Three hours to change a lightbulb because of my stupid solar setup

I got a new smart outdoor light that works with my home battery system. Simple swap right? Wrong. I spent three hours on a Saturday trying to figure out why it kept blinking red. Turns out the solar inverter has a weird power cycle glitch when you plug in a high draw LED. Had to wait for sunset to test the motion sensor again. My neighbor saw me out there with a multimeter and laughed at me. Has anyone else had a random part of their green setup just refuse to cooperate for no good reason?

2 comments

2 Comments

viola_cooper6216d ago

A while back I tried to put a smart thermostat in my old farmhouse and the wiring was so ancient it took me four hours to even figure out which wire was which. My multimeter kept giving me weird readings and I finally realized the previous owner had just painted over the wires and the paint was messing with the contacts. Your neighbor laughing at you sounds about right. People always think you're crazy standing there with tools for hours over something they think is simple. But hey at least you got it working in the end, that's what counts.

eric_price16d ago

Had to wait for sunset to test the motion sensor again" is honestly the part that kills me, because everything with solar always has that one stupid timing constraint that makes simple jobs take forever. If you have a laptop battery or a portable jump pack, try powering the light from that first to rule out the inverter glitch before you mess with the whole system again. I've had to trickle charge a few smart bulbs off a car battery just to test them without fighting the house setup, saves a ton of headache.