- Jun 7, 2000
- 9,099
- 19
- 81
Wall of text, straight ahead. Turn back now if you aren't interested by the thread title.
Friends of mine are interested in automating some exterior lighting, so as to cut down on their summertime electric bills. The problem is that their driveway is sloped such that it's better to back (reverse) into the driveway rather than pull (forward) into it. The driveway is narrow, and at least a couple of hundred feet long. There are obstructions beside the driveway, low to the ground, that are difficult to see at night (and, as such, have been repeatedly struck by vehicles). Now they're considering having a very small pond put in not far from the driveway, but before they do that, need to find a good way to shed some light on the situation -- they don't want anyone to drive into the pond after dark.
The driveway wraps around the side of the house, and ends into a carport. There are currently multiple exterior lighting circuits that they use for decoration, security, and safety. Two separate circuits, each switched from inside the house, control flood lights and overhead lights that are mainly used for driveway lighting assistance. Other circuits have multiple low-voltage transformers on it, some for decoration, and one for illumination of walkways between the driveway, carport, and house. There's probably 1000W of lights on one high voltage circuit, and at least 400W on the other -- it uses a lot of electricity to keep them burning.
Most of the time, these folks don't have any idea what time of day or night they might be returning from work or other activities -- they come and go quite a bit. That eliminates the possibility of using timers for this. They don't want all of these lights running from dusk until they might happen to arrive home -- sometimes they're already home before dark, and sometimes they won't arrive home until midnight. Right now they just make a best-guess as to when they might be getting home, and turn the lights on if they think they'll not be home until after dark, or leave them off if they think they'll be back soon enough (see also, vehicles striking obstructions). The driveway and carport can also be seen by a major highway, so they don't particularly want to advertise that there isn't anyone home by leaving the lights on until they get home.
Then comes the concept of motion detecting flood lights. They're great in concept, but the implementation of those would be somewhat difficult. Because of the placement of the driveway, they wouldn't be able to use a floodlight motion sensor mounted on the house to illuminate one important part of the driveway, as it would probably also sense motion on the road that the driveway intersects with, or wouldn't sense motion at all, depending on the quality of the detector - it's probably at least 100 feet from the nearest flood lights to the end of the driveway. There are multiple solutions to this that I can think of -- I'm trying to find one that's not horribly expensive, and the easier it is to implement, the better.
One such solution - the one that comes to mind quickest - is to mount a wireless (probably battery powered) motion or IR sensor at the end of the driveway, and angle it back toward the inside of the property, as then the sensor should only 'see' traffic that hits the driveway, not traffic on the road. That sensor would need to transmit a signal to some device that would turn on all lights - meaning multiple circuits/relays - for some pre-determined period of time (probably 10 minutes or so). Capability also needs to exist for control from within the house. I can imagine that they'd want to trigger a 10-minute timeout, so that they can get in the vehicle(s), leave, etc., and then have the lights automatically extinguish. There are also times when they'd need override ability, so that the lights are forced on without a timer.
Does anyone have any suggestions for products to accomplish this? They don't really have any fixed budget for this, but the lower, the better (a few hundred dollars would be a LOT better than a few thousand). I'll probably be either implementing this or assisting with implementing this... I'm not worried about technical details/programming, I'm sure I can figure that out. I'm looking for something that someone has used, or that you've heard good things about. There are a lot of products out there that claim to be able to do this easily, but reviews indicate that they completely suck at their job (that said, it wouldn't surprise me if the product is fine, and the installation is just horrible). Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks... I hope.
Friends of mine are interested in automating some exterior lighting, so as to cut down on their summertime electric bills. The problem is that their driveway is sloped such that it's better to back (reverse) into the driveway rather than pull (forward) into it. The driveway is narrow, and at least a couple of hundred feet long. There are obstructions beside the driveway, low to the ground, that are difficult to see at night (and, as such, have been repeatedly struck by vehicles). Now they're considering having a very small pond put in not far from the driveway, but before they do that, need to find a good way to shed some light on the situation -- they don't want anyone to drive into the pond after dark.
The driveway wraps around the side of the house, and ends into a carport. There are currently multiple exterior lighting circuits that they use for decoration, security, and safety. Two separate circuits, each switched from inside the house, control flood lights and overhead lights that are mainly used for driveway lighting assistance. Other circuits have multiple low-voltage transformers on it, some for decoration, and one for illumination of walkways between the driveway, carport, and house. There's probably 1000W of lights on one high voltage circuit, and at least 400W on the other -- it uses a lot of electricity to keep them burning.
Most of the time, these folks don't have any idea what time of day or night they might be returning from work or other activities -- they come and go quite a bit. That eliminates the possibility of using timers for this. They don't want all of these lights running from dusk until they might happen to arrive home -- sometimes they're already home before dark, and sometimes they won't arrive home until midnight. Right now they just make a best-guess as to when they might be getting home, and turn the lights on if they think they'll not be home until after dark, or leave them off if they think they'll be back soon enough (see also, vehicles striking obstructions). The driveway and carport can also be seen by a major highway, so they don't particularly want to advertise that there isn't anyone home by leaving the lights on until they get home.
Then comes the concept of motion detecting flood lights. They're great in concept, but the implementation of those would be somewhat difficult. Because of the placement of the driveway, they wouldn't be able to use a floodlight motion sensor mounted on the house to illuminate one important part of the driveway, as it would probably also sense motion on the road that the driveway intersects with, or wouldn't sense motion at all, depending on the quality of the detector - it's probably at least 100 feet from the nearest flood lights to the end of the driveway. There are multiple solutions to this that I can think of -- I'm trying to find one that's not horribly expensive, and the easier it is to implement, the better.
One such solution - the one that comes to mind quickest - is to mount a wireless (probably battery powered) motion or IR sensor at the end of the driveway, and angle it back toward the inside of the property, as then the sensor should only 'see' traffic that hits the driveway, not traffic on the road. That sensor would need to transmit a signal to some device that would turn on all lights - meaning multiple circuits/relays - for some pre-determined period of time (probably 10 minutes or so). Capability also needs to exist for control from within the house. I can imagine that they'd want to trigger a 10-minute timeout, so that they can get in the vehicle(s), leave, etc., and then have the lights automatically extinguish. There are also times when they'd need override ability, so that the lights are forced on without a timer.
Does anyone have any suggestions for products to accomplish this? They don't really have any fixed budget for this, but the lower, the better (a few hundred dollars would be a LOT better than a few thousand). I'll probably be either implementing this or assisting with implementing this... I'm not worried about technical details/programming, I'm sure I can figure that out. I'm looking for something that someone has used, or that you've heard good things about. There are a lot of products out there that claim to be able to do this easily, but reviews indicate that they completely suck at their job (that said, it wouldn't surprise me if the product is fine, and the installation is just horrible). Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks... I hope.
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