SENPILL & Night Move issues

I have a SENPILL mounted in an entry that I would like to have a light come on for a few minutes when it detects motion. So I setup Virtual Key 3 with any move function to Night Move. During the day, the unit sees about 1200 Lux from its mounted position, so the light level target is set to about 1000.

Long story short, it turns dark, and with occupancy enabled, nothing happens. I go back into toolkit and change it to Any Move, and it works flawlessly, with the issue that it's also turning the light on during the day which is unnecessary.

Any thoughts on what I'm setting incorrectly to make it think its not a "night move"?

I also setup key's 1 and 2 for day and night moves respectively and they are not reacting to anything.

 

By default the SENPILL has Potentiometer A set to "Light Level & Sunset Adjust". This pot will then vary the sensitivity from 0 lux to the value set by the light level target. So in your case it will set the trigger level from 0 lux (fully ccw) to 1000 lux (fully cw). Have you checked the position of this pot?

 

I tried changing the setting on Pot A to unused. It seems that the impact has been that while it is operating in Night Mode setting to initiate detection, it seems to enable the light at all light levels, similar to "All Moves" setting.

 

One problem with the SENPILL light level sensor is it faces directly at the floor so tends to pick up the light reflected from the floor. As you move under the sensor the light level it receives can change dramatically. If you watch the ambient light level reading on the light level tab and get someone to walk past the sensor in daylight, you will probably see the light level drop below your 1000 lux threshold which will put it in night mode and turn on your group. To counteract this you will need to play around with the level adjustment.

When I do this I set a spare key to the sunset function and the corresponding group to a nearby light that you can see but won't effect the light level. Then as you walk around you can see the sensor moving between light and dark functions.

 

can you set up a schedule to enable the sensor at sunset and disable at sunrise?

i did this at my old place and never had problems with a situation similar to your own

 

This is what I ended up doing out of frustration, just yet another disappointment in how the the programming doesn't behave as it should. It's probably user error, but frustrating nonetheless.

 

Hi poldim,

I have an identical issue with 8 SENPILL sensors.
Could you please tell me how you've sorted this out?
Did you ended up fixing this properly or simply setting up a schedule?

ta
Vlad

 

I created an enable group that I scheduled to turn on a few hours before sunset and disable at sunrise. I could not find a proper fix.

 

Thanks for your reply- much appreciated.

Any chance you could outline the process of creating and scheduling the enable group?

 

Going from memory:

Setup the sensor to react on all moves. Then create a group and assign that to the enable setting of the SENPILL. Next, create a schedule to enable and disable this group based on the schedule you want. I also created a soft button to control this group in Wiser so that I can manually turn this group on and off.

 

thanks. Will give it a go and test this afternoon.

I am still surprised that the actual sensor doesn't work as intended?! There are 8 sensors here and none react properly to day/night changes.

did you create the enable/disable schedule using piced?