The Medway Handyman wrote:


Yerbut, nobut, yerbut. At the front of handyman towers I have a dawn dusk
lantern (no PIR) with an 11w thingy bulb (sorry, lamp) and about 8' away on
the front of the garage I have a 500w halogen light (manually switched, no
PIR).

If I'm loading the van at night & switch on the 500w jobby, the dawn dusk
goes out, until the 500w is switched off again. So (a) how come the 11w
lantern doesn't switch itself off evey time it switches on and (b) its seems
to react to a 500w halogen just like sunlight.

My brain hurts...



The sensor in the dusk-dawn lantern is located so it is in the shadow of
the lamp, so the lamp does not trigger the sensor.

Clearly, when you switch the 500W halogen on, the beam from the halogen
*does* impact on the dusk-dawn sensor.

This indicates that the dusk-dawn sensor is quite sensitive (you may
notice that the lamp doesn't come on until it's pretty dark and goes off
at the first hint of dawn). This is good for environmental reasons!

If there is a sensitivity control for the dusk-dawn sensor then if you
turn the sensitivity down (i.e. towards the sun icon) then the halogen
won't trigger the dusk-dawn sensor and the dusk-dawn lamp won't go out
when the halogen comes on.