Hi
We are enjoying the snow at our house through the patio doors. It looks great at night with the outside light on. However it is triggered by a motion sensor and switches off very quickly. Other than have a child open the door to trigger it and freezing us all, is there any way to temporaily force it to stay on?
Thanks Suzanne
All the motion sensor lights thatI have bought have a feature to keep the light on if you switch it off and on again within a second or two. That feature seldom works for me, so I'd rather not have it at all. If there's a short power cut while I am on holiday for two weeks, that will be 300 watts being wasted for two weeks.
Most of the new ones allow you to blip them on, off and on again and will then stay on manually. This varies a bit though, so either RTFM or experiment.
Mine are much simpler to use - I run 3+e cable to them rather than
2+e, connect one core between the lamp and the sensor (this is usually obvious inside) and have two switches: one for "On - Auto" and one for "On - Manual".*Some* PIRs have a function that latches them on if, whilst it is on, you switch it off and back on again within a couple of seconds. You do have an interior switch for this light don't you?
Longer term you might want to get the sparks back to install an override switch - we've just done that with a newly installed one for the front porch.
Thanks for all the replies. We used to have one that a couple of rapid switch on and off's kept it on, but it doesn't seem to be the case with this one. We don't have a FM to read as it was installed by an electrician.
I was hoping there might be a trick with tinfoil or something to confuse the motion sensor?
Thanks Suzanne
Send child outside to play in the snow, then close the door.
Colin Bignell
Buy a FM Tether child outside and then go through the FM.
HTH Richard
Yes, I don't like it either - ours has been known to get stuck in the 'on' position before. I think it's 'only' a 60W bulb in there, but it's still a pain in the bum if it gets jammed on for any length of time.
That cats always trip it, too - maybe two sensors in series at slightly different angles would better detect a person rather than one of the critters.
As for the OP: we have a whole bunch of solar-charged yard lights which cast a rather nice glow over the snow (without the light being otherwise intrusive) - I'm in the US, but they would have worked out at about 2 quid each. I fully expected them to die this in winter as the snow here covered up the solar cells on their tops, but so far that hasn't happened
- the tops are a small enough footprint that there isn't much snow build- up, and the radiant heat of the sun tends to melt whatever does accumulate there. I can't imagine their batteries are putting out much when it's -20C out...
cheers
Jules
Probably not in this weather. If it's warmer, a thick tinfoil "wind chime" (old pie dish) hung within sight can sometimes be enough of a false trigger source.
One of mine is triggered by a bird feeder - if the cat is out there watching, the cat's vantage point on the wall triggers the sensor.
Santa's bringing me solar lights, but it'll probably be another 10 years before we get another snowfall like this!
Ours is triggered by our cat too, but the old boy is seventeen ain't going out more than twice a day in this weather.
TINFOIL IS WORKING!!!!
Assuming you can switch it off from inside (i.e. choose between off and auto), then you could change the connection in the lamp to connect the live feed to the PIR output rather than its input (usually there are 4 terminals in these things L, N, & E in, and a L out to the lamp. Connecting the wire currently on the L in terminal to the L one instead (along with the wire going to the lamp) would turn it into an ordinary switched lamp.
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