Friends, after having a hew section built on my home I now have a dogleg around the back of the house.
I would like to fit PIR lamps on each corner but to have them operate simultaneously whichever door is used i.e rear or front and drive.
Can someone explain in a simplified way how I should go about wiring them?
Would it be just to run a power cable connecting all three or must they have seperate power supplies?
Regards, Peter.
I am thinking ordinary flood lights and separate PIR Sensors wired so that whichever is triggered the circuit to the lights will be energised. Often you find that the best location for sensors are not always the best places for lights (unless you want them dazzling you as you approach your house).
Best way would be to buy lights specifically designed to be daisy chained like this. They will possibly need a supply to each one and a control signal is a further wire to link them. The physical run of the wire could be linear or in a star. You can buy 3 core and earth wire for this sort of purpose.
Bodging simple single lamps into such a configuration will possible cause problems as which ever light is triggered will be carrying the current of all the lamps which would likely overload the relays.
Bob
It does depend on how much light you want at each spot - do you want a
500W blaster or a more environmentally friendly 60 or 100W. This is the key as most PIR relays will handle 500W and if it's the latter then it's just a case of daisy chaining the required 'Swan Neck' lights on each corner of the house from the one PIR lamp.But then you say that requires that particular PIR to be fired - the solution to that is to fit the one PIR lamp and the required number of stand-alone PIR detectors.
The wiring if you think it through logically is just a collection of switches in parallel, switching the line, feeding a number of lamps also in parallel - the switched line going to the 'top' of the lamps and the neutral to the 'bottom'.
If you want to have greater light power at each point using individual PIR lights, then I think you're into a more complex set-up involving trying to find some way of using the relay of one light to switch on the relays of all the other lights.
That is into the realms of major modifications of the PIR card and actually isn't necessary. I have a main 150W PIR switching as I've described above with a 'slave' PIR looking in the orthogonal direction and two slave lights on the corners of the house ('L' shaped area). That allows me to go to the next corners where further PIR lights then pick me up and come on.
Rob
Lets assume you are using standard PIR lantern type beasties with an integral PIR. Typically these have a terminal block with 4 connections - L N & E in, plus an additional switched live that returns from the PIR module.
Take a L N & E feed to the first lamp. Then take a L N E, & Switched Live feed to each of the next - you can daisy chain several[1].
This way each lamp has a permanent feed and its PIT is active. If it switches on it will switch all the lamps. Additional lamps switching as you walk through the zones will simply switch other lamps PIRs on in parallel. Only when they have *all* switched off will the lights go out.
[1] Choose your lights carefully to see how much load the PIR is capable of switching. I have some that will do 1kW and others that can only manage 150W which limits you to a couple of lamps with 60W bulbs.Exactly the same logic will work with standalone PIRs - by taking the three core feed to these instead of the lamps. You can use a combination of the two as well.
One to all three makes more sense. I would normally take a feed from a dedicated MCB in the CU to a switch inside. Use three core cable (& E) to go from there to the first light, thence all the others. That enables the switch to be used as an override forcing all the lamps on by connecting L to SL. (or if you want to get posh, use a two gang switch, or centre position one so you can force them all off as well)
You should be able to just connected the switched live outputs of 2 PIRs together without problem. To be certain there wont bea n issue, and to make them fully compatible with all lamp types, choose PIRs with a neutral connection.
NT
Thankyou for all the useful replies, it is now just a question of which power of bulb my wife would like to have!
I suspect that 150 watt would be sufficient to light the sections of walkway without it blinding whoever is using it but then again I must consult the oracle.
Thanks again, much appreciated.
Peter.
150 is sufficient in a dark area. Too bright and it limits your ability to see into the shadows
the main difference is not power handling but reliability. When a filament bulb arcs on dying its sure to kill a 150w triac, where a
500w one would often survive.NT
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