Tips for Installing Motion Sensitive Lights

For reasons of safety and security I had decided to install motion sensitive lighting at several points around the house. Motion sensitive lights are useful in that they will detect a moving person as they come near the home. If your interest is in scaring away an intruder these lights do a good job. And as we all know, a motion sensitive light is also a detector and can therefore be incorporated into an alarm system. Mr. Criminal lurking around outside your home doesn't want any excess light around so he is apt to move on.

On the other hand these lights are useful in that they can detect YOU or family members as you or they approach your home and serve to illuminate the walkway, driveway or entrance to your home. Thus illuminating the area for hazards hidden otherwise in the darkness.

For my needs I determined I could use the cheaper ten dollar variety of light. These particular lights don't have a shroud over the bulbs and the degree of detection is reduced from 180 to about 110 degrees. My house has over hanging eaves and the more expensive lights with the shrouds or hoods as it were, were an unneeded expense. The bulbs are protected by the eaves already.

I had a look around the exterior of the house and decided to place a light over each door entrance, the basement door, the space over the garage door facing the street and another at the rear garage door entrance.

These motion sensor lights operate by means of an infrared light detection system. It sees heat. And the average human produces about 93 degrees of skin temperature. Tune the sensor to that setting and you can get it to pick up a person walking by. Add some relay circuitry to trigger the lights to come on when the sensor changes voltage levels as it sees somebody. These lights do not produce the infrared themselves they simply see it and react with a change in voltage levels.

I did not want hanging wires draped underneath the lights and running for several feet to an outside wall socket so I set about drilling through the walls and fishing the wires into the basement where I could connect them into an interior power source away from the weather. I also used an armored conduit of small diameter to protect the wires. I would later paint the conduit to match the exterior of the house and make them virtually invisible from a distance.

Motion sensitive lights are wired exactly like a lamp or any 110 volt device. One black wire, one white wire and a bare wire for chassis ground. On the connections I used the appropriate wire nuts and as added insurance that the connections would stay secure I used electrical tape on each wire nut and a small zip tie to prevent motion.

With my wire and conduit in place it was time to put up the light. I used a small one foot square piece of plywood and mounted an electrical junction box to it. The box is made in the same shape as the base of the light. I then used long wood screws to mount the plywood to the house and garage at each selected location and then used the supplied mounting screws to attach the light to the box after threading the wire through the box and making the electrical connections. The plywood panels would receive a coat of paint along with the conduit in the near future.

With all lights mounted and all wiring leading down to the basement I attached plugs to the wires and plugged them all into a power strip which I had rigged with it's own breaker in the breaker box.
Flipping the breaker to the "on" position I went out to inspect the lighting system. These lights have a self test or warm up cycle. They will initially come on and burn anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes before turning off. And from that point on a light will turn on for a period of time when ever it detects a moving heat source. The sensitivity and duration of time the light will stay on is adjustable by a couple of rheostats on the under side of the casing.

It is a good idea to go out after dark and deliberately walk near the lights to get an idea of when it will activate as you approach and to see if the sensor or the lights themselves need to be repositioned for more efficient operation. A sensor pointed away from the area you want it to monitor isn't going to do much good for you. And a light shining in the wrong direction is just wasting energy. Both the sensor and each light are articulated and can be positioned where you need them. So this is something to take into consideration as you are planing on where the lights are to go. I had adjusted the lights for a 5 minute duration and medium sensitivity to heat detection.