TheOne said:
You will have to pick your placement carefully to eliminate a lot of false alarms.
Years ago, when I still lived with my parents, my younger brother and I shared a bedroom. He decided to build a touch sensitive remote control light switch from a kit, it basically was built on a plastic blanking plate, with a small IR sensor sticking out on the bottom edge.
Now the light switch was on the left wall just as you came through the door, with the switch wall going forwards and the door opening to the right, the door was right near the corner of the room - hope you all understood that?.
I helped him fit the switch, which we did with the door open (to avoid anyone opening the door into us), and we tested the switch!. Touch it - turns ON, touch again - turns OFF. Hold your hand on the plate and it dimmed up and down over a few seconds, the level you leave it at was the level it next came ON at. Absolutely perfect! - what a really great device!. We tried the remote control, again, it worked perfectly!.
Then we shut the door - the light came ON!, opened it again - the light went OFF!. The door moving past the switch was triggering it! - by taking it out again and reducing the sensitivity we managed to get it to work OK.
Or at least we thought so, it had the unfortunate poperty of dimming itself UP and DOWN randomly in the middle of the night! - which was most upsetting with a 200W bulb cycling to full brightness!. Needless to say, I had a 'few gentle words' with my brother, and he removed the switch :lol:
So be aware, proximity devices are all very well, but they aren't always reliable!.