One of the best things about an outdoor security light is that you can set it to be on only when you want it to be. With some controls, you can even set it to be on dimly when it's dark out and to switch to bright light when someone steps in front of it.
If your light came with built-in controls then you will work with those. A lot of times, though, we make our own outdoor security light by combining one or two lampholders with a separate control unit.
Those usually offer more controls and more choices within each control.
The outdoor fixture shown here and in Choosing Outdoor Security Lights is one of those. It has a separate controller mounted between the two lights. The control unit senses light and motion, and has selectors that you can set for when and how it will be on, how long it will be on -- or stay bright -- after it's triggered, and its sensitivity to motion triggering.
Separate controllers like this one are wired, or connected, to power coming from a switch, and then the light bulbs - the lampholders they're in - are connected to the controller. That way the controller always has the power it needs to operate, and the lamps only have power when the controller sends it to them.
The Automatic Controls
Almost every outdoor security light has a control that will keep it from being on when it's light outside. Some have timers and some have photocells. Some, such as the one shown here, have both.
The photocell is the small eye in the lower right corner of the bottom plate.
It's a normally-closed switch that opens when light is present. That means the other controls will have power anytime it's dark. It also means that if the photocell fails, the light will just stay on all the time. For security, of course, that's the way we'd prefer it to fail!
The large lens across the front of the unit is the motion detector. A motion detector uses an infrared view to sense when a warm body has entered its field of vision. This control is a normally-open switch. It won't close, and send power on to the lights, until and unless it sees something.
The Controls You Set
There are two slide buttons and a dial with a pointer on the bottom plate of this controller.
The slide switch next to the eye for the photocell sets the hours of operation. Because this particular controller is a DualBrite model, it also has a setting for OFF. That can be selected to disable the low-power setting, so that the lights stay off until the system is triggered, rather than being dim. The other three settings are Dusk to Dawn, 3 hours after dark, and 6 hours after dark.
The other slide switch selects how long the light will stay on, or stay bright, after it's triggered -- one minute, five minutes or twenty minutes. This slide switch also has a TEST setting. That's a handy feature that allows you to turn the lights on at any time -- even in the middle of the day -- to see if they're both working. It can be particularly useful when the fixture is being installed, to tell you whether everything is connected the way is should be.
The dial with the pointer is the Sensitivity control. This controls how far away or close in a person must be before the motion detector will react, and close the circuit.