5750WPL to control an Indoor Sensor

Hi,

I'm having a great deal of trouble doing something that i thought was fairly straight forward

I have an Indoor 5753L that is in the entrance of my house that i want only to turn on the entrance lights when its dark and there is motion detected.

I cannot do this stand alone as i cant get the pentionmeter screw to work as i want it just comes on at all times when motion is detected.

I then thought i could use the Outdoor Sensor (5750WPL) to enable the indoor sensor so when it falls below the preset darkness it will enable the indoor sensor and then if there is motion detected while the sensor is enabled the lights will come on.


I've created a dummy group and put it in the sunset to sunrise section of the outdoor sensor.
then on the indoor sensor ive put that dummy group in the sensor enable/disable tab.

i cannot get it to work.

anyideas??

i thought i could get the sensor to work standalone without it being fed from the outdoor but not having any luck

thanks in advance
Adrian

 

The first thing to figure out is why the 5753L can't be configured to suit your requirements on it's own.

I would reset the unit back to factory defaults in Toolkit. I would then re-enter your group address and set the timer value to something short for testing, like 5 seconds. Then turn the light level adjustment screw fully anti-clockwise. You should be able to walk near the unit and have it trigger. Now turn the adjustment screw fully clockwise. You should be able to walk under the unit and not have it trigger now.

If that all fails then it may be because the light level sensor in the unit is faulty, or it might simply not be seing sufficient change in the light level.

If you want to use the 5750WPL to remotely enable and disable the 5753L this can be done fairly easily by using the Sunset function to control a group address and put this group address into the Enable/Disable group of the 5753L.

 

Hi Newman,
I tired turning the screw fully anticlockwise and then clockwise it just continues to go on and off no matter what position the screw is in.

I also tried again to remotely control the indoor sensor from the outdoor one. ive attached some screenshots




'Dark Outside' doesn't control a lighting group
what am i doing wrong?

thanks for your help

 

It is possible that the unit is configured to operate regardless of the setting. Did you do what I suggested and reset the unit back to factory defaults?

For the 5753L sensor to become either enabled or disabled using the configuration you have the outdoor sensor needs to be programmed this way AND THEN it needs to see a transition in light level from above to below it's set threshold. This will enable the indoor sensor.

To confirm that the outdoor sensor is behaving properly connect look at the Toolkit application log. This will show you when the Dark Outside group address turns on and off. The indoor sensor will need to see at least 1 message on this group address before it will fall in to line with what the outdoor sensor is telling it.

Also, check the configuration of the timer on the Sunset function. If it's configured as the default of 5 minutes then the indoor sensor would only be enabled for 5 minutes. You may want to make this duration a lot longer. Don't worry about making it extremely large. As soon as the light level rises above the set threshold the Dark Outside group will be turned off.

Can you please clarify what you mean by this statement?

 

i have had similar problems before with certain sensors when i have turned the pot all the way down. My solution (not ideal), was to use logic in a Wiser or HomeGate to only allow the lights to be triggered by the sensor after sunset (give or take a specific length of time) and before sunrise.

 

Hi Newman

Yep, I reset the Unit back to deafult and turned the screw like you said, it enabled the lights to come on and off as i turned the screw but they never stayed off no matter what position the screw was in, they would still come on during daylight and motion

I also increased the pre set period as it was only set to 5mins.
everything seems to be working properly after that, it worked exactly how i wanted.
it was working in the evening, and then again in the morning when i left for work it was dark.
then when i came home it wasn't going on during the daylight

but...
the cycle never repeated. it only worked one night and then it didn't work again the following



'DARK OUTSIDE' is just a new load group i created to put in the sunset column.
there isnt an output on any of the relays/dimmers called 'dark outside' its just one that i created to try and activate and deactivate the indoor sensor.

 

It is possible that the motion sensor was disabled by the other sensor. I would temporarily configure a button on a switch so that it also uses the same enable/disable group address, i.e. "Dark Outside". Then, if the sensor doesn't seem to be working, you have both a visual indication of it's enabled/disabled status as well as a method of overriding it.