After conquering the Double Peak Mountain overlooking San Marcos, Randy and I came back to the apartment for a bit. While he was here he looked at the light switch in the bathroom for me. He was quickly able to determine what needed to be done to swap the switches in the closet and the bathroom. After hooking the sensor switch up in the closet, though, we ran into some problems. The light came on, but the switch didn’t seem to be functioning. The LED on the switch itself never illuminated and the button didn’t do anything. Worst of all, the light would come on, then, after ten seconds, turn off again. It would only stay off for one or two seconds, then turn back on again. This behaviour made no sense.

I went on the internet to find out if there were others that might have had similar difficulties and I found the company’s website. I never found the information I was looking for, but I was able to find a product catalogue with switches that were similar to mine. On one of the pages was a layer by layer photographic diagram of what was inside the black box. Nothing too useful about that, although it was interesting. Also of note was that the diagram showed the switch with its faceplate removed exposing the sensitivity and duration controls.

Sensativity and duration controls!? This was just what we needed! Randy put the switches back the way they had been and turned the sensativity and duration controls to maximum. I started a timer to see how long the light would stay on if no movement were detected in the bathroom. The light stayed on almost exactly thirty minutes! This is a much better solution because now I don’t have to worry everytime maintenance people popped in to check on things.

Thanks to Randy, the light switch formerly known as evil has redeemed itself.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 25th, 2006 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Life, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.