Flood light (motion light) recommendation

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iamsammajor

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#323762 12-Jan-2026 09:54

hi everyone + all the great diy peeps in a geeky world.

I’m hoping you guys could give me some ideas or recommendations on what I should go forward with.

It’s an old house that we live in. There are three sensor-equipped (possibly motion + light) floodlights around the house, and there’s a switch inside that can turn all of them on or off at once.

The sensors are pretty buggy, though — sometimes they work, and other times they randomly don’t.

I was looking at replacing them like-for-like, but I’d really like to have the ability to turn all of them on at once when I’m having a BBQ night out the back, without needing a ladder or having to change anything on the units themselves.

Ideally, I’d like something that can integrate with Home Assistant without breaking the bank. Also, those floodlights from Arlo and Eufy are expensive 😅

I just wanted to see if any of you have been in a similar situation and could share what solution you went with.

TIA

Sam

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#3452174 12-Jan-2026 10:20

What about:

Arlec 20W Grid Connect Smart Security Light With Movement Activated Sensor - Bunnings New Zealand

Should integrate with HA, certainly will with Alexa etc.

Not sure how well they light up, but I've used a little bit of Grid Connect stuff (ceiling fans are the latest) and they work well enough.

Senecio

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#3452187 12-Jan-2026 11:29

It’s not widely known but most motion activated flood lights have an override feature that you can set through a series of on/off clicks at the wall switch. My own is on-off-on-off-on which turns the light on permanently until you switch it off and back on again.

siyuan

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#3452265 12-Jan-2026 14:21

Yep mine started failing to turn off, so ended up connecting the lights to an ESPHome based smart switch and turn on the switch whenever my camera detects interested objects (person/car/cat) using Frigate's HA integration. The lights work way better now and have been working consistently ever since.

iamsammajor

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#3452270 12-Jan-2026 14:59

trig42:

What about:

Arlec 20W Grid Connect Smart Security Light With Movement Activated Sensor - Bunnings New Zealand

Should integrate with HA, certainly will with Alexa etc.

Not sure how well they light up, but I've used a little bit of Grid Connect stuff (ceiling fans are the latest) and they work well enough.

this looks like a easy out of the box option.....

thanks for sharing :)

iamsammajor

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#3452271 12-Jan-2026 15:01

siyuan:

Yep mine started failing to turn off, so ended up connecting the lights to an ESPHome based smart switch and turn on the switch whenever my camera detects interested objects (person/car/cat) using Frigate's HA integration. The lights work way better now and have been working consistently ever since.

presumably, it is one switch per light and then all of them sit behind a physical wall switch?

i was going to do this way, but not too sure how much more it will cost, could you please share what brand of smart switch you used?

thanks :)

siyuan

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#3452322 12-Jan-2026 15:23

iamsammajor:

presumably, it is one switch per light and then all of them sit behind a physical wall switch?

i was going to do this way, but not too sure how much more it will cost, could you please share what brand of smart switch you used?

thanks :)

Yep one switch to control two sets of sensor lights. I used the Sonoff M5, which you need to manually flash ESPHome onto them, but reasonably easy to do even without soldering.

https://everythingsmarthome.co.uk/flashing-sonoff-switchman-m5-with-esphome/

You can also use a Z-Wave smart switch would be fully certified for NZ, but significantly more expensive. I think Shelly is another option, but I've never used one, I tend to prefer ESPHome devices as you fully control them.

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richms

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#3452323 12-Jan-2026 15:26

If you do get that arlec one, the supplied lamps are awful with a somewhat near daylight claiming temperature, but a CRI that is probably sub 80 so fine for being where you want to scare intruders, but for lighting up an area you use, you would want to swap for better ones. There is a fuse inline which prevents putting 100s of watts behind the sensor in addition to the 2 lamp holders on the device if you have them wired out to other lamps too.

