The first few nights, the motion detector light (a Heath/Zenith Secure Home SH-5105) was on all night. I checked the settings the second day, but it appeared that the lamp was not in all-night mode nor was it in test mode. My first major change was to change the sensitivity to minimum and the time from 20 minutes to 1 minute. That successfully kept the light from being on all night, allowed multiple testing after dusk, and it appeared that anyone passing the northeast corner of the house would be detected. I tried walking into that region from both extremes, as close to my house as possible, and as far from my house as possible. But it wasn't until Saturday near dusk that I made the final (?) adjustments. I ramped up the sensitivity a little. It was hard to tell how little would work best because the motion LED kept flickering just with me standing on the ladder. So I tried setting it to about 9:30 position. That detects an incoming walker about 5 feet before reaching the northeast corner of the house. And in the few nights since then, including at least one windy night, there were no false detections, or at least I never saw the light come on or stay on. I also adjusted the time back to 20 minutes, which I feel will wear out anyone's patience who shouldn't be there, but also be convenient for doing garden work at night.
On Sunday, after a great afternoon concert and dinner, I mowed the front yard including both north and south side yards. There were lots of small broken limbs from my mimosa tree (invasive in some climates and planted by the previous homeowner over 22 years ago) which needed to be picked up. There have been some windy days since the last mowing two weeks before. I also got the lamp in the computer room connected to the outlet controlled by the new Insteon wall switch. Strangely, the X10 module and computer controller had been working perfectly after the removal of the old X10 keypad wall switch, it was switching on at night and off during daytime as it had been supposed to do but rarely did recently, but it was not nice to have no control over the lamp from the new wall switch.
Here are pictures from the box of the new motion detector lamp my electrician chose. It's very sophisticated in many ways, including a second "creep zone" motion sensor under the main detector, many different settings, and a ramp on/off feature to preserve the life of the light bulbs. But while the main housing is metal the motion detector module is plastic. We'll see how long the thing lasts, but I've had all metal lamps burn out their transformers in just a few years, and it seems that daytime sensors for outdoor lamps don't last that long either.
On Sunday, after a great afternoon concert and dinner, I mowed the front yard including both north and south side yards. There were lots of small broken limbs from my mimosa tree (invasive in some climates and planted by the previous homeowner over 22 years ago) which needed to be picked up. There have been some windy days since the last mowing two weeks before. I also got the lamp in the computer room connected to the outlet controlled by the new Insteon wall switch. Strangely, the X10 module and computer controller had been working perfectly after the removal of the old X10 keypad wall switch, it was switching on at night and off during daytime as it had been supposed to do but rarely did recently, but it was not nice to have no control over the lamp from the new wall switch.
Here are pictures from the box of the new motion detector lamp my electrician chose. It's very sophisticated in many ways, including a second "creep zone" motion sensor under the main detector, many different settings, and a ramp on/off feature to preserve the life of the light bulbs. But while the main housing is metal the motion detector module is plastic. We'll see how long the thing lasts, but I've had all metal lamps burn out their transformers in just a few years, and it seems that daytime sensors for outdoor lamps don't last that long either.
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