I have a light with a built-in dusk-to-dawn sensor on my porch. I installed Lutron Caseta smart dimmer for that light. I covered the dusk sensor on the light so the Lutron can control it. I set up an automation to turn it on at sunset and turn it off at sunrise in Home Assistant, but it doesn’t work all the time.
One day it turns on as it should; sometimes it doesn’t. I have to turn it off and on again a few times so the light turns on. It doesn’t happen all the time, but every few days. I even set the automation to turn on the light when it is completely dark just to make sure that the sensor doesn’t interfere.
Did anyone else have a similar issue? I suspect that the fixture and its sensor are somehow not compatible with the Lutron, but I don’t get why. Doesn’t Lutro basically cut off the power when it’s off? How could it mess up with the light itself?
Found it. The PD-6WCL (no-neutral dimmer) leaks a small trickle voltage even when “off”. My fixture’s built-in sensor/driver was sensitive enough to that trickle that it sometimes wouldn’t wake up on command.
Swapped to a PD-5NE (I had a neutral available), which powers itself from the neutral instead of bleeding through the load. Clean on/off ever since.