Wow.. amazing!! you should show these chinese manufactures how it's done!!! Is it hard to do?
DriversAndFans by
TKIY, on Flickr
Use wire nuts, solder and heat shrink, or the same molex plugs if you can find them. Molex would be plug and play and really easy.
- The bottom 2 wires connected to the AC plug is the input, which gets replaced with the 2 input wires on the new driver. The third wire from the AC plug leads to the grounding screw.
- Brown and blue output on the new driver connect to the other end of the red molexed wire that the one on the original driver leads to (the leds).
- Connect the 2 dimming wires from the new driver (DIM+ DIM-) to wires 1 and 2 of a cut ethernet CAT5 cable (1: Orange-White,2: Orange). For driver # 2, connect to wires 5 and 6 of the same ethernet cable (5: Blue-White, Green). (Drill a hole in the back for the wire to go through)
- Disconnect the fans from the drivers. Cut the red and black wires from each fan so they are on their own, and not connected to the heat shrunk board they are attached to.
- Get a 12v Universal AC adapter plug, and cut the multiple plug piece off. Run the cut cord into the fixture. Connect the red wire from each fan to the striped cord, connect the black wires to the solid black cord. If you use a 12v Adapter, you can control the speed of the fans by flipping through the different voltages on the adapter. Make sure the fans blow air into the fixture. If they dont, flip the polarity switch on the adapter, and the fans will reverse.
- Put the fixture back together, and test the dimming via the Apex. Make it ramp from 0 to 100 in 1 minute.
If you are good with wiring, it would take you minutes. If you aren't, it will take hours.
This makes the Nova A4 Apex dimmable. It will only dim down to 10%, which is still sort of bright. All DIY drivers basically do this though.
You will not be able to control it with the Pot switches anymore. It will only work with an Apex or other 0-10v dimming controller.
This probably wont work on the d120 or other Novas. I haven't seen how those are wired or what the specs on the drivers are.