The Medway Handyman wrote:

Calvin wrote:
SNIP

Just to expand on Ron's and other's comments and try to make it
clearer there are two sorts of PIRs you'll find in the shops.
Expensive (properly designed in my opinion) ones require a live and a
neutral and provide a switched live output. These will work with any
sort of bulb.

Calvin.

That all makes sense, but how can you tell the properly designed ones from
the crap ones? I mean without opening the box & taking the thing apart? Is
it just price or are there any indications one might see in the spec? Or
any specific makes?

--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

I'm not sure you can tell good quality from bad from the outside.
Price is a negative indicator in that if it's cheap then for sure
someones cut a cormer somewhere. The trouble is that something being
expensive doesn't guarantee quality.

Anyway since writing that note on PIRs I've been thinking a bit more
about it and I guess I was a bit harsh on the in-line ones. It's a
kludge for sure and it definitely has its drawbacks, like not being
able to use most CFLs, but maybe it's actually a clever bit of design
to allow you to fit it in place of a normal switch without the hassle
of running a neutral to the patress box. What they could maybe do a
little better is explain some of that in the instructions, mine gave a
range of wattages for different types of bulb and even though my CFL
was within the range it flashed. Not much thought later I'd realised
that of course there's no way for the PIR manufacturer to know the
characteristics of the particular CFL. It would be much better if
they'd said so, trouble is that once you start writing "maybe" on the
spec sheet people stop buying the product.