I am engineering a house that is adding their existing motion flood lights to a centralized lighting panel. I need to find a way for the lights to be triggered by a motion still and be able to turn on with a Keypad. I have the keypad figured out but am not sure how or what is the best way to integrate a motion. I need some sort of low voltage motion to mount to the floods or a dedicated circuit that is hot all the time to drive the motion with a low voltage contact. Has anyone ran into this before an what solutions are out there.

If they are 120 volt just bring a 120 feed from the same breaker the load is on. Wire it in parallel. When motion is sensed the lights will turn on. When you press the flood light button they still turn on.

What outdoor motion are you guys using? A 120v motion or a low voltage one tied to alarm panel then triggering a scene?

One unusual thing about many motion lights is how the act when switched on/off.

Mine will:

1. Turn switch off and no function at all.

2. Turn switch back on, and they will turn on AND stay on.

3. Cycle the switch again, and they will operate as they should.


Might create some issues.



Not to sure about that parallel wiring deal. I don't think you can do that.

I have 2 existing rear lights and 2 front lights. I want to have a motion trigger either the front or back to turn on and through programming I can have them do whatever. The old system was x10 and any motion that sensed motion would have all of them turn on. I want to create something similar.

There is your answer

I understand for one flood light that will work but I want one flood lights motion to trigger a macro in c4 program to turn all of them.

This brings up a question I had about a year ago, and I never got any more than a guess.

See, if you wire it that way, when you turn on the lights with the control system, you'll apply 120V to the output of the motion sensor. My question is, is this a problem? The sensor will have 120V on its input; it's got a neutral; then applying 120V from outside to the motion sensor output will do... what?

And if the motion sensor trips, its internal circuitry will turn on, then later turn off... does that affect anything if there's 120V from the control output on the sensor?

What I wanted to do was to put two lights about thirty feet apart, with a motion sensor at each, but wired so that when either one came on, the other would, too. This required wiring the outputs of the two motion sensors together.

Based on the fact that most all will have that oddball feature I mentioned earlier, what may work is to have your control system toggle the light switch feeding 120v to the fixture/s, off and then on, which should turn the lights on.

Then have it toggle the switch off and on again, which would put the system back to having power on and the lights back in "motion" mode.


I say this based on how MY lights work at the beach house.


I think y'all are over engineering.

I didn't hear that he's removing power from the fixtures, but instead using the motion control sensor to turn the lights on and off for intrusions, but IN PARALLEL, supplying power directly from the panel to the light.

So... the only issue is, if the sensor is off and you feed power to the light, which incidentally makes the output of the sensor see HOT, does it damage the sensor?

(By sensor I mean sensor, switch, internal, TRIAC, the whole thing.)

In that case all you need is a motion sensor with a set of wires for a dry contact. Wire those wires into a contact closure on your processor. In your programming have it do whatever when that input senses contact from the motion sensor.

This is what I was thinking. Write the code however you want it to be.

Ken..."Ya'll"..that's a southern term, right?

We do this all the time with Crestron and occupancy/motion sensors. Use an outdoor rated LV motion detector wired back to your processor (all motions use N/C contacts), when the signal is opened you can either start a timer and turn on lights or have the lights turn on when motion is detected and off when motion not detected. If you want to be able to also turn the light on and keep it on with a button you will need that button to disable the logic of the motion when you want the light to stay on.

Can you provide a link for the outdoor rated motion sensors you use please?

We haven't used an outdoor motion yet as we tend to complete these situations inside a home but we have installed outdoor motion detectors. We use Paradox for our security systems. here is a link to all their motions [Link: paradox.com] we usually install the DG85 (it only has a combus) so you would need to get the DG85C (also has dry contacts on board.