NightWatch Avaritia NA40

LED Flashlights – General Info 26650 Flashlights
41

Yes, 2400 lumen would be it’s output in raw form. Output drops a bit once installed in a light.

In the video
Chris does not have an integrating sphere to measure with. He is using a ceiling bounce measurement and his correction numbers might be off a little.

I imagine 1800 to 1900 lumen is more realistic for OTF lumens. So this NA40 could in theory be doing 5500 lumen with a FET driver and good battery (not so much the KeepPower). 5000+ lumen is a realistic number to me. I’m curious to see output tests with a good battery.

42

Is it a triple xhp50.2?

For that light you would need a boost driver for sure and current designs are limited in output. The Acebeam EC65 is a quad xhp35-HI running a single 21700 cell. It can put out 3750 lumen. So right around the 45 watt range (Same as Lexels and Loneoceans boost driver limit). If you have 3 xhp50.2 in 6v parallel on a 45w driver and a good high drain cell you can expect a bit less output than the NA40, maybe 4000 lumen, but have it as steady output, where the FET driver immediately starts dropping voltage and output.

IDK, this xhp50.2 version sounds strange and there’s a reason we have not seen that style of light. Further investigation is needed.

43

I could only find info on the Nitewatch EC21 which is a single xhp50.2 rated at 2200 lumen at 3A.

It’s also made with the sst 40 or xpl-hi.

Then Nitewatch also has a xhp70 light that is rated at 3600 lumen at 4.8A.

44

I rcv'd mine last night. Measured 13.2A at the tail w/clamp meter on turbo (LK 5000 cell with a magnet on the Batt+ end), 5.45A on hi. There's 16 7135's and two FET's in parallel. FET's are used for turbo, max 7135's used for Hi mode. On turbo I measured 4,640 @start, 4,280 @30 secs, 36.5 kcd taken at 5M. It's a 14 pin MCU, ~21 ohm resistor from Batt+, then to a diode, then to pin #1 (PWR), pin #14 is GRND. Driver is 32.2 mm wide - I don't have any of that size, but enough cavity room to sandwhich one in.

Looks like a copper DTP, though I didn't verify it's a true DTP. Thermal grease pattern is a bit strange. Screw was attempting to hold it down or simply in position, but the screw wasn't threaded in the hole - odd. LED- wire is also oddly soldered but probably no loss's. I got 7,890-6,530 lumens on a triple SST-40 light, but used 4P 18650 35E cells in a bigger host (SP03), so could be the lumen #'s make sense. My modded C8F does about 5000 lumens @30 secs using XPL2 V6's and 19.1 amps using a VTC5D VapCell.

Springs are very stiff and copper look - suspect good quality so bypasses probably won't help much. Tail has no spring, but a simple ring (no pic). Stock LK cells rattle, but adding a thin magnet on the Batt+ end fixed it. Battery options are limited because of the weird tail end - circular contact area is too big for 18650's, batt length must be just right, etc.

It's a nice quality light - easy UI, nice FET/7135 driver design, thick shelf, copper DTP (probably), red and green LED's under switch (4 wires). The head has some weight to it which is a good thing. It seems like SS bezel - has weight.

Not liking the LED alignment pieces - little slop/play results in not centered though not sure if it cause any problems in beam pattern or output. 20 AWG wires, long to be able to pull out the driver. Clearance of PCMCB wire soldering is tight, so upgrading to 18 AWG could be tricky.

It seems like more amps should be possible with an LK - not sure if wires, springs, and batt magnet account for it all. Batt+ must pass thru the 2 spring charging board setup. In theory, triple SST-40's should out do triple XPL2 V6's. Could be restrictions with those FET's, driver layout, etc., as well, or maybe the LED alignment pieces could not be helping. The C8F is really a top shelf host, about perfect in many ways.

NOTE: driver retaining ring threads oppositely - CW to loosen

45

I hate to bring this up, and I don’t mean any ill will, but your using the Manxbuggy1 lumen tube, right? An educated guess looks like it could be reading 10% to 15% high. Some other Manxbuggy1 tubes seem to read about the same. This is a whole other topic, though. Sorry.

