I put on motion sensors that turn on the soffit lights of our new place. I had them on the old place and they are great, we hardly ever use the switch, they go on by themselves and stay on just 4 minutes. Soffit lights look better than flood lights and great security too. But they have a mind of their own and come on for no apparent reason. I have Cooper Lighting motion sensors, I will return them if there are better ones. Or is there something I can do to these?

Are soffit lights the ones that are set up in the soffit and wash vertically down the wall, or are they the two spotlight kind that can be adjusted to point different places?

soffit lights are generally recessed cans in the soffit that wash down the wall. I call the two bulb adjustable fixture a flood light, but I suppose that is not so accurate.

I've been playing with multiple different makes and models of motion sensors for 20 years. There seem to be sensitive ones, insensitive ones and occasionally, defective ones, but in the end, what it comes down to is that they will come on for reasons not apparent.

They have "sensitivity settings", which you can fiddle with or you can adjust the aiming of the sensor window. You can also use something like tape or paint to selectively occlude the sensor window if the other adjustments don't give you satisfaction. I've often thought I had them set up perfectly and been happy for months, only to have the wind come from a different direction and trigger them all night long....

Their saving grace is that whatever causes them to trigger, they eventually turn themselves off.

"Their saving grace is that whatever causes them to trigger, they eventually turn themselves off."

Sometimes mine work fine in the evening, then in the middle of the night turn on and stay on the rest of the night. Last night some stayed on until I noticed at about noon.

I have had motion sensor lights that could be switched between motion sensor lights and switch-operated lights by togglng the switch off and on (handy if you are expecting company and want to turn the front porch light on and have it stay on). For a design like that, a power interrupt might cause the lights to switch to continuously on. I don't know if yours have that control feature.

I have had motion sensor lights that could be switched

Good point. I had one of those early on and subsequent to that saw the same mechanism in a different manufacturer's package which did NOT note that feature in the scanty instructions.

I have the same lights on a switch too, so it is either the manual switch or the motion sensing switch.

Well I have eight motion switches, for the eight sides of the house and garage. Five of the eight sides are controlled by manual switches too.

Brad-

So hopefully you understand my point. If the lights are switched between motion-controlled and manaul-controlled by cycling the switch off and on, then the lights that were turned on and left in the motion-controlled mode would be switched to manual-controlled and stay on continusously if there were a momentary power interruption or glitch in the middle of the night. It would be just as if you cycled the switch, but it would not require you to touch the switch since the light control system doesn't know if the power switching was done by the switch or for some other reason. That would explain how the lights could be turned on and stay on continuously while you were sleeping. There is not a good solution to the problem other than to get lighting systems that did not have the feature of switching back and forth between motion-sensing and manual control.

Pretty much what I've found for 20 years. You love 'em and you hate 'em.

Has anyone found a brand/model that they feel works great?

Lee, I understand, and these too have a "dusk to dawn" feature so that you can keep them on if your turn on or off the power a couple times in 30 seconds or something. But mine will work okay, by themselves, and then just stay on.