Lights! Motion Detected

[digitS']

What is your experience with these?

The neighbors have them. When the people across the fence put in a new garage, I thought the thing was spotting me when I walked in my kitchen overnight ..! I'm not sure if it was. The ex-husband was very technology savvy and tinkered with it until I could even walk around in my yard without being blinded.

The new BF apologized for something yesterday. I thought it was for the light coming on whenever the wind blows. Turned out he was talking about the noise the teenagers make over there.

Next door down, the neighbor has motion detection at his front door! This is true for 2 other houses within 100 yards down the road. All 3 come on when a car drives by! Bink . Bink . Bink!

It is like you are approaching Stalag 13! Expect to meet Sergeant Schultz at the intersection!

The neighbor to the dahlia garden has one in his backyard. I kind of appreciate that if I'm over there late but that doesn't happen often. I've noticed that it is on during daylight hours the last few years. I don't know if it is detecting me at that time or if it's stuck!

Do you have good or bad experiences with these lights?

Steve

 

[so lucky]

That would drive me crazy! My DH's brothers are tech-crazed, and they have rigged up their deceased dad's property so that even a leaf falling in the driveway causes a barrage of cameras to click. The whole set-up picks up motion and sound inside and motion outside. Of course it is all hooked up to our computer, (because DH doesn't want to be the only bro that doesn't have a clue what is going on over there) so we sometimes get hundreds of e-mails announcing motion detected. Important e-mails get buried in the onslaught. When the wind blows, when a leaf falls, when teens use the circle drive late at night, we receive an e-mail about it. ( have tried to get him to redirect all those communications to a separate folder, but I am dealing with a person with GAD, so that's too much to think about for him right now.) Everybody knows the house is empty; there is not much in there worth stealing (except the surveillance equipment) so I don't see what the need is. It's in the middle of a residential area in a smallish bedroom community. Clearly I have married into a disjointed family of paranoid hermits.
I feel your pain, Steve!

 

[NwMtGardener]

We just installed one in our large pole barn. There was no light out there, and this is a big improvement. We have a lot of stuff out there - a friends boats and rafts, our camper, lots of bikes, parts, and accessories, firewood. And since it has no walls or doors pretty much everyone can see whats in there. I'm not paranoid - we don't even lock our house door, but the motion light is really handy for us and a nice safety feature. Of course our house is far from the neighbors, the only windows it shines in are ours!

 

[Ridgerunner]

My experiences have all been positive, Steve. I don't have one and if my neighbors do they are so far from me that I don't realize it.

I do have an outside light on a light pole that costs me a dollar a month that the electric company maintains. They haven't had to do anything to it in the seven years I've been here. it is on a light-sensitive switch and provides enough light to get to the compost pile or to the chickens even on a moonless night. There are buildings between it and the living part of the house so it does not bother us at all at night.

Where the window is in the coop, it won't bother the chickens and it won't bother the neighbors either. With all the nighttime critters around here, deer, raccoons, possums, skunks, rabbits, coyotes, foxes, owls, and who knows what else, I don't think I'd want a movement sensitive light. I do understand the sense of security that could give some people though in different circumstances.

I'm not that much into gadgets anyway. My brother-in-law and I are both engineers. I consider a design completed when there is nothing left to take away. Make it as simple and task oriented as possible. Don't make it so complicated something is bound to fail. On the other hand, he doesn't consider a design complete until there is nothing left to add. Make it so flexible that it can do about anything, even if you will never do the vast majority of those things. But you can! It's just the difference in people and the way they look at things.

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Hi digitS' - the timing of your post is quite a coincidence. Just yesterday I installed two solar powered motion sensor LED lights out in two barns. Both of the lights are inside the barns and the motion sensors are just inside the doors. When I step into the barn the light comes on and so far they work very well. There are some real hazards out there in the dark and I have bumped my shins and stumbled over stuff for weeks now.

 

[digitS']

Ah yes! I once fell over the bucket of a tractor in the dark. The result was me holding a towel around my leg until the good people in the ER could stitch the skin back together. Neighbor saved me from having to drive like that.

The non-existent light switch beside the door might have helped. I don't know that we had motion detection back then ... but, I was mostly just a blur of movement in my twenties ... probably would have fallen over the tractor anyway .

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

Our house came with motion sensing security lights on the front of the garage, over the entry sidewalk and next to the back door.
They can be turned off with a light switch if we don't want them to come on.
So the one by the back door is nearly always off except in the winter when I sometimes have to tend to the critters after dark, but then I just flip it on like a porch light and turn it back off when I come in.

I keep the other two in the on position because kid#2 works nights and comes and goes in the dark.

I wouldn't like it in a neighborhood when the neighbors lights would come on and shine in the windows, but we are all far enough apart that there's no danger of that.

As it is, the new neighbor kid down and across the road has his front porch and garage lit up like Broadway all night and it shines in my room. He's pretty far away, but after so many years of no light from that direction it's a little annoying. Easily remedied by shutting the curtains, but I like to sleep with the curtains open so I can look out at the night sky, and wake up at first light. Now I think I'm whining.

I am however looking at getting some battery powered motion activated lights to mount on a tree or two so that I don't have to stumble around in the back yard beyond the reach of the back door light, if it's necessary to be out there.

 

[ninnymary]

We had a motion detecting one outside by the deck. The problem was that animals kept setting it off and the neighbor complained that it shined right into her window. Wanting to have good relations we disconnected it. Now you have to flip the switch if you want to turn it off. My husband also took out the bulb facing her house, the unit had two of them.

Mary

 

[Nyboy]

Big fan of them, have a few different kinds. My house was empty for a number of years, kind of became lovers lane for teenagers. I have 4 that are hardwired to house, 2 the ones by front and kitchen door come on at dark dim, with motion they get much brighter. I just added 2 solar leds on shed, havent tried them yet. The ones I love the most are small battery they use 9volt and give a surpizing amout of light in pitch dark. They where $10 at the As seen on Tv store in the mall. After break I went to get more, the store no longer carried them, but their website still as them. they do have another type of battery motion light but uses many more batteries without giving more light.

 

[Smart Red]

So far, my opinion of them isn't real positive. I wanted one for the front door. Not a good idea. It was turning itself off and on every 2 minutes or so. I don't know if it was the wind or something else, but I've ended up just leaving the switch off. Worthless that way, but even if I know someone is coming and leave the light on for them it shuts itself off while they are on the sidewalk.

I have two others to install. One is solar for the garden shed -- so I can see my way to both that and the chicken coop -- and one should be going on the woodshop. Not a priority right now.