Need design for motion sensor battery operated LED light.

Microswitch under the floorboards and/(or both) the seat-area, uses no energy, and shuts down immediately. Your motiondetector will be a continious drain on the battery.

How about a switch on the door, that lights things up for, say, 20 minutes?

Or just use a lithium battery and a good LED and leave it on. That can last years. James has a circuit that will turn it off when there's ambient light, roughly doubling the battery life.

Or google: battery powered motion sensing light

This product exists

I'm sure that's not the only way to get it.

Thank for both replies. The switch under the floor is an interesting idea, but I'd probably have to do some major changes to the floor, or have a double floor. All of that seems like too much work. The switch under the toilet seat is an excellent idea in a women's outhouse, but wont work for the men who use the urinal.

This leaves the door switch. I like that, but how do I make it shut off after _x_ minutes?

I did do some googling and found that there are both solar powered and motion sensing battery lights. I had tried that earlier using other search words and got nothing. I like this one the best so far.....

How can a lithium battery really run a LED for years? I have used some of those small cheap teacup LED candles that flicker and look like a real candle. They are only one LED, and run on a CR2032 lithium battery. After leaving them on overnight for several days, the battery is dead.

Also Lowes and HomeDepot carry similar, in same price range, more or less, name brand stuff like Sylvania.

put a microswith where the door lock will activate it, or install one of those slow momentary button switches.

Looks like a cool device. I'd worry somewhat about maintenance. CR2032 are expensive and short lived. You can fix that with bigger batteries and a solar charger. But that dramatically reduces the MTBS...mean time before stolen.

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Use a battery with low internal resistance and a supercap. There are lots of bicycle dynamo-powed lights that use a supercap for a few minutes of illumination; maybe you could dump enough into the cap during the time the door is open.

Add a microphone, after splashing noise is sensed, delay 2 seconds then turn the LED off...

That was my suggestion. keep it simple.

Most campers will have a flash light and won't need the led.

George H.

.highlandtechnology.com=A0 jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

I meant a serious battery, like a Tadiran good for, say, 7 amp-hours. A good LED will make useful light at 100 uA, which is 70,000 hours.

WARNING! The above post involves numbers!

You've never used an outhouse. It's a building over a deep hole.

My father's favorite teenage stunt was to move the outhouse away from the hole, set a bonfire about 10' behind the hole, then yell "fire" ;-)

I don't know what the light problem is. As I recall, from actual experience, if you're going to the outhouse after dark, you'd be carrying a kerosene lantern (today, it'd be a flashlight... you don't want to step on a snake :-) ...Jim Thompson

My dad told about 'Outhouse Tipping' on halloween. One old man thought he could stop them by staying in his outhouse, but they slipped up and flipped it over before he knew what was happening. Instead of just falling over, the unbalanced weight casued it to rroll down a hill, and beat him up pretty bad. The kids always went around the next day and set them back up, and did any repairs, but he was like Sloman who thought he was the smartest man in town. He was quite humble after that ride. ;-)

You can buy a ready made unit for $7.99 to light the thing and save your battereis for the trip back. Mount it under some plexiglass to keep them from stealing it, and use an external D 4 cell holder (Or a six volt lantern battery) to get weeks or months of use between battery changes.

Yep. The good ol' days.

My grandfather was losing chickens to thieves, so my father and my uncles (teenagers at the time) staked out the chicken coop (a two story affair)... and shot the perps with birdshot and rock-salt.

Next day go see who's getting the shot plucked out at the doc's house.

Never had another problem, and no concern from the authorities ;-)

We need to return to that kind of justice. ...Jim Thompson

Hmmm.. Maybe a door mounted light, with either a microswitch to detect it opening, or just a little ball bearing thing to detect the motion to trigger a little 555 timer thing. Door opens, it stays lit for five minutes. It it goes out, you kick the door, and it lights up again... ;-)

off

during

Like one comic said, "The problem with the US these days is that the re aren't enough woodsheds."

BTW, onme local school system is debating the return of paddling for grade school trouble makers.

I have a flyer for one at $18 Here is another

Greg