HOW to protect Motion Detector Lights from Lightning?

One golden rule about lightning, you cannot predict when or where it will hit. All you can do is decide what you want to do with that energy when it happens. Hence for "lightning protection", do the best you can. Then, do twice as much and it may still not be enough....

A direct strike. Forget it. That's the purpose of a lightning rods. Simplified: Pointy objects sticking up connected to a large conductor to ground.

I had a multi-channel analyzer connected to an electron microscope and it died. That's a bad combination. There was no protection against surges in the analyzer. I asked the company because we had schematics and they said, the unit requires 120 v 60 Hz. End of story. A surge is not 120V 60 Hz. So out $1000.00 USD for repair.

For specific devices get an ISOBAR surge suppressor and SAVE THE RECEIPT. Trip-lite will replace or repair affected stupp properly connected to the suppressor. We had one that got toasted. It turned black, so it may have been a good strike and they replaced the monitor.

A company is not going to add 3 components costing maybe $6.00 total to protect a $60.00 Lamp because cost matters.
For 120V, you need 3 ZNR's, two rated for ~120 V RMS and one rated for 5 V RMS. L-N and L-GND get the 120 V ZNR's. G-N get te 5V ZNR's/

At work, I did a lot of re-engineering of stuff that continued to break. A thermocoule scanner used near 1000 W IR lams, for instance stopped scanning. It used CMOS parts and all of the DC regulator stuff designed into the product was unpopulated. I ust added 2 low Voltage Transorbs and all fixed.

I'm currently working on a car amplifier, that dies particulary when the car gets jumped. I think at this time there are three design problems. No protection against positive transients for the remote in and power. Remote in died when the transistor broke in pieces, so that was a surge on the remote in, The amplifier ICs have a TTL input which should not exceed 5.25V. There design suggests that it could reach 6V. It's the mute and standby pins which are supposed to be 5V briefly when the amp turns on. That fix will be harder.

The backlight on a $300.00 USD communicating thermostat kept coming on and would not go off. I turned off the thermosat for 2 weeks which fixed the problem and then added a 24 RMS to the power to the control board and thermostat, I also had to add an RFI fillter for other reasons. It was polluting the power in the house.

I can come up with Digikey p/n's if you want me too?

I always heard lightning was attracted to 12 bay TV antennas.

shortbus= said:

I always heard lightning was attracted to 12 bay TV antennas.

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It is, very much so.

Ron

Maybe you would like to try something else. You can buy battery operated lamps, I got one at Costco, runs on 3 AAA rechargeables, and has a small solar panel. Does a decent job. This one has lasted for 18 months, the first one 11 and Costco replaced it for free. For the larger area, I purchased a 12 volt PIR detector, a 10 watt solar panel, and solar charger on eBay for under $60.
I use a $25 garden tractor battery and two 6 and one 9 inch automobile light bars. They work regardless of whether or not we lost power.

shortbus= I have found that women wearing clothes attract lightning. I insist my partner get undressed at the first hint of thunder.

The Lightning Research Lab at the University of Florida
Career: Lightning-tolerant spacecraft designer, power utilities engineer A lucky few engineering students at the University of Florida get to do something vaguely magical: conjure their own lightning. To make bolts, students fire specially designed rockets, each of which trails metal wires connected to sensors, directly into thunderstorms. Students examine high-speed video of strikes to study lightning-bolt physics and test materials by directing bolts toward a target.