I have been working the past few days on getting the motion lights on the corner of the house working again… They never really worked good but for the past year we have just had to turn them off at night or they would stay on…
I figured that if they came on they must be ok, and all they need is adjustment… I fought that a bunch when they first went up and now am thinking it was just bad lights…
I had gotten dome dual zone one when we first put them up… since the eves of the house are so high figured that would be good… from the history if you pointed the main sensor out it caught all the damn trees swaying in the breeze… and were on nearly all the time… so I kept fighting and never really got them so they didn’t false trigger but were working some… but now… it is a real mess…It all started last week when I figured I could add one to the front small garage door as some of my family never seem to be able to turn that light off… so we bought new ones for that one and the one on the shop office… spent a couple of hours Friday getting them up and in test mode… adjusted fine… got them working and left them for the night test…
This is the old one… I think they were more black when new?
And this is the new one installed… didn’t like that it was so big and pointed down but if they work that would be ok… well it didn’t work out that way…
When I got these up I went around and readjusted the four corner lights as well…
Then when the sun went down… a couple of tests and they came on…. but …. wouldn’t go off? and two of the corner eve lights were on and off and on and off and just oh crap…
Saturday, I did more testing and more adjusting… Sunday more adjusting… finally… Monday morning at about 4am…I turned them all off…
Monday I took one new one down but kept working with the eve lights. They were no better Monday night… mostly either on or on? So Tuesday I took the other new one off and boxed it up and got them ready to return…
Today I returned them and explained that I couldn’t get them to go offer in any mode other than test once it got dark. Once I got my credit I looked at the other motion lights Flood types to replace the eve lights and also found they had some cheap ones (these new things cost $70 each)… they had some add on socket types for $10 and a 180 deg single zone for the eve at $25 so I got two of the $10 and one of the $25. Today I have the $10 addition on the light above at the garage door, and it appears to work fine… comes on when I walk within the zone and off at the desired time…even in the dark. I also replaced one eve-corner with the cheap $25 unit (they are dual light bulb types that use flood lights)… and that one seems to be working fine. I tested it in the dark as well… and the zone it covers is more where I want it to be (close to the house)… so I guess I will go get a couple more of the cheap ones and dump these dual zone pains ? oh and I replaced all the bulbs with LED spot light bulbs as Walmart has a bunch of them on sale… on sale they are still $20 to $25 each but for an LED-dimmable bulb that is cheap… guess the shoppers at Walmart are not into “over time” savings only cheap now type stuff.. even though they should save about 7 times the cost over time?… I figured if mine keep staying on all night… they will pay out this year? just hope I can get them to only come on when I need them to?
Tomorrow is another day to tackle another problem? or swap out two more of these flood lights ?
WD0AJG