Lutron Maestro LED+ Motion Sensor/Dimmer Switch with Wallplate | 150W LED | Single Pole