Back to this light, it’s quite possible that @30s it’s only doing roughly 3800 to 3900 lumen. This is much lower than spec. I was hoping for 5000lm at least, but I think that would require about 20A at the tail. (Maybe a Samsung 30T would get the job done?)

I have no idea on that driver spring, maybe it’s low resistance, maybe not. I would swap it with a longer known type of spring and do a bypass on it. That could eliminate 2 potential problem areas.

46

Their springs are very unusual. Like none I have run across before. Here is a picture from one of their 21700 single emitter lights I have. It’s very thick and very stiff material. The one I have is not a FET driver but I would definitely bypass this spring on a FET light. Regardless of how good the electrical properties of the spring are i’m skeptical of the coating (if there even is one). Seems like it could tarnish and create resistance over time. All in all though I like a lot of things this brand is doing differently even if they have some room for improvement they aren’t just copying the typical designs.

47

I've heard/saw some inkling of the high readings, but I find it hard to dispute Rick and Rodney's initial calibrations based on many high end commercial ANSI/NEMA FL-1 tested flashlights. My PVC lightbox is a manxbuggy1 original, and we worked together on the calibration, and even using the same exact flashlights. I'll grant you 10% is well within the tolerance, but I rarely, if ever, get a reading higher that claimed, usually lower, again, on name brand supposed FL-1 tested modern lights. I'm still using the same meter and occasionally regression test it to my old lights and still seems on. I hope I've been in the ballpark because the Q8 rating is based on my readings, and I thought djozz's readings and mine were close at the time.

The LK cells do pretty darn well, though I think the VTC5D is the current 18650/26650 king, edged out by the 30T though. I'l like to see what the 25S does, available here: https://www.18650batterystore.com/18650-p/samsung-25s.htm. The old Samsung 20R used to be the hot cell, and was hoping for a 30R or 30S for a long time, but it never happened.

I agree this light does much lower than spec'd. Seems they, like many, just make the #'s up. In theory, doubling up the FET's should do better but I never heard of those FET's before, so could be low performers. Also fairly long 20 AWG for 3 low Vf LED's will be a bottleneck, but maybe those springs are the bigger bottleneck - same here, never saw springs like that before.

48

I think I recognize that reflector. I got one like it from either Fasttech or Kaidomain to use in a 3xSST40 build. It’s been slow going because I couldn’t find an MCPCB with the right spacing, and my first pass at using small Sinkpads soldered to a copper disc went awry just before I was ready to reflow on emitters.

How does the beam look?

49

I just received the NA40 SE Updated version today and it already failed :cry:

I popped in a NOT fully charged Shockli 26650 and took a measurement with my calibrated TA lumen sphere at 3,800 lumens at turbo 0s. It’s definitely brighter than the TC20 and equal to my D4s XP-L HI 5D.

The problem is the flashlight doesn’t turn off even when I hold the button. I had to unscrew the battery tube and screw it back in a few minutes later for it to turn off properly. I then took the battery out to charge and was planning to take a lumen reading with a fully charged battery. To my surprise the light stays in dim mode and doesn’t turn off. I took out the battery and reinserted a few times and noticed the spring on the usb charger driver scratched up the battery pretty badly. The spring itself is also crushed (spring has almost no resilience). Now I’m left with an unusable light. Very disappointing because the light looks great and the finishing is very high quality. It also has good potential for modding since you can swap out the driver and still retain usb charging. Sigh….

50

if I followed correctly you did report that to Neal too and he already sent you the replacement?

51

You helped me forwarded my request to Neal at first. I haven’t reported it to Neal directly.

Btw, which 26650 did you use with this?

52

Got my original NA40 updated with a piggyback'ed 17mm DEL driver running NarsilM - really nice now. Didn't take apart the switch but tied the red and green wires to the LED pin #3 and seems like I only got one working LED in there - seems to be RED but looks orange. In room light it appears only on one side of the switch but in the dark it's a definite orange and looks consistent throughout the switch - I like it .

