Security Light Wiring Problem

B

buyingabroad

Registered User
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159
Hi all,

We have a security flood light at the front of the house with a separate sensor. The sensor was erratic switching on and off the light randomly.

Anyhow I got a new sensor and went to wire it up.

There is one cable coming to the sensor which appears to deal with current in and current out. There are three wires inside the cable - black, green and blue.

The sensor (a Friedman) has inputs L, L1, E and N.

The blue wire obviously goes to N. The green probably should go to E but if it does then L and L1 cannot connect when the sensor triggers and flow current to the lamp.

I put black and green to L and L1 and vica versa. No joy.

Would anyone be able to steer me in the right direction?

Thanks,

B.
 
I would suspect that whoever wired up the original sensor took a short cut and used one of the wires in the cable as a "switch" wire.

If you don't want to rewire it properly, by running another cable of at least four cores then you will have to identify the two "feed" in, ie.the phase and neutral and then use the third as the switch to your light.

NB: Using this method you will not have an earth to your sensor, which you didn't have anyway.
 
SparkRite said:
If you don't want to rewire it properly, by running another cable of at least four cores then you will have to identify the two "feed" in, ie.the phase and neutral and then use the third as the switch to your light.
Click to expand...


How do I do that? There are 6 combinations altogether.

Thanks,

B.
 
buyingabroad said:
Hi all,

There are three wires inside the cable - black, green and blue.

The blue wire obviously goes to N. The green probably should go to E but if it does then L and L1 cannot connect when the sensor triggers and flow current to the lamp.

How do I do that? There are 6 combinations altogether.

Thanks,

B.
Click to expand...

Assume NOTHING!
With that colour coding anything could be phase/neutral/earth, even though I strongly suspect you have no earth to the PIR.

A handy way to identify what is what is with the lamp removed/isolated (this is important) use a duel phase tester or multimeter to identify the phase and neutral and then the meter to prove that the third conductor is indeed the switch wire to the lamp.

Wire the Phase to L
Wire the Neutral to N
Wire the Switch Wire to L1.

If the Pir is double insulated then there is no need for an earth conductor.
 
Would it be possible to use a voltage tester screwdriver for this exercise? I have one of those but not the multimeter or duel tester.

Also, since I've been at this, the house alarm doesn't work. They're hardly connected, are they?

Thanks.

B.
 
buyingabroad said:
Would it be possible to use a voltage tester screwdriver for this exercise? I have one of those but not the multimeter or duel tester.

Also, since I've been at this, the house alarm doesn't work. They're hardly connected, are they?

Thanks.

B.
Click to expand...

It's easy to identify the phase with a screwdriver/phase tester but not so the neutral.

Its unlikely the feed to the PIR has anything to do with your house alarm other than maybe being fed from the same MCB. So assuming you have had this switched off while working on the PIR then perhaps, if your alarm backup battery is poor, your alarm may have re-set to factory defaults.

Why don't you buy a duel phase tester, they are not that dear.
 
Don't get anyone in just buy a new light with the sensor attached and all you will have to do is connect the live (brown), neutral (blue) and the earth (green/yellow)
 
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