What you can do is set up automation in the tuya app where when the sensor triggers, other lights turn on, and when it goes back to normal the other lights go off or are set to a dimmed state. I have done this with a group of lights I have in my string light set. They get very bright when all on white and 100%.

I have not found a way in the tuya automation to make these work as a group where when one triggers the others turn on because it seems to end up just staying on when I have tried.

Richard rich.ms

shk292

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#3452425 12-Jan-2026 21:07

iamsammajor:

trig42:

What about:

Arlec 20W Grid Connect Smart Security Light With Movement Activated Sensor - Bunnings New Zealand

Should integrate with HA, certainly will with Alexa etc.

Not sure how well they light up, but I've used a little bit of Grid Connect stuff (ceiling fans are the latest) and they work well enough.

this looks like a easy out of the box option.....

thanks for sharing :)

did anyone read the reviews?

richms

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#3452470 12-Jan-2026 21:13

Yeah, mine all work perfectly. The initial run of these were crap where the smart was decoupled from the sensor, but they sorted that out. I have the issue where they will revert to defaults if power cycled, but that only happens when there is a power cut. One died that had actual water running over it from the roof when it rained, but that could be because it filled with water so I dont hold that against it. The others are all running just fine.

When people say they cant connect things to their wifi or that they disconnect all the time I just assume they have crap wifi because mine never go offline.

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Jase2985

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#3452474 12-Jan-2026 21:44

richms:

I have the issue where they will revert to defaults if power cycled, but that only happens when there is a power cut.

Thats my only gripe, have to remember to reset the settings after a powercut.

fe31nz

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#3452484 12-Jan-2026 23:08

Grid Connect is Tuya and requires an Internet connection to phone home with. It will not work if the Internet is out. And it will stop working if the server is ever shut down.

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richms

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#3452486 12-Jan-2026 23:32

Yeah, I know that, and will have about 200 devices to replace if that ever happens. They were a very cost effective option for outdoor motion sensing and lighting when I got them - price gone up significantly since then, and there have been and gone a few other sensor only grid connect options.

Its a risk I am ok with taking since the only other option is zigbee which means that when my home assistant install dies or the pi dies everything stops working, and I know that tuyas cloud has someone else fixing it when it breaks, which suits me just fine.

Richard rich.ms

iamsammajor

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#3452628 13-Jan-2026 15:19

siyuan:

iamsammajor:

presumably, it is one switch per light and then all of them sit behind a physical wall switch?

i was going to do this way, but not too sure how much more it will cost, could you please share what brand of smart switch you used?

thanks :)

Yep one switch to control two sets of sensor lights. I used the Sonoff M5, which you need to manually flash ESPHome onto them, but reasonably easy to do even without soldering.

https://everythingsmarthome.co.uk/flashing-sonoff-switchman-m5-with-esphome/

You can also use a Z-Wave smart switch would be fully certified for NZ, but significantly more expensive. I think Shelly is another option, but I've never used one, I tend to prefer ESPHome devices as you fully control them.

im getting more and more inclined to put 1 shelly behind each light, and use frigate detection rather then relying on the motion detectors....

just need to balance which relay to use against total cost.... the shelly 1 mini gen4 has matter support, is it better for ios eco system? and they seem to have quite good integration with HA

richms

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#3452631 13-Jan-2026 15:30

Just get smart lights instead of a shelly if you are going to control the lights. That gets you brightness control of them. There is often not a lot of room in the back of those mounts for sensor lights to put things. Even terminating 2 bits of 1.5mm 2+e in them is a chore to fit.

Richard rich.ms

iamsammajor

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#3452682 13-Jan-2026 15:55

richms:

Just get smart lights instead of a shelly if you are going to control the lights. That gets you brightness control of them. There is often not a lot of room in the back of those mounts for sensor lights to put things. Even terminating 2 bits of 1.5mm 2+e in them is a chore to fit.

any recommendation on smart lights?

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