I replaced incandescent flood bulbs on outdoor light/motion sensor base and the LED bulbs stay on all the time, day & night. Is it a technology problem? Do I need to put incandescent bulbs back in, or replace the base?
Any chance you kciked the unit into "stay on" mode?
- many have this as an option.
I ran into this with a newly installed unit which stayed lit.
That circuit has a wall mounted switch and.. if you turned it off then back on within a couple of seconds, the lamps remained energized and lit regardless of motion, etc.
To get it back into "motion sensor mode" involved simply turning the wall switch off for 30 or more seconds, then back on.
I am actually glad to hear that someone else has the same problem. I currently have a Philips non-dimmable LED in one of our eleven motion sensor outdoor lights and although it does not come on during the day it frequency does not go off at night once it is turned on by motion. I just went out and flipped it on test and back to shut it off and then walked by and of course it came back on but to my surprise it went off after the programmed 5 or 6 minutes. Because it is not consistent I am going to try exactly the same brand, model, and wattage of bulb (I have a bunch of them) in a few others and see what I get from them...maybe I just have one bad fixture.
Should try dimmable one too.
I haven't yet used LED bulbs in such a fixture, but I have tried CFLs. It may work properly if you replace only one bulb (one incandescent, the other LED).
I've never seen a motion sensor that works like it should all the time. It dont matter how much you pay for them, none are perfect. Some are better than others though.
Anyhow, it could be there is not enough current being drawn to turn off the light. (Just a guess). If so, you may have to either use LED bulbs that draw more current (higher wattage), or make one of the bulbs an incandescent, the other a LED.
Maybe the dimmable ones will work better, I dont really know. LED is new technology, so there will be issues, and since motion sensors have always been touchy, that just adds to the issues.
Do they make and sell motion sensor fixture INTENDED FOR LEDs? I dont know, I have never looked for them. I got rid of most of my motion sensor fixtures because they seemed to waste more power than without. Seemed that the lights would go off just from a dog or cat, or a wild animal, moving branches, rain/snow, etc. So it seemed they were turning on and off all hours of the night. I only have one left on my barn, but I put a switch on it. When I'm working out there after dark, I turn the switch on and the sensor works when I go near the thing. Before I go in the house at night, I turn it off.
This is not the first time I heard of this problem, including using CFL bulbs.
You could also wire a second fixture to the same sensor, that would be FOUR LED bulbs on one sensor. Maybe that would help????
When the electric company installed a smart meter my motion detector light sensor stayed on all night. It's only about 4 feet above the meter. I tried putting a can around the motion sensor but that didn't work, then I cut the end out of a metal coffee can and put that over the meter. That worked, the smart meter can still phone home. I have four LED bulbs that run off the motion detector now. I've had incandescents, and HFL but now LEDs it didn't matter they all turned on and off automatically. The neighbor's dog sets the motion detector off but that's OK they are just doing their job of keeping honest people honest.
replying to Paintedcow, Lynster wrote: I think you might be on to something with the "Current Draw" theory. I've got several dusk/dawn/motion fixtures around the house and thought I'd save some "long term" money by replacing the incandescent flood bulbs with LED flood bulbs. Nope, bad idea... they don't turn off but go into a rapid flashing (very irritating) mode. When motion is detected, they go on full, but then when it times out, back to rapid flash. SO to throw more $$ away, I bought a couple of new control heads that explicitly state on the box "Works with LED, CFL, yada, yada..." Bad news, they do the same thing! I wonde if they test this crap before they start selling it?
Buy a cheap mechanical relay rated for the voltage of your system. It might suck up the odd current in your circuit. Amazon, Ebay, or maybe your local auto parts store if the circuit is dc. I got this idea from the resident electrical whiz kid when I was having trouble with solid state relays.
If you can live with one incandescent in that circuit, it will probably work. For example, if you have four 75W bulbs and replace 3 with LED, you've cut the power usage by ~60% and it will probably work. Whether it's acceptable, not noticeable to have one different, depends on the application. Or you could even have one 40W bulb in there and it will likely work.
replying to swak.leete, sarabulho wrote: I am dealing with the problem of a motion sensor switching LED bulbs. After thinkering with the problem of extended time off or no turn off at all, I found a MS that has a led which blinks when motion is detected. To my surprise, it keeps blinking at a constant rate even without motion! It occurred to me then that bulb leds has switched power supply included which generates lots of EMI (RF) and that triggers the sensitive MS through the power line. I figure that the solution requires an RF filter for the load.
sarabulho posted for all of us...
You are a wizard! Now git r done.
replying to Lynster, Grammy wrote: Not according to a manufacturer that I called. While in Lowes, I found a motion light that showed it could use LED lights. While there I called the phone number on the fixture box. I asked what brand LED bulb they suggested. He said, "Oh, we don't test them". He said anything should work. Doesn't the government require testing of electrical products? I become frightened when I have a conversation like that.
=
If it explicitly says it should work with LED bulbs, buy it. Try it out and if it doesn't work, return the cheap china-crap piece of shit to McLowesDepot and get your money back.
At some point the china-junk manufacturers and retailers will become tired of product returns and stop screwing consumers with this mal-engineered mal-advertised china-crap.
They have tested THEIR product - they don't have to test other people's products, and could get into trouble for recommending one brand over another. If their unit is designed to operate withe LEDs, it should not make any difference what kind.
I get around the whole problem now by buying motion sensor lights built with LEDs installed - then there is no compatability issue.
suggested. He said, "Oh, we don't test them". He said anything shoul d work.
nd if it doesn't work, return the cheap china-crap piece of shit to McLowes Depot and get your money back.
d of product returns and stop screwing consumers with this mal-engineered m al-advertised china-crap.
+1And if it says it works with LEDs, it probably does.
replying to swak.leete, Toolworker wrote: I have an X10 PR511 floodlight unit that's driving me nuts. Most cycles, the lamps in the unit remain on. I replaced it with another one bought on eBay and it fails similarly. I did have one LED and one CF bulb in it. I'll replace the CF with an incandescent and report back.
I tested the unit I removed using just one indoor LED bulb and it seemed to turn off reliably, so I don't think it's the wattage. It could be interference from some LED or CF bulbs.
Has anyone tried to update their unit? I started to open it up, intending to replace the electrolytic capacitors, but got to where a ribbon cable had to be removed, got leery and put it aside.
X10 is well known to be far from reliable. It's OK for some apps, when you understand that. IDK what your specific problem is, but most of the load specific problems come from many of these devices relying on using the load path to power themselves, ie, they don't have a neutral connection. That works fine when you have an incandescent load that's 40W+ but not when you have a CFL or LED load that's a small switching power supply. If that's the problem, then putting one small incandescent in the circuit will fix it. Of course, that may not be a real solution, eg if you have
4 outdoor lights by a garage, having one incandescent and 3 LEDs may not be acceptable appearance wise.
True. Also, I have a similar motion sensor switch which is continuously triggered as sensing motion just by the ballast circuitry in a CFL. I must use at least one 40W incandescent in parallel with LEDs. (If just LEDs', it ends up flashing them very briefly every few seconds when in standby, i.e. when no motion is detected.)
NB: The upstream 'homeownershub' post is two years old, but I decided to followup in order to possibly enlighten someone else.
Most X10 devices will turn on when the load has been removed and reapplied. This was a feature (local ON) with incandescent lights, but electronic devices (including LEDs) actually do turn off for parts of the AC cycle and this can cause the X10 device to turn on again.
I think there's a simple way to fix that, but don't have the information for that one.
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