A local Virginia facility engineer had an unusual, and mundane task to accomplish. In a newly completed housing building, the living quarters all are equipped with motion or occupancy sensor to increase the overall energy efficiency of the new building. With no motion in a particular room, the lights and HVAC systems are reduced or shut off. These particular occupancy sensors, illuminate utilizing a green LED when sensing motion. This however, in a darkened room is very bright and disturbed the occupants. The engineer found no published method to extinguish the LEDs, so he contacted the manufacturer. The manufacturer explained a procedure to accomplish this task. It was however a cumbersome task, especially when there were over 1100 of these sensors involved. The procedure goes something like this: Press the programming button 20 times, wait 1 second, press the button again 2 times, wait 1 second, press and hold the button 1 second, press the button 20 times. Can you imagine performing this procedure over 1100 times without a mistake?
Fortunately, he was already a user of the IDEC FT1A touch screen for other applications there. He designed and built the “jig” shown in this quick video, to program the occupancy sensors 5 at time, error free every time!
An efficient and fun project!
