Disco Sensor

I have an infrascan type sensor outside that i am using as a sunset switch for my front lighting. When I have the light level dial on the unit turned near the dark setting the lights will strobe on then off repeatably when the sun gets low (dusk) then the lights stay on when it gets a bit darker. The only way I have overcome this is by backing the dial off but the lights come on earlier than I would like, ie: its still too light to need the lights on. If i turn the dial to the darkest setting the lights will strobe from dusk till darkness (bout an hour or two). It looked quite impressive but didn't take long to get annoying!! Has anyone come across this before? If so..what have I set wrong? All I have is two groups turning on with the sunset function. Nothing is in the movement (day or night) or pulse settings.

Thanks.

 

Sounds to me like your Infrascan is located very close to the load that is being turned on. When the load comes on the ambient light level is increasing and the unit is turning off the load.

Try pointing the Infrascan away from the load. There is a reasonable amount of hysteresis built into the units to minimise the chances of this sort of thing from happening so I'd try this first. An alternative is to shield the Infrascan from the source of light.

 

I have had the same experience when using an outdoor infrascan as a "sunset switch", even when the only lights that were being controlled were located in a room on the opposite side of the house, and could not have affected the light sensor. The lights would typically turn on and off irregularly twice before they finally stabilised in the desired state. I put up with it because generally we were never in the room when the lights were strobing. I only ever noticed it happening in the evening, so I suspect that cutting down 20 or so trees on the west side of the property would have solved the problem (poor excuse for cutting down trees imho).

The firmware in the 5750 and 5751 products does include hysteresis in the light sensing, but unfortunatley this is not always enough to solve the problem, and is not adjustable. The SENPILL firmware has corrected this by allowing adjustment of the hysteresis.

Hopefully in the near future, firmware in the earlier products will be updated to allow an adjustable hysteresis.

Don

 

Another thing to try

Try turning off the LED indicator built into the sensor. I have found that this will also effect the light level the unit swithces at.