- Hey there, how's it going?
This is Seth from the REtipster blog.
In this video I'm gonna talk to you about motion sensor
light switches and how they can change your life.
Stick around.
(upbeat music)
Alright so for the past few months I have been
geeking out about motion sensor light switches.
Earlier this year, bought a new house,
and if you've ever bought a new house before
you're probably familiar with the process of going
back and forth to stores like Home Depot and Lowes
when you see little things you fix up around your house.
Something that I wanted to start experimenting with
a little bit was putting these motion sensor light
switches in different rooms in my house.
And chances are you've probably seen these before
when you're walking into a public restroom
because these things will sense when there's motion
in the room and when people leave the room
they turn themselves off, usually after waiting a minute
or five minutes, or even 15 minutes.
And the reason these light switches are so cool
is because, first of all, they can save a ton of energy.
If there's every a case when somebody accidentally
forgets to turn the lights off when they leave the room
that basically gets eliminated with these because,
as long as they don't sense any motion for the amount
of time that you designate,
they're gonna turn themselves off.
Another reason I think they're kind of cool is because
when I walk into a room I don't have to fumble
for the light switch, especially in situations
that I've found, like whenever I am walking down
the basement stairway of my house,
nine times out of 10 when I'm walking down that
stairwell I have a bowl of ice cream in one hand
and a bowl of popcorn in the other
and I can't be bothered with having to mess with
light switches.
It's ridiculous that I should be expected to
have to do that.
So with these new kinds of light switches in place,
obviously as soon as it seems me coming down
the stairs, it's gonna turn itself on.
And as soon as I'm done, it's gonna turn itself off.
I'll be the first to admit, this is a very,
very minor thing.
Kind of like a first world problem.
But I'll tell you it's an amazing thing when
you can just walk through your house and the lights
turn themselves and turn themselves off whenever
you're there.
It's a really cool kind of life-changing thing
once you start to experience it yourself.
So there's actually a number of different companies
out there that make these kinds of light switches.
The company that makes the ones that I'm using
is called Lutron and I haven't really tried the others,
to be honest, but I've got to tell you I have been
very very impressed with the light switches
that Lutron makes.
I've actually put a lot of these in my house.
In bathrooms, laundry rooms, garages, basement rooms,
storage rooms, utility rooms,
and they can sense motion that is very, very fine.
So as long as somebody is in there,
it's not gonna turn off on you.
Lutron actually has light switches that are even more
sophisticated and they can not only see motion,
but they can even hear sound.
So, for example, if you put one of these in a bathroom
and you've got somebody who's taking a shower
behind the shower curtain and it can't actually see
any motions but somebody's still there,
these kinds of light switches can hear the noise
in the room and it will keep itself on because of that.
So if you've got a special situation where you want it
to stay on when it hears water running or typing
fingers on a keyboard, things like that,
they have that kind of thing available too.
They've also got these special motion sensors that
you can put on your ceiling or on your wall.
And the nice thing about these is that they're
battery powered which means you don't have to wire
anything up or dig into your walls to set it up.
Whenever this thing senses motion it sends a radio
signal to this special switch,
which is a little bit different than the other
one I just showed you, and then this will automatically
turn itself on and off.
And this solution is a little bit more pricey.
This item here I think is about 50 bucks
and this one, I've seen different prices out there,
but they range anywhere from like 80 to 120 bucks
depending on where you get it and whether or not
they're having a sale.
This probably wouldn't be my first choice,
but there are some situations where the motion sensor
itself on the switch can't always see everywhere
in the room, but this thing can.
So if you've got a situation like that,
these could be worth looking into, as well.
All of the motion sensing switches I've got in
my house also have a feature where they can sense daylight.
So say if you're in a room like this room I'm in
right here, if there was a motion sensor on that wall
over there it would be able to detect that there is
ambient sunlight coming into the room,
and because of that, it does not need to turn on
when somebody walks in the room.
Because there's already enough ambient light there.
But obviously when it gets darker and it's nighttime
and there isn't any ambient light, then it would turn on.
So it's kind of like a smart system and because of that
it can save even more energy on autopilot.
It's not something you have to think about,
it'll just do it for you.
I'll also tell you I have two small children in my house
and we try to always teach them to turn switches
on and off and that kind of thing,
but if they ever don't do that, that's okay too because
these switches are gonna turn themselves off.
We're not gonna have situations where somebody leaves
the lights on all day long and then we come back
to realize we've been wasting electricity all day.
For a lot of reasons, I think these kinds of switches
make tons of sense and I'm, frankly, kind of surprised
these aren't a more common thing in a lot of
homes out there because they're really cool and they
work really well.
In terms of the cost of these light switches,
this particular one is a single pull application
so it only works when there is one switch that
controls the light and these are less than $20 a piece.
There's also a three way option which costs
less than $30 for those.
That's when you can turn the lights on and off
from two or more different locations.
One thing I will say is that these kinds of motion
detector light switches don't make sense all the time.
For example, I would never put one of these in a bedroom
and I probably wouldn't put one of these in a TV room.
Think through your house, think of all the rooms where
whenever there's a person in that room you always
want the lights on.
For example, a bathroom.
I can't think of any reason why you'd want to be
in a bathroom with no lights on.
So if you're there the light should just turn on.
Same thing with, like, a laundry room or a garage
or any kind of a basement utility room,
anything like that, then I think these things are
a great idea.
But if you've got like a bedroom where,
just because you're in the room and moving doesn't
mean you want the lights on, those are the situations
where you probably would not want to have one of
these things involved.
So just think it through and what I would suggest
is just buy one of these things and just see
if you like it.
And if you think it's helpful, then consider getting
more of them because the only thing it's gonna do
after you pay for the cost of the switch
is save you money and make your life easier.
So I definitely thought these things were cool,
I wanted to recommend them to you because I've had
a great experience with them.
And I'll tell you, this is nothing that Lutron is
paying me to say, I'm literally just doing this
because I think it's a really, really cool product
and I've had a great experience with it.
So since I loved it so much, I wanted to pass it along
to you and hopefully you'll find it useful.
Thanks, see ya.
(upbeat music)