It's a nice quality light all around - love the anodizing, SS bezel, square threads and separate charging circuit. At best I got about 17.5 amps out of it, 5950 @start, 4980 @30 secs (my lumens). Losing about 1000 lumens in 30 secs is excessive for sure. Not sure what's going on there - thinking the MCPCB mounting is not ideal. Maybe it's not tightly pressed down by the reflector, not sure.

The biggest issue I have is the weird battery tail (negative contact) setup. It's the oddest setup I've ever seen. It seems like a spring is just simply missing? stock LK's rattle and can't make contact. Typical magnets on the tail are too small in diameter -- totally weird stuff. Why??? Hope they fixed this up in the SE upgrade? I use solder blob top LK's with a magnet off centered on the tail - not ideal but no rattle and it basically works.

I stripped the stock driver to use as a contact board, epoxied the 17mm on top. Looks like the MCU is a ATTiny84, 14 pin surface mount, and some of the cap and resistor design closely matches the DEL driver designs. The 16 7135's are divided into banks, at least 3, maybe 4-5, not sure. Because the 84 has a ton of I/O pins, it makes it easy to do and you can optimize your mode sets to be full sets of 7135's at max output - no PWM's. I almost considered air-wiring in a ATTiny85 to use the existing 7135's and FET's, but would be a challenge for me.

Wish I knew the details of exactly what they changed in the SE model - for example "improved switch", well, what was improved? Could it be it stood out too far and was too stiff? Why was the reflector swapped and what's the advantages? I could speculate maybe it frees up space for the wiring - they had to epoxy up the exposed wires, so maybe there's some true interference going on there, maybe resulting in a poor MCPCB bonding to the shelf. Shame because it's a really nice light, great for modding. It's like a 26650 version of the C8F, but nice charging setup, better quality body, though the C8F isn't bad at all. The driver size of 32 mm is non-standard for us, sorry to say -- no one on BLF makes a 32 mm, or one that can be tailored to 32 mm as far as I know, but the piggyback works well.

Even with the issues, they are relatively minor. The original NA40 is a nice light for the money - I don't regret buying this one. The NA40SE hopefully improves on or eliminates these shortcomings.

53

I just tested all my 26650 batteries, all of them works fine with my original NA40.

54

Where did you buy this NarsilM driver?

55

Appearantly DEL built it for him. He made it himself based on Del’s design.

If you want to buy one ready to go you can see Lexels thread on them.

56

I just got the replacement tube from Neal. :+1: I think it was the springs. The springs on this thing can get crushed easily. Otherwise I really like this light. It has good mass for heat sinking. I measured 3,970 lumens at 1s using freshly charged shockli 26650 5500mah on my TA lumen tube with Maukka calibration.

57

I think the light output is being severely limited by the springs. They are probably phosphor bronze/BeCu short springs can carry quite a bit of current, especially if it’s really stiff, meaning it has very low contact resistance initially.

The problem however is that it takes into account if the light is new. Pure copper oxidizes very quickly, meaning contact resistance shoots up dramatically, and even faster with heat, which can great hot spots, and contact resistance goes up because of heat.

Using gold plated springs, or even better, dual springs, would help a ton in this regard.

58

You are probably right. The original springs that came with the NA40SE is very thick. The replacement is thinner with more loops, which I’m guessing is from the version 1 NA40.

59

Seems quite bright for 3 emitters. :+1:

My xhp70.2 (4 emitters) and FET driver with 2 x 26350 got 4100lm measured similarly. I bet using that single Shockli is way better than my 26350 cells.

This NA40 would be pretty sweet with a better UI like Tom E used. You retain the charging as well. That’s one advantage compared to building up a C8F 21700.

Did you happen to measure how many amps it’s pulling across the tail cap on turbo?

60

I don’t have the equipment to measure amps.

I’m waiting for my Nightwatch heavyweight XHP70 light to come from Enogear and see if the NA40 tube fits. That would add USB charging to that light.