Best Leviton ODS10-ID Decora 120/277-Volt Wall Switch Occupancy Sensor Deals

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List Price: $65.99
Sale Price: $40.84
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If you are buying this for the ambient light feature: I'd be wary.

The ambient light sensor will not override the switch until the room is brightly lit -in fact much more brightly lit than the light provided by the typical 17 watt CFL the switch is operating! The ambient light sensor in my five outdoor motion sensing lamps which turn on only when it is nearly dark work much better. Plus, those lamps cost about as much as this single switch and include actually functional electronics and a whole metal lamp housing.

Want more technical? More technical: The ambient light sensors in the units that I received need far more than the 2 foot candles indicated in the specs to override the motion switch. The spec both here and on the Leviton website indicates 2 foot candles or 2 lux of light as the lowest setting for override. First, there is a mistake here since 2 foot candles = 20 lux. The difference between 2 lux and 20 lux is the difference between enough light to barely see and enough light to read easily, so the spec matters. Second, whichever spec is supposed to be correct, these units often seem to need more like 40-50 lux or more to override the switch. When I tried to set the dial controlling the ambient light switch any lower (well before the off setting), the light would not come on in the dark.

I've tried three of these Leviton units from Amazon.

Unit 1: Ambient light sensor required a direct light source or sunlight on the unit for the ambient light sensor to override the switch at its lowest setting.

Unit 2: Slightly more sensitive light sensor, but the 30 second time setting did not work. The minimum on time was 10 minutes, which made diagnosis especially tricky. This unit also turned the light on randomly in the middle of the night without motion.

Unit 3: Would not turn the lights on unless the button was pressed, regardless of the ambient light setting.

Defeated, I spoke with Leviton customer support. The excellent representative indicated that none of these units appeared to be working properly. So, you can take your chances that you get a properly functioning ambient light sensor. He did say that air drafts in the room could trigger the unit in the middle of the night. Air drafts. I have an old motion sensor for incandescent bulbs and it has never turned on with airdrafts, even when the furnace was warming up a cold house.

It may be worth trying the made-in-USA version of this product, which does exist. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to find for sale. Amazon sells the made in China version. There are also made in Mexico versions. Each have the same ODS10 part number -the ODS10-IAW is made in USA, the ODS10-IDW is made in China. I have no idea if the ones made in USA or Mexico work any better, but these ones gave me a worse headache than reading in the dark.

If you don't need ambient light sensing, there are cheaper units. If you do, I'd recommend to keep looking. On paper these are awesome, and I'm pretty bummed they don't work since keeping looking is not turning up much else.

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I installed one of these in my laundry room (which is located just inside the garage door in my house). Now, whenever we come home, we don't have the fumble for the light switch. I've also installed one in the room that my wife uses for her office for the same reasons.

This switch comes with three adjustments to customize it to your needs.

First, it has an ambient light adjustment so that you can tell it not to turn on if there is already sufficient light in the room. If you turn this setting all the way up, the switch will become a manual on, auto off switch that will only turn on when you push the button, but will turn off after it senses no motion for a set period of time.

Second, it has a sensitivity adjustment, which adjusts how far the sensor will look for motion.

Third, it has a duration adjustment to tell it how long it should wait with no motion before turning the light off.

It also has a red LED, which blinks whenever it detects motion, so you can tell how whether your movements are being detected or not.

Best Deals for Leviton ODS10-ID Decora 120/277-Volt Wall Switch Occupancy Sensor

Initially purchased a cheaper Leviton ($25) occupancy switch from a local hardware store to control a 4-tube flourescent fixture in our garage. Initially the switch worked great but it eventually failed to turn on 2 of the four tubes using the motion sensor. (all four tubes lit with the manual-on overide). After researching online, I came across this switch which works with both Magnetic and Electronically ballasted flourescent fixtures so I decided to spend the money.

Installation wasn't too challenging but did require the use of an a/c probe to determine which of the two black wires was the line "hot" and which was the load (light). Set up was also a breeze with the adjustment dials being easy to understand and dial-in.

This switch just went in and it's working perfectly with no flickering or problems so far. All four tubes of the overhead fixture fire up with any motion and the manual on/off is a great feature to have as you can simply turn the lights off or on and not worry as the motion sensor resets after the selected time out period with no motion.

The unit is also much more sensitive than the previous model, picking up the initial motion of the garage door opening so the lights are on by the time the garage door is fully open.

I would love to purchase more of these swiches for closets and other areas where lights are frequently left on.

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I bought this switch to install in my garage after looking at several different switches. Installing was pretty upfront and easy and it worked pretty well.

What I didn't know is that there was only three settings for time, 30 seconds (Which is technically for walk-through testing), 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and 30 minutes. I've used a few other occupancy switches before that have allowed for more shorter intervals than 10 minutes, but this doesn't seem to allow for that.

Another problem for me is that from its placement on the wall it couldn't actually see the entire room, allowing for the light to eventually turn off if you were in the other half of the room, which started to get a bit annoying.

In the end I ended up getting the OSSMT-MDW, which has an ultrasonic addition that allows it to pick up movement that is not in its direct line of sight. It also has an adaptive mode that starts at 2.5 minutes and adds additional time when needed which fits my needs for this application better than 30 seconds or 10 minutes.

Overall this is a great product and will use in another section of my house, but didn't work that well for the original reason I bought it.

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I ordered 6 of these, I'm sending 4 back. The reason? The light sensor is terrible.

I installed 2 of them, and I found that the adjustment for the light sensor CANNOT be adjusted to actually take into account ambient light conditions. The adjustment is a small plastic screw adjustment underneath the plastic cover on the front of the switch. For the first switch, I carefully followed the instructions for gradually turning this adjustment clockwise until the lights came on, under the desired light level for light turn-on (this is how you're supposed to set the correct threshold of light). What I found was that ambient light is ignored. You turn the adjustment until the lights come on, and thereafter, the switch will turn on WHENEVER motion is detected, independent of the light level. A pretty major failure of the main selling point of this switch.

In addition, the "switch point" was totally different on the two switches I installed.

This all speaks to a poorly designed and poorly calibrated internal circuit. I just left the two switches I installed in place, since arguably it's the darkest spot in the house and usually you want the lights on...I'll just put a low wattage LED bulb this location and stop worrying about it.

I'm returning the remaining 4.

At least the relay switching is good no minimum load requirements, no issues with fluorescent or LED compatibility. The look is just ok it's not nearly as nice looking as the Lutron switches.

Very disappointed. I was really hoping to have a switch that would turn on the lights automatically, but only when it was necessary (when dark). The dream has not been realized. It's too bad, because I'm sure that a good design would NOT be difficult to achieve.

I will keep waiting for Lutron to come up with something.