On 8/15/2008 7:15 AM DerbyDad03 spake thus:

On Aug 15, 9:30 am, BigLar wrote:
On Aug 14, 9:38 pm, "cshenk" wrote:

wrote

Let me guess... You can stand under the security light and look into
the kitchen and living room windows.

Your motion sensor is "seeing" the act of the light going off as
motion, and is turning on in response to the perceived motion.

LOL! Now why didnt I think of that?

Actually, it is not the problem. Although a pretty good theory, I went
home yesterday and disproved it. In the living room, there is an
overlead light/fan combo. I pulled the light string to off so there
would be no visible light. I then flipped the switch to on and
nothing. However, once I flipped the switch off the outside security
lights came on for about 15 seconds. Is apparently has something to do
with the circuit it is on but I don't know enough about electricity to
know what it be. Any more ideas? Thanks.

Many motion-detector (MD) controlled fixtures will come on for a few
seconds when first powered on.

It sounds like the flipping of the living room switch to the off
position is sending some sort of "signal" to the MD making it think it
was just powered on.

Maybe the living room switch is arcing when it breaks the circuit.

I think your first guess is pretty good, but your second (an arcing
switch) is grasping at straws here.

Isn't it more likely that the motion sensor is just on the fritz? Right
now I'm dealing with about half a dozen different motion-detector lights
among different clients. About half of them don't work because the
sensors have gone bad.

Fortunately, the sensors (assuming this is one of the garden-variety
type that's available everywhere) are pretty cheap, easy to get and easy
to replace. They should *not* be affected by the turnings on and off of
nearby devices.


--
"In 1964 Barry Goldwater declared: 'Elect me president, and I
will bomb the cities of Vietnam, defoliate the jungles, herd the
population into concentration camps and turn the country into a
wasteland.' But Lyndon Johnson said: 'No! No! No! Don't you dare do
that. Let ME do it.'"

- Characterization (paraphrased) of the 1964 Goldwater/Johnson
presidential race by Professor Irwin Corey, "The World's Foremost
Authority".