Dusk till Dawn failure on outside light

[ARWadsworth]

Last week I changed the lamp in a light similar to

then put my hand over the photocell, the light came on and I left.

Now it turns out that I can get the light to come on like this in the day time but it will not come on at night.

Any ideas anyone.

[cynic]

to

> I then put my hand over the photocell, the light came on and I left. >

I once had one of these problems. It turned out that there was street light which was in the sensors field of view. This confused the thing into thinking it was daytime while the street light was lit

[ARWadsworth]

I checked that. It is pitch black when the light is off at night.

[Andy Dingley]

to

Now it turns out that I can get the light to come on like this in the day

Not at night, or not when it's cold? I've got one of these CFL linear halogen replacements, and it's already refusing to strike when cold at night,

[ARWadsworth]

That was one of my thoughts, but it worked last winter at minus 9 and I have put a new lamp in. It was not cold at 5.30pm when I checked it out this evening.

I am tempted to just swap the fitting.

[js.b1]

Is the seal intact?

[A.Lee]

Light fitting sensor knackered. I posted here a couple of years ago about a brand new one I fitted - had to change it twice as 2 new ones would not light up automatically. The first 2 were £10 ones from B+Q iirc, the next was from my local electrical wholesaler which cost £30, and worked fine - it was certainly better made than the first 2. Alan.

[Dave Osborne]

Sounds like it's stuck in test mode to me.

[ARWadsworth]

It does not have a test mode. It's just a photocell not a pir. I hung my jacket over the light this morning, the light came on, but when I got back from the wholesalers with a new light the light was no longer on.

[ARWadsworth]

I swapped the light. When I took the old one down I discovered a crack in the plastic case.

I am now sure that the photocell works but the electrics are buggered and are somehow turning the light off after a few minutes. I have no idea why the unit was cracked though, it does not look like it has been hit with anything.

Of course the new unit needed the cable to be re-routed:-(

The new light was £40 and it was not worth buggering about with the old one for any longer.

I fitted this

[Terry Fields]

I have a porch light like this.

It didn't work when we recently moved in. I went to replace to 25W G9 lamp but it looked new when I pulled it out. I couldn't see the base contacts but they felt strange, so I gave it a squirt of WD40, reassembled, and found the light would come on (in the sense that it took about 10 seconds to reach full brightness) in daylight (provided I covered the photocell) but it would go off after a few minutes.

I left it like this, with the lamp going on and off at irregular intervals at night until the lamp failed.

I decided to take the fitting off the wall, and put it on the bench running from a 12V inverter. This didn't solve any problems, so in desperation took the plastic end-cap off, only to find a control unit inside having dip-switches with markings on the housing.

These were a symbol that looked liked a light or the sun, a triangle, and some numbers like 5" 30" 1' 3' 5' 8'. The switches that seemed to be set were the light/sun and the 3'. By resetting them to the triangle symbol only, the light is controlled by the hall switch, so at least I know what it's doing.

There's no makers name on the fitting, so no chance of finding what the switch symbols mean or what the various combinations might do :-(

TF

[ARWadsworth]

That sounds more like a knackered PIR than a photocell problem. The timer bit is how long the light should stay on for when the when the PIR is activated (5 sec, 30 secs, 1 minute etc) and the light/sun is an adjustable setting for when the light should start working.

[Spamlet]

I've had one similar to this

came with an appropriate wall fitting, controlling all my outside lights for a number of years. Designed for street lights, you can string a lot of cfls on them before they come near to being overloaded - and they were certainly a lot cheaper than the cfl's with built in photoswitches (all of which were too bright anyway - 7 watt is plenty for outdoors). I don't think I've had a single outdoor cfl fail since I fitted the Zodion - which currently has 5 on its string and must have saved us quite a bit over the years.

S

[js.b1]

This is how 10min jobs become 1hr :-)

3 year warranty is well useful, dumps any problems back on them.

[ARWadsworth]

It was not that bad, but still a PITA.

I am not sure that timeguard will come out and swap the unit if it fails. I guess that that they will offer a replacement but not actually replace it. One thing is for certain, I will not swap it for free in 2 years 11 months time.

[Terry Casey]

5 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 8 minutes, perhaps?

The 'sun' symbol could be a circle - a common symbol for 'on'.

The triangle could be the 'delta' symbol, which represents change ..

Is it possible that you're reading the switches upside down- i.e.: you now have it set permanently ON (when powered) whereas it was previously set to come on ONLY when there was a CHANGE in light, for the period set up on the other switches ...?

[js.b1]

Heh, no chance, but 3yr warranty is decent (a lot of stuff is designed to fail at 1yr, 1min :-)

[Terry Fields]

Thanks to ARWadsworth and Terry Casey for helpful replies.

The fall-back position with the porch light was to rip out the electronics and just wire the lamp base to the incoming wires from the hall switch.

However, having found a setting that effectively does the same thing, it means I can retain the fitting as is, and using your observations work out what the various combinations mean.

This, of course, is going to take some time...;-)

TF

[The Medway Handyman]

This is the problem with faulty stuff, missing bits etc. You may get a replacement, but you don't get paid for your time.