Automatic light control based on motion detection

Night Light Over Kill - Automatic light control based on motion detection

I'd like to setup my system to control a set of lights based on motion detection. Specifically, I would like this to only occur during the non day light hours. Whether this is a calculated value off of sunset (to be between the hours of X and Y) or an input from the outdoor ambient light sensor, I imagine will not change a whole lot. My preference would be that the lights can ramp to a given amount, say 25%, and then very slowly ramp down to 0% over the next 5 minutes.

I noticed that the SENPILL has virtual key groups that have a function called night move. Right now Ive got it running. I was surprise that when I was able to figure out how to get this to work in a relatively short amount of time with RTFM, but then I wasted a ton of time trying to figure out how to ramp up without success.

Right now I have it set to tun on a test group with occupancy detection for motion during dark for 5 seconds and then ramp down. This works 90% there, but for me, its the finer details in life such as not being blinded in the middle of the night. Just hoping there was a way to ramp up to a specified amount rather than instant on to full brightness. Any suggestions?

 

You don't need to specifically use a SENPILL to achieve what you want. You can do it with any standard C-Bus PIR. It will need a little bit of tweaking as the default behaviour of C-Bus PIR's is to turn on a group address when it detects motion below the light level threshold and turn it off after a period of time without movement.

The first thing to decide is how you're going to enable the PIR. This will depend upon what hardware you have:

• If you have a C-Bus device capable of Schedules (C-Touch, C-Touch Colour, C-Touch Spectrum, PACA, Wiser, etc) then you can make these units enable and disable the sensor at a calculated Sunset/Sunrise times. You set up a couple of schedules that turn on/off a group address at the appropriate times. You then configure the PIR to be enabled/disabled in response to this group address.
• If you have an outdoor light level sensor (SENLL) then you can configure it to turn on a group address when the light level is below a defined target. You then configure the PIR to be enabled/disabled in response to this group address.
• If there is sufficient ambient light level variation where the sensor is located you may be able to set the light level threshold which activates the sensor on the PIR itself.

Get this bit tested and working first. If this is done right you should find that motion is turning on the light to full brightness when it detects motion and turning it off after a period of time without motion.

To change the sensor so that it ramps on, rather than jumps on, go to the Toolkit UI tab called Key Functions. In the 'MD' column change the Short Press event from On Key to Ramp Recall 1. Toolkit will give you a warning about generating lots of network traffic. This is fair as this will generate a bit of network traffic as the sensor will now send out a C-Bus message every time it sees motion. Now go to the Blocks tab and change the value in the Recall 1 column for the group address being controlled from 100% down to 25%. This should give you the soft turn-on to 25% you're looking for.

To get the fade off once the PIR timer expires you need to change the timer expiry function. Again, on the blocks tab, change the Timer Expiry command from Off Key to Ramp Off. This will give a soft turn-off.

The only down-side of this approach is that you will have the same turn-on and turn-off ramp rates as both Ramp Recall 1 and Ramp Off use the Global Ramp 2 rate of the units (default is 12 seconds).

For more sophisticated control of the turn on/off you'll need to consider a C-Bus device that includes the Logic Engine.

 

Thank Newman.

So I figured out my problem. I was using Virtual Key Group #1. Apparently everytime I selected an occupancy setting for it (AM for testing purposes rather than MD), it would automatically uncheck the selection when I changed the On Key to Ramp Recall 1 on the Key Functions tab.

I put two channels from two different units into one group. Its now doing exactly what I want it to do across multiple units.

 

Newman,

Should I be able to link a channel from a dimmer unit to control the on/off status of a dimmer unit? The dimmer is a DIMDN4F / LU5504TD4A and the occupancy enable/disable group is Motion Detection, SENPILL. I've mapped this to channel 3 on the dimmer, but it appears toggling the channel on/off on the unit does not toggle the bit on the network and thus does not enable/disable the sensor.
Keep in mind this is not the intended long term solution, just for educational purposes.

 

Sorry but I can't understand what you're trying to achieve or exactly what is happening. Can you please try explaining what is happening and what you're asking as clearly as possible?

 

I want to use the physical button for channel 3 on my DIMDN4F to enable the occupancy sensor.

 

The physical buttons located on the dimmer unit are for local override of the channels only. They do not control the associated C-Bus group and pressing these buttons does not result in any C-Bus messages being generated. As such, to enable/disable the sensor you'll need to use a C-Bus switch to do that. The motion sensor can be configured with an enable/disable group address (Occupancy Tab) and you then need to assign this same group address to the button on the C-Bus switch that you wish to use to enable/disable the sensor.

 

gotcha