I picked what I thought was a very fine brand of motion sensor, but the units are lasting only a few months. It's a 3-wire sensor: always-hot and neutral power the sensor, and switched-hot is passed through. As I read the documentation, I see them mention "Tungsten". I am driving LED "barn light" type products.
I could install one incandescent bulb to make the sensor happy. But when it burns out, it won't be quickly replaced, which would create the failure condition. So I want something that emulates a tungsten bulb, but is long-lasting. I'm thinking a resistor.
The question is, how do I find a resistor product that mounts on an electrical box it in a code-legal way, and is outdoors-safe? Is that even a product one could find? I'm not asking "shop for me" but I don't even know where to begin.
Best Answer
So you need resistors with an ampacity comparable to incandescent lightbulbs... have you considered incandescent light bulbs? I know, but hear me out here - we run incandescent light bulbs at the extreme end of their tolerance for the sake maximizing luminous efficacy. Backing down on the voltage, even a little bit, significantly increases the durability of the bulb. At 90% voltage, you're talking somewhere around 4x life span, 16x at 80% voltage... at 50% voltage, the bulb may well survive longer than you. So if you wire two incandescent light bulbs in series, you have a very cheap, low ohm, high wattage resistor, with a good life span (as long as vibration is low).
How to turn this into a code approved solution is left as an exercise for the reader.