Lights, sensor, action

I worked at a  start up in San Francisco a few years ago and at the time we had a healthy obession for costs. In this spirit we installed some motion sensor lighting in the bathrooms. Replacing the switch plate on the wall, this device would sense when someone was in the room and keep the lights on. 10 seconds or so after they left, the lights would turn off.

Our downstairs bathroom by the kids room has a row of five lights above the mirror, so when I see that light left on I have to think "there goes five rooms worth of lights". I've done my best to replace all the bulbs in the house with flourescents, although this particular fixture have a circular shape that require incandescents. 

Aftter seeing that light left on again I thought I would apply a bit of Digital Dadness to the problem. I purchased a motion sensor fixture at Home Depot for about $10 (surpisingly inexpensive). After turning off the breaker I installed it in a few minutes. It has a small slider switch for OFF, AUTO, and ON, in case someone needed to do an override.

There's an adjustment panel where you set the "trigger" lighting level for detecting motion and another setting for how long the lights stay on for after someone leaves the room. One hint - set the motion sensor trigger level in the evening, as setting it during the daytime provides too subtle a distinction for the sensor.

I remember from my start up days thinking that this new bathroom switch was pretty cool - until I sat in a stall in the bathroom and was thrown into complete darkness after one minute. The sensor couldn't detect me behind the stall wall - maybe that was a way to encourage efficient bathroom usage?

Fortunately my bathroom is laid out in a fairly open fashion so the sensor has a good range of detection. The kids love it and think it's magic. I enjoy looking downstairs and seeing the bathroom light off. All is well.