for free so no cost to me so far. It was fairly tough to get apart since it was glued together at the head, I had to put it in a vice and use a pipe wrench to get it apart.

 

[is300luver]

Any update on this?

 

[bevansmw]

I'm currently deployed in Bahrain but I'm looking at buying some materials to finish this one off.

 

[Becon42]

Update

 

[is300luver]

I would like an update on this as well. -Brandon

 

[bevansmw]

Finally got around to doing this after quite some time.

What I managed to fit into the light...

1x TaskLED Hallsw board
1x 8x AMC 7135 Driver board (2.8Amps on High w/ 5 modes)
1x CREE XML U2 LED

Everything fit just perfectly, to get the hallsw board to stay in place I cut an old GNC Goldcard to fit into the slot the old Intova circuitboard sat in and then slid the hallsw board in front of that one.

I also removed the spring from the bottom of the 8x AMC 7135 board and cut away some of the plastic where the old board slid into so I could push the driver board into the round plastic piece. The two boards are in it perpendicular to eachother and fit perfectly. You can't see the driver board in any of the photos and I didn't feel like unsoldering wires to show it as the wires are just long enough for everything to fit.

It's wired like this:

Hallsw:
LED+ to Driver Batt+
LED- to driver Batt- (outer ring of the driver)
Batt+ to the spring on the bottom of the plastic casing
Batt- to the stranded wire thats flayed on the outside of the metal where the LED rests

Driver LED+ to LED+
Driver LED- to LED-

It's currently running on 6V with the two original cells and keyed into the slot in the manufacturer's slot and works like a charm. I'd like to get it to run off of one 4.2V 18650 cell but the cell is a little wider than the batts that it takes now.

My goal is to drill it out some to widen it for the 18650 while being careful not to remove the key slots for the pill to rest in as it holds the pill at the right angle to activate the hallswitch (in case of original its a reed switch) with the magnetic switch on the outside.

Anyhow light works great as it is now, the body heats up a bit out of water rather quickly running on High, but shouldn't be a problem in the water.

I used some shin-etsu thermal compound on the back of the LED heatsink to effectively conduct the heat away from the LED.

Photos attached.

As a side note I've modded a Underwater Kinetics SL4 to run off of a single Li-Ion 25500 cell and originally had an XML U2 LED running in it with a 8x 7135 driver board (same setup) and it got so hot that the driver board melted and bent and the LED had a small burned spot on its dome. I since swapped it back to a single-mode 4x 7135 driver with a XML U2 LED as that setup never had any problems, still using the Li-Ion 25500 cell which makes the light much lighter without the 4x C-sized cells inside of it.

 

[bevansmw]

Drilled it out with a 3/4" drill bit .. left a small ring to keep the keyway that holds the LED pill in the correct orientation for the magnet.

This one is going to be my video light with a fantasea blue ray tray on an ikelite housing for my canon point and shoot camera. Got the intova holder to go onto the arm, probably one of the cheapest solutions for a high output video light. Actually should be quite a bit better than a lot of the more expensive and heavier setups.

Photos attached of the light accepting a single 18650 after drilling it out.

I have one of the narrow beam ones I'm going to do the same thing to for my primary dive light.