shannong Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I have a few of the Insteon Motion Sensors and this is my first time using them. I'm having difficulty with the Dusk.Dawn node. I thought the sensor would detect night/day illuminance and that node would reflect that. However, the ISY is not getting any messages for it from the sensor and doesn't have a Current State for it. I tried putting it in my coat pocket for a few minutes and nada. I have tried both Night Modes and nothing. So I thought maybe the sensor was DOA but I tried another with the same result. I've tested with the sensitivity set to 5 and 250 and with no change in behavior. I know it's not a comm issue because the motion "Sensor" node is getting updates from it. Any guidance or extra info would helpful.
Xathros Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 State changes to the dusk.dawn node take 3.5 minutes to flip. Put the sensor in the dark for at least 3.5 mins to test. -Xathros Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
shannong Posted January 24, 2014 Author Posted January 24, 2014 Thanks. That's a useful piece of info to know. I had it in my coat pocket for at least 10 min.
shannong Posted January 25, 2014 Author Posted January 25, 2014 Will the Dusk.Dawn sensor update On/Off in either Night Mode?
shannong Posted January 25, 2014 Author Posted January 25, 2014 How does the sensitivity level scale work? Bigger numbers make it more or less sensitive?
LeeG Posted January 25, 2014 Posted January 25, 2014 The lower the sensitivity the darker to trigger Dusk/Dawn. The motion sensor will trigger in both modes. For a test I set sensitivity to 120, Night Mode: Always checked. It took 4 minutes under bright light before motion sensor turned Dusk/Dawn Off
jgorm Posted January 25, 2014 Posted January 25, 2014 Why not just use a sunrise sunset time plus some time? I have all my motion based lights programed like that. Are you trying to use a scene instead of a program? I'm still learning the best ways to use these devices, so sorry if my questions are basic.
oberkc Posted January 25, 2014 Posted January 25, 2014 Why not just use a sunrise sunset time plus some time? I have all my motion based lights programed like that. Are you trying to use a scene instead of a program? I'm still learning the best ways to use these devices, so sorry if my questions are basic. I, too, prefer the reliability of sunset/sunrise times, but I can see where there is value in making adjustments for cloudy days and mornings. It might be nice to have lights on earlier if it gets dark early due to cloud cover.
shannong Posted January 25, 2014 Author Posted January 25, 2014 Why not just use a sunrise sunset time plus some time? I have all my motion based lights programed like that. Are you trying to use a scene instead of a program? I'm still learning the best ways to use these devices, so sorry if my questions are basic. As I mentioned I'm just starting to use them. I like to learn the details and functions before I begin using something new so I can better understand my options to use it. At this point it isn't working at all for me. I do use sunrise/sunset for some timers. However, there have been a few times where it's been really cloud at the end of the day and the garage and utility room are quite dim. I like the idea of controlling lights by luminance rather than TOD. However, I only want to do that if I have something to reliably provide feedback for that. I also assume another benefit would be that the sensor could switch on the light locally which would be fast and reliable vs a program which carries with it the inherent delay and occasional miss. That would save me the annoyance of thinking the sensor didn't "see" me and I start doing some sort of silly dance to create more motion to trigger it. I haven't had a chance to test and see if that's true, yet.
shannong Posted January 27, 2014 Author Posted January 27, 2014 It's working for me properly now. I'm not sure what happened on the first go. For sure the delay caused a bit of confusion in addition to not understanding if the luminance sensor should operate when not in night mode. I think the light sensitivity is not graduated well since I have to turn it all the way down to 30 to keep it from coming on in the day light. It also would be nice if the sensors had the ability to operate like wireless thermostat where the device sees wired power and stays on all the time rather than using a sleep mode. Thanks to all for the assistance.
larryllix Posted January 27, 2014 Posted January 27, 2014 I use nine X10 MSs and one Insteon MS. I use counting programmes when each unit reports a change to Dark or Not Dark. This allows me to use the value to access how dark the house is. eg. on cloudy days etc. Some units report 'Not Dark' with a small amount of sky light (cloudy or overcast) and some take full sunlight in the sky. The increment and decrement programmes need to have a minimum value of 0 and a maximum value of about three less units than are working. This allows for dead units, missed reports, and units that are never exposed to sunlight in the room. Those could also be cut out of the accumulation process. The end values saturate at times and keep the values in check, mostly when it is completely dark the value is always 0. I am not using this scheme with my ISY, as yet, but it did work quite well on an older X10 system to gauge how much water to put on a newly seeded lawn. On cloudy or rainy days the sprinklers got 1 min shots maybe twice per day. On bright sunny days the sprinklers got 3 min shots of water almost every hour. The seed grew amazingly fast that a neighbour even came over and commented about it.
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