We have a number of Zwave lights in our house. Only a couple set up in our GC3 panel. I will be setting the others as times goes by and we transition from SmartThings to the new panel. My question is, can I set up sensors outside that when triggered turn on lights around the house? I installed a couple of motion sensors already, but they trigger the alarm (mounted inside the house). I couldn’t figure out how I would use the to trigger lights.
For example, I have a sensor in the back yard. After dusk and be before dawn I want the back porch, living room and spot lights to come one for XX number of mins. Is this possible and how?
I have PIR motion sensors throughout the inside of my house. That would trigger an alarm when the system is armed away. I also have Zwave light switches.
I set up a rule to turn on my office lamp for 1 minute when my office sensor detects movement.
That would work except I don’t want them to arm when away. Since these will be outside and we leave where deer, cats, dogs and lots of other animals roam into our yard, I just want it to turn on lights. I assume, when I set up the PIR I would just not have it report in? What is the right settings for that?
Make sure to use outdoor motion detectors for this, but yes you could just program them into the panel as Zone Type (23) NO RESPONSE TYPE. This will report their status to ADC however they will never activate an alarm.
I had a similar question with the GC3 and was wondering if instead of using a security motion detector which you recommend to trigger the event, can you use a zwave motion detector to trigger the lights to turn on?
Thanks for that. I was wondering the same thing, about the zWave sensors. I have a few old ones around, so reuse would have been preferable. Anyways, thanks so much.
Another question regarding using the motion sensor and triggering lights through ADC. I know ADC has some threshold time for reporting events with respect to motion sensors. I think that it doesn’t report the sensor as off until there is an hour of no motion. Does this affect the rules in that if motion gets triggered a second time after maybe 30 minutes it will not process another motion event and trigger the lights again?
The “cooldown” so to speak for motion detectors activating Z-wave rules would be based on the panel interaction, not ADC.
So, it would be determined by the sensor’s own delay (usually a few minutes) to save battery.
Rules are created in ADC and saved in the panel or module, depending on the panel model, so that processing the rule happens locally.
The most accurate way of using motion detectors would be to utilize an externally powered detector, like a 12vdc wired model, and use a wireless sensor with a wired input like the DW10 as a transmitter or directly wire to the panel. An externally powered model would not have a power save delay
The lights I want to activate are Lutron controlled integrated with ADC, not Z-wave. I tried a test rule to see if they would light under a motion activated rule and nothing happened. Motion was already registered on ADC prior to setting up the rule and I tried to trigger a second time.
Do you know if that kind of rule will work with Lutron integration?
The lights I want to activate are Lutron controlled integrated with ADC, not Z-wave
Ahh, good distinction, yeah that would require Alarm.com interaction to process the rule. The status delay would then come into effect.
You can test with a door sensor as the trigger. I’ll talk with ADC and see if they have an existing workaround for a motion detector activated Lutron rule. It may require setting a motion detector as no response type, contact.
