A good while back I set up an area light over the main driveway that was 12v powered, using an array of 12v LED floodlights on a board, powered from a marine battery that was activated from a cheap 12v timer. Fast forward and the wood structure and the other hardware that I used to fabricate the structure started rotting and the battery was shot. The costs to restore this structure were way more expensive than to just replace the whole thing with one of the self contained LED/lithium battery streetlights you can get from places like Walmart or online. That setup was easier to setup than my old floodlight setup. Anyway, that meant I had several parts to put to use, namely the LED floodlights. I came up with an idea to use one of the LED lights to illuminate the area around the Storage Trailer's entry door. In order to do this I decided to use a dusk/dawn sensor along with a 12v adapter to power the LED from 120vac. I would install an outlet box that would be cycled from the sensor and would power the 12v adapter to power the LED.
The area that I wanted to install the hardware had a 12v area light already over it. This had to go to make room for both the sensor and the LED. After removing this light, the hole on the wall behind the old area light ended up being too big so I had to drill another hole next to the big hole with which to secure the dusk/dawn sensor. With the sensor in place I secured the bracket for the LED light next to the sensor. I ran the wires for the LED through the original big hole in the wall, but will have to find some kind of way to plug that big hole so it doesn't end up being an entry way for wasps or other bugs, much less the rain. In order to keep this project cheap, I used what I had available. I had a blue plastic outlet box among other things, that I decided to use. I secured that box to an open area on the wall above the other outlet that I'm currently using to power the trailer's interior lights. Of course I couldn't use this outlet because its powered off a switch. I had to pull the interior light's outlet off its box and route the wires for the dusk/dawn sensor and the romex cable from the new outlet.
All the connections for the new hardware will be routed through the old outlet box. I had to connect the black and white wires from the sensor to the line/neutral wires being fed into the old outlet box. The neutral line is connected to the old outlet's switch. The neutral line which is going to the switch is also connected to the neutral on the Romex line feeding the new outlet. Three wires are hooked to the neutral line. The load wire on the sensor is hooked up to the black wire on the Romex cable feeding the new outlet. With all this stuff wired up, I could finalize things with the 12v adapter.
After plugging up the 12v adapter and turning on the power to the trailer, the LED light came on as the sensor got power. Once the light activated the sensor, in about a minute, the sensor cycled off and killed power to the LED light. I held my hand over the sensor and after a couple minutes the sensor cycled back on, turning the LED light on as intended. I adjusted the sensor where it would be above the LED light so any glare from the light won't activate the sensor accidentally. Of course I'll have to wait until night time to get a good idea of the level of illumination this little LED will cover but I'm confident that the single light will cover the area around the door pretty good as I had four of these lights light up a large area around the driveway pretty good. I really don't need too much light around the door anyway, just enough to be able to see the door, steps and the keypad lock so I can go over to and into the door without needing a headlight or other flashlight. This little setup is just one of many little conveniences that I plan on setting up around here.
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