Automatically turn on street lighting in a suburban area

Rest in a house outside the city becomes comfortable and brings pleasure only when the tasks of maintaining the house and the plot are minimized. Often, the owners are forced to irrigate landings, control the provision of ventilation and heating at home, turn on the lighting of the site, etc. Of course, such a "rest" was a wave of standard for our grandparents, but today there are completely different times and standards of life, which increasingly exclude the transformation of being outside the city into work that takes a lot of time and energy.

Today, this much-needed functionality can be completely delegated, at the same time, not to hired workers, but to modern multifunctional modular electrical equipment that allows you to perform all the processes on a suburban area in automatic mode, i.e. without human intervention. Its installation is quick and easy in existing power supply systems and, thus, there is no need for complex repair work.

There can be many processes, but in this article we will focus on automatically turn on with the onset of darkness street lighting.

For most homeowners, the onset of the evening is associated with an already established ritual - the inclusion of lighting on the site. To turn on and turn off the light on the site, the most commonly used is a conventional switch in the house or a circuit breaker in the electrical distribution panel.

When controlling outdoor lighting using circuit breakers installed in the electrical panel, it is possible to turn on and off certain groups of lamps.

All these methods of controlling outdoor lighting have their advantages - they are cheap and easy to manage.

It is good if the territory adjacent to the cottage is small and only a few lamps are located on it. But if a suburban possession can boast of a rather complicated lighting system - say, lamps near the porch, along the perimeter, on the lawns, near the gates, and each zone has its own separate switch (or other control), then on such evenings you can watch the picture when the homeowner runs long and painfully around the territory.

There are more modern ways to manage street lightingthat allow you to turn on the lights in the yard and in the garden with the click of a single button. Used for this infrared and radio controlled switches.

These wireless remote control devices consist of a transmitter and a receiver. They can control several electrical loads at once. Infrared switches can be used at relatively small distances from the transmitter to the receiver, radio-controlled switches at distances of up to 100 and more meters. You can read more about this type of switch in this article - Remote lighting control.

Despite the fact that there are many simple ways to turn on street lighting, it is difficult to argue that it is much more convenient when the lighting turns on and off without any human intervention, i.e. in automatic mode.

Modern modular equipment allows not only programming for timely switching on the equipment, but also creating different combinations of light zones (for example, several lawns will be lit at one time, and later on, lamps on the remaining lawns and near the entrance).

The issue of turning on the lighting in automatic mode becomes especially relevant in the autumn and winter months, when the sun sets very early and the owners of suburban real estate are forced to return home in the dark.

There are currently many devices on the market that allow you to solve the problem of turning on the lighting in automatic mode. So, if it is necessary to light street lamps with the onset of darkness, then it is best to use twilight relays (photo relay). In the evening, if the illumination level drops below a certain level, the relay will trip and the lighting will turn on.

Photo relay schemes for lighting control

The easiest twilight switch (photo relay)

Luminaires that are installed for security reasons near the gates, the garage door or the entrance to the house can be connected through Motion Sensor. For these purposes, it is most often used electronic infrared sensor, detecting the presence and movement of a person in the zone of his action. When installing motion sensors, you need to select the correct location based on its sensitivity.

To solve the important task of street lighting control, you can opt for astronomical relay.

The main advantage of this device is that it does not require an ambient light sensor installed on the site: just set your coordinates. So, a kit with an astronomical relay, as a rule, includes a world map, according to which you can approximately indicate your location, indicating the appropriate longitude and latitude when setting up the relay.

The device, thanks to its internal program, will independently calculate in a specified area the given time of the year, the time of dawn and sunset, and will enable street lighting in automatic mode at dusk and turn off at sunrise. An example of such a device is astronomical timer Rex 2000.

To organize lighting at the entrance to the house or the entrance to the site, you can choose time delay function. Such a device is controlled from a push-button switch and disconnects the load after a set time (lamps in the yard or in the garden).

Time relay in home automation

How to make a do-it-yourself time relay

The delay time for switching on the load is set on the front panel of the relay, and can be adjusted depending on the device. In some timers (timers), you can program not only the time intervals for turning on and off the external lighting, but also to distribute them according to the days of the week.

Very interesting and useful effects can be obtained by combining various types of lighting control devices. So, for example, a motion sensor can be connected with a timer. Due to this, it is possible to make sure that the timer automatically turns on 2 bulbs of 20 W each, and when a person approaches, a motion sensor works and 2 bulbs of 100 W each turn on.

A huge number of possibilities for controlling outdoor lighting can be obtained using equipment for building home automation systems (X10, Z-wave etc.). Modern technologies and home automation devices help you create the most comfortable and convenient schemes for controlling outdoor lighting, the level of cost and complexity that suits you.

All the devices listed in the article - photorelay, timers, motion sensors can be integrated into one system, which can be controlled using the remote control or completely automatically. More information about the possibilities of controlling street lighting and spotlights using the X10 home automation system will be described in the following articles.

See also:How to choose, configure and connect a photo relay for outdoor or indoor lighting