X10 Community Forum

🔌General Home Automation => Automating Your House => Topic started by: AccurateOne on September 19, 2009, 09:22:37 PM

Title: What is the best way to mount a motion sensor?
Post by: AccurateOne on September 19, 2009, 09:22:37 PM

I am looking for the best way to mount these things. Here is what I am thinking. I have a two story house with a deck off of the top floor exactly in the middle of the back of my house. The bottom floor back of the house looks like this D=Door, W=window, x=sensor locations the deck is what is protruding out in this diagram :

                                                           ________
                                                          xl            lx
                                                           l            l
                                      __D______W__ l          wl__D___W______W____


I want to mount the sensors under the rails of the deck pointing downward at an angle towards the doors and windows below. How should I mount these. Speaker mounts, block of wood? What have you guys had success with? Or, should I rethink this?

Title: Re: What is the best way to mount a motion sensor?
Post by: Knightrider on September 19, 2009, 09:32:16 PM

Rethink it? No way!  I'd go with the block of wood because I am a carpenter, but the speaker mounts will give you more flexibility.

Title: Re: What is the best way to mount a motion sensor?
Post by: HA Dave on September 19, 2009, 10:11:03 PM

Remember those "eye" sensors are designed to look down [when mounted to a wall]. So when mounted looking towards the ground... they will also be looking in the direction of the bottom of the sensor. I like to use Velcro for mounting the sensors.... it really makes battery changing and resetting... much easier.

Title: Re: What is the best way to mount a motion sensor?
Post by: Charles Sullivan on September 20, 2009, 06:08:05 PM

Quote from: AccurateOne on September 19, 2009, 09:22:37 PM

I want to mount the sensors under the rails of the deck pointing downward at an angle towards the doors and windows below. How should I mount these. Speaker mounts, block of wood? What have you guys had success with? Or, should I rethink this?

I'd be cautious about using metal speaker mounts.  If the sensor is mounted against a metal plate, the RF signal will be attenuated.

Title: Re: What is the best way to mount a motion sensor?
Post by: HA Dave on September 20, 2009, 06:59:28 PM

This post<link (http://forums.x10.com/index.php?topic=13211.msg73671#msg73671) started out about sensor mounting (he used lego parts). He even included a drawing!