I fitted new outdoor lights with these dusk till dawn photocells:
I'd be grateful for any suggestions.
Many thanks!
Could it be the type where if you switch it off then back on the light stays on? In which case you need to leave it off for a few mins before switching back on.
Distorted Vision has brought this to us :
Some, by design, if you turn them off then back on within ten seconds - will remain on until reset by being left off for a longer period.
Why do the manufacturers design them that way? It's an unwanted "feature" as far as I am concerned. If there is a power cut for less than ten seconds then floodlights may stay on indefinitely. Not very good for an unoccupied building with sensor lights. And at my home, visitors trying to turn lights on or off sometimes flick the sensor switch off for a few seconds. If I could buy sensor lights without that feature I would do so, but it seems they all have it.
Matty F pretended :
They will stay on only until they are manually reset, or until the next dusk to dawn transition.
We have four, three on the same circuit - which makes it easy to turn them all on in an emergency. The switch/es are all out the way in the airing cupboard.
Good. Not just me who thinks that then.
I fitted 2 for a customer in a very rural location, replacement for old switched lights. Every evening they worked fine, but were on permanently every morning. I went back twice to check the wiring.
On the second visit I noticed the lady's cooker clock flashing, which led me to look at her microwave clock - also flashing.
Eventually twigged it. Every night there was a very brief power cut - preumably as the power was changed from one supply to another? Which put the lights into manual mode.
Had to replace them with manual lights again.
on 17/04/2010, The Medway Handyman supposed :
or the vast majority of people they work fine. We have had one brief power outage in the past four years. It stayed off of around 30 minutes, so the lights were not triggered.
It happens that Harry Bloomfield formulated :
Well bugger me!
Just 20 minutes after posting that, we suffered an outage lasting about
3 seconds :o)
Got Talent"?
Adam
The Medway Handyman explained :
Thinking about this - you could always build a simple timer circuit, which would hold the mains supply off for 20 seconds if the supply is lost. Added in before any switches, it should entirely solve the problem, yet still allow them to be kept on via the usual switch.
That may be some sort of Economy 7 switch over fault. You should have asked the customer to report a fault to her supplier.
Adam
Sods law in action :-)
No, it took me 20 minutes to phone his power company, so I could prove my point!
I have been using dusk to dawn sensors in a street light and then one of those sockets that detects power to the main outlet and switches peripherals. This enables me to power on a number of daisy chained bulkhead fluorescent lights.
Today I came across the sensor (erl pcm1000) sold separately to retrofit to a light fitting and shall use it to control a 70W SON but it's rated for
2kW of resistive load. I paid ~7quid.AJH
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