Todays whinge - Security floodlights.

There is a reason stage lighting etc has "barn door" style shutters!

I suppose you could fabricate a collar for many of the common flood light form factors to collimate the output a bit.

Yup - PIR on the light fitting itself is rarely ideal.

I tend to use (multiple) dedicated PIR modules to switch mine in groups.

So for example I switch the garage apex flood, the lantern on the pillar next to it, and the lantern on the side door toward the rear of the building together, using two PIRs - both mounted quite low so they can only be triggered from inside the garden. One to catch as you walk up to the rear door of the garage (it also spots you on the path down the side of the house) and one looking out obliquely across the front garden. So you can trigger it approaching from either of the likely directions. Ideal for say taking the wheeley bin to or from the front garden in the dark.

I'm curious what people use these lights for. Is it like the FA cup where they play under floodlighting in the evening? Do they do gardening by night? Or are they defending against prowlers who might be lurking in the shrubbery? Has anyone's lighting ever spotted such a lurker?

Most of the time I'd have thought a few small lights to give enough lighting to put the bin out or walk out to the shed would suffice, and no need for lighting that would overpower the apron at Heathrow.

Theo

'Security', apparently, according to my neighbour. All they seem to have done is annoy me and deter the bats.

My parents had a bike and a drill stolen from the garage at night.

There have been a number of cases of sheds, garages (and even the backs of houses) being broken into around here recently.

Years ago, my uncle and aunt woke to a noise and the security light in their back garden coming on. When they investigated, they found a broken fence panel (that someone had run straight through) and a bloodied man wielding an iron bar ... it turned out that he was the victim of a violent robbery where the guy and his wife had been tied up, beaten and threatened with the bar, a samurai sword and a shotgun. He'd broken free and managed to fight them off and been chasing one.

The one on my shed is so that I can get too and from it without tripping over anything or stepping in a puddle in bad weather (we're on clay so it can take some time to soak away). It is also for security, as I have a model railway in there, with lots of (now very expensive) n-gauge locos and rolling stock. That light is not very powerful, as it only needs to fill-in the area between the front of the shed and the front of the longer garage beside it.

The one on the garage serves the same purposes (tools rather than trains), but also can be switched permanently on, which I use if doing DIY during dark winter evenings, where there is little light by the time I get home from work and I'd rather cut wood outside than get sawdust all over my tools and shelving. That one does need to be brighter to be able to see clearly for safe working.

Hah! I have a suspicion that a triggered lamp attracts Moths, who attract Bats, who further trigger the lamp. etc.....

There are two on a factory unit near me. It's an old WW2 hangar, and near a half mile long road. From the right bit of the road it looks like a pair of headlights coming towards you. On the wrong side...

Andy

John Rumm wrote on 25/07/2022 :

Yep, shining down, is much more useful, than shining horizontally out. Unfortunately the usual cheap lights with built on or in PIR, do not facilitate that. The lights work best high, the PIR's work best at head height.

You can report it as a danger, but I can't remember whether it is the council or the police that you are supposed to contact.

Although with most lights with integrated PIR, you can tape off areas of the PIR and angle it about a bit to restrict the area it "sees".

You can also usually gang them up with other PIRs to get sensing in more useful places in addition to the area seen by the internal one.

The Phillips ones have quite a long cable.

Bill

Yes I made that mistake. They didn't last long at all.

Bill

It's surprising how much they need to be tilted down, and even then it's sometimes necessary to paint a black stripe across the top of the glass.

Bill

To increase the coverage area. It makes little difference to unwanted spread; just angle the unit correctly.

Bill

From much experience with sat dishes and aerials, it's possible to tell where a pellet came from by examining the damage.

Bill

Correct.

Bill

LED floods don't really have a reflector. What you think is a reflector is just for show. The LEDs don't radiate towards it at all. The reason the beamwidth is so great is that the LED radiation is limited only by the frame. So do what I do and use paint on the glass to mask some of the beam.

Bill

I was driving into the local town when I got totally blinded by an angled set of solar panels on someone's roof

The ones I got are rewireable, I think these are the same:

Trebuchet.