Best flood light with motion sensor to distinguish a person from wind?
Years ago, I bought a non-brand name device with places for 2 floodlights and a sensor to turn them on when it was dark out and motion was sensed, which also caused a beeper in the house plugged into the AC to beep when the sensor turned fhe floodlights on or continued to keep them on.
I liked that beeper but I've turned the sensitivity to the lowest of 3 settings and still the wind is turning the floods on all the time. I want to replace the fixture.
Is there a brand or model of such a floodlighht with the ability to distinguish someone walking in my yard from the wind?
(I'm not worried about burglars much when I'm home, but if I can get my back pain under control, I plan to go away for a month in late February.)
We have IR sensors. The wind moves our flora around and depending on the weather, the 'moving' flora can look like people walking around and the lights go on with nothing there. Plus, now the bats have learned to fly around close to the IR sensors, set off the lights, then eat the bugs the lights attracted. We have 'night vision' cameras with multiple angles of cross coverage recording all the time, so when reviewing the HD recordings, I watch these bats swoop back and forth until setting off the flood lights, then the bats really go nuts with the feast that follows.
I did a lot of research before deciding not to implement a security camera system.
Can't give you any specific recommendations, but I can give you a few things to think about.
Typical low-end IR sensors have a single sensor that outputs a voltage dependent on the total IR illumination of the scene.
Motion is detected by the curved plastic lens in front of it. That pattern you see is many individual Fresnel lenses that focus the IR onto the sensor. Because of the angles involved, for a given direction, approximately one of the lenses focuses on the sensor.
As the heat source moves across the field of view, the image from one lens passes on, then off, the sensor, then the next and so on...
It's the change in sensor output that is interpreted as motion.
You need a temperature difference that moves. Under normal conditions, flora is the same temperature as the surrounding area. Movement should not be detected...unless the motion of the flora masks, then unmasks a hotter or colder region.
Depending on the construction of your particular device, you may be able to use a laser pointer to determine which of the lens elements focuses the problem area on the sensor and mask it out with some IR-opaque tape. Or just reduce the sensitivity with some IR-not-quite-transparent tape.
The bat problem is interesting. I think you're gonna have to get clever and use more than one sensor.
One thing I can think of is to use two IR sensors. One as you currently have and the other pointed up toward the sky, above human range. The bats would trigger the skyward one. Use that to inhibit the light on the other one. Should only take a relay.
Or maybe do the same thing with an ultrasonic sensor that senses the bat "chirps."
I know nothing about bat behavior, but if the presence of a human scares them off, there'd be little reduction in actual security.
Would also be interesting to know if the bats are consciously triggering the light, or if the light is a happy accident of their normal foraging behavior.
An alternative is to use the cameras for motion detection. The software detects motion by looking at the differences between sequential images. There's software that lets you mask out problem areas. But you'd be masking out all the flora, anything the wind moves and the bat flight path. May be nothing left.
There are many variables to consider. For me, I determined that a sign in the front yard saying, "I don't have a big-screen TV, but my neighbor does," would go a long way to prevent being burgled.
A simple motion sensor light says, "It might be risky to come here, go next door."
I don't need to stop a burglary, I just need to send it somewhere else. ;-)
I've got several cameras. Just can't imagine that having a fuzzy picture of a ski mask stealing my stuff...and my camera...would be much help.
Would be interesting to see a study of burglaries by type of prevention/surveillance...done by someone NOT motivated to sell me surveillance equipment.
Used to be in the Security Industry. Very familiar with almost every detector but the new ones that actually 'smell' an intruder and recognize a human. And, can be placed around a location, then you go in later and pick up your units, go through the data and determine time of day, how many, and where they went. Don't even have to do this real-time anymore.
Anyway, I'm very familiar with the nuances of designing ultrasonic, microwave, and IR motion detectos. In addition some types you might not be familiar with: one that is very obtrusively a visual blight, using 10kHz electric field androwas and rowas of interlaced send/receive conductors all for perimeter security; and the less obtrusive one [invisible] like a cable placed in a zig zag pattern just under the surface of the ground to detect an intruder walking over it [picture a carpet pad type thingy; and a perimeter security using parallel 'very leaky' transmission cables that launches high frequency energy above the surfaceto detect motion of an intruder. But ALL these still require some processing to determine whether the disturbance came from an intruder, and what type, or is something else going on, like gophers digging around. We referred to all these sensors as, "Fai weather Detectors", because they always worked fine in fair weather.
When I lived in a super urban area, I once put the 10kHz 'fence' small section on the inside of a downstairs wall along an unprotected drive. One night it went off, I went out to discover four very drunk sailors looking for the tattoo parlor. I had to tell them that was South 600 block, not the North 600 block, and they all toddled off but less boisterous.
After living in an urban area, I found the best [to keep Ms happy] was to put in cameras that look AVERYWHERE, and be able to switch them into the TV screen to 'look around' if you hear something. Her hearing is incredible! Some details of her hearing ability are astounding. At least with cameras she can 'look' around, safely.
I do not know. I do know the birds have learned that I fill the birdbath, so when it goes empty, they'll come around to the office window, opposite side of the house, and land on the window sill to get my attention [and glare at me] then when I go around to the breakfast bay windows where the now empty birdbath is, the bird will stomp around inside the empty birdbath glaring at me, and if I say nothing just stand there, they fly up to the window, sit on the ledge look at me, look at the empty birdbath, look at me, back and forth; as if to say, "Don't you see our birdbath is empty!? So are gonna fill it?" Then when I go out and fill it; they'll sit in the trees and chirp loudly, don't know if that means, "Thanks." or "Where have YOU been?"
Although possible to do, I still always set all 8 cameras for constant recording, so I don't miss anything, just in case.
Rodney Dangerfield had a routine about preventing his flat being burglarized. Somthing about putting a note on the door saying, "I'm inside, no need to rob me" only to come back and find everything gone and a note saying, "Stopped in, couldn't find you, so I borrowed a few things."
Picture shouldn't be fuzzy, need a better camera. Turns out that even with fuzzy images and masked people; someone who knows them can recognize them. That's why they post those videos on TV News, because someone who knows the perp will recognize them and turn them in [if really heinous crime]
Because I live in a mountainous area, there are always winds coming from above that are either warmer or cooler than ambient. Plus there is plenty of wildlife that sets off a traditional motion detector. I finally put a cross driveway sensor pair near the front of the property. It is about 2 1/2 to 3 feet off the ground. It doesn't get tripped by wind or most wildlife. But it isn't plug and play. I used the Optex units like this:
It's a townhouse and I don't have a driveway, but I do have a fence, a gate, and a sidewalk leading from the gate to the door. Things are so much smaller and wireless than when I moved in, I should really think about this. Maybe I can cut a 3x5x2 inch piece out of the pine tree near the gate,, put a hole in the bark for the sensor eye, and glue the tree back together again.
I could change the battery at night, when no one is around.
Maybe I could mount it 2 inches above the ground and bury the wiring, for both the power and alarm switch.
People are tall enough to climb over the 44" fence, but I don't think anyone would. I have a spring but no latch on the gate.
I coudl take the door light that goes on, often when someone has just entered the gate, and somehow connect that to all the floodlights. There's a lot to think about here.
No cats. I think I pointed it away from branches. Maybe it's mostly that I bought an off-brand and I should buy a quality brand, I like the beeper and wanted to remove it from this light and put it in the next one, but it's one piece with the very same circuit that turns the light on.
I did find some floodlights that use dual sensors, PIR and microwave.
$100 instead of $20 to 30. But it would be worth it if I knew it would work,
Also many of them had LED floods. They couldn't possibly be as bright as incandescent, could they?
Don't they all use IR? The other choice is microwave and I didn't think any outdoor fixtures used that. (I will check what it says on the box and check online too, but I think I'm right.)
I should admit that for my burglar alarm 30 years ago, I got one of the first dual sensors, called Dual-Tech***, for use indoors. Both sensors had to alert before the unit as a whole did. I wanted to be able to leave my 2nd floor bedroom window open and still turn on the alarm when I went out** but the wind still made the unit alert. The curtains would blow so I weighed them down and still the unit alerted, just from the warm breeze I figured.
OTOH, that was 30 years ago. Maybe they got it to work by now.
**But I wanted the alarm to sound if someone got a ladder and stuck his head in the window. Eventually I disconnected that sensor, left the window open, and figured that no one would get a ladder. And no one did.
***I appreciate your reminding me of this. Just maybe they make floodlights like this. Well they do make DSC LC-171 Outdoor PIR Motion Detector Dual-Tech Sensor with pet immunity, but it's about $108 and that's just for the sensor, No floodlight fixture included. Probably not meant to be mounted 25 feet high, also
Changed search terms, found a fixture with dual sensing. Doppler means microwave.
formatting link
|Base&gclid=CNGqkr7P58ACFce_7Aod91wAXw&gclsrc=ds Combines Doppler radar with traditional PIR technology. $98 Turns lights OFF after a pre-selected time delay (1 or 12 minutes) For
98 dolllars, they should give more than 2 choices. My currrent cheap one gives 3 choices and I picked 5 minutes.
But if I thought this worked, I'd buy it.
Wow. I thought that flora would not put out enough heat, if any, to resemble warm-blooded people. (I have a roll of IR film in the refrigerator for the last 30 years. Probably no good now. I got it for fun and never got around to using it.)
Plus I don't really have much waveable or moveable flora in the area the sensor looks at. I can tell the area by walking around at night.
Wow. They didn't do that at first? They learned to do it?
Now that I have CFL's in my bedroom ceiling fixture, I think it still attracts bugs, but they are not hot enough to kill them. Not sure if that's good or bad. At least I don't have to take off the glass shade all the time to take out the dead bugs. Especially the dead stinkbugs.
And there are no more stinkbugs. I guess they completed their disappearance more than 3 months ago, but I didnt' notice.
Now when part of the blanket falls on me, I don't think it's an ugly stinkbug.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.