Made By Monkeys

Hi David,
I pity you as I was in the same type of office with exactly the same problem about 8 years ago, and this lasted for two or three years until a dreadful thing happened.
The firm was Thales in Crawley, and I designed electronic circuits.
We fixed up pieces of paper on the ceiling connected to a string to pull when the light went out, which was distracting when in the middle of a train of thought.
Writing to the maintainance department, they took no action, and desinging took much longer as a result.
I then found that a cooling fan positioned on a closer desk kept the light on.
Because of the noisy fan a collegue put thick carpet tiles round it (not my idea).
Unfortunately I forgot one day to switnh the fan off as it was on the other unused desk, when I went home. My colleauge did not either.
Late in the evening the security guy patrolling saw a fire starting from the desk; it was the fan, overheated due to the carpet tiles.
The place would have burnt down if he had not seen it.
Of course I got the blame and had to go to a diciplinary meeting with personnel, where I mentioned the other guy and his carpet tiles.
I was glad when it was time to retire after the way I was treated, and the dreadful dimly lit with no windows building.
Cheers,
Ray.

@Karen, thanks for publishing this story.

@Ray, as these are motion and not heat sensors I haven't considered burning the place down :-) I have been tempted by a remote helicopter but have managed to resist temptation so far.

The ways these sensors are used is very much as if they are tools of a cult of technology for its own sake. They work great in places where people move and don't feel any affiliation to, such as staircases and corridors, but in city offices using a combination of one light switch per room and (education if needed and) trusting staff to use the switch has a much greater efficiency in term of productivity, morale and energy savings.

br -d

In a blog post here awhile back, I related this story from an expert witness who testifies in cases where automatic doors fail. It really underscores how lame David's maintenance department was in claiming they had a solution that was satisfactory for most everyone, and the diabolical challenge in adjusting sensor sensitivity: "Technicians had been called in almost on a monthly basis to make simple adjustments to the sensitivity of a door's control system. 'Somebody would complain that the door was "ghosting" or opening for pedestrians and vehicles simply passing by at a distance, so a technician would reduce the sensitivity or tilt the sensor downward,' he recalls. 'Then somebody else would complain that it wasn't opening every time a person wanted to pass through, and a different technician would come back and increase the sensitivity or tilt the sensor upward. The cycle would repeat all over again, until the adjustment was over-corrected and an individual was injured.' I assume they switched over to a manual door at that point!

If the lights aren't staying on when you're working at a computer your employer may be in breach of Health and Safety. HTH

We fixed this issue with an old solar garden light!

We took the solar powered garden light apart and replaced the buld with a low-powered electric motor with a cardboard "blade" attatched. When the lights go out, the motor kicks in and spins the blades. this is attached to the ceiling (hooked into the frame that holds the ceiling tiles in place) and the blade moves directly past the sensor, and the lights on go. As a result of the new light, the motor stops and we're back to square one!!!

> When the lights go out, the motor kicks in and spins the blades.
Very ingenious, but not the sort of thing you should have to do in an office! Health & Safety would be down on you like a tonne of bricks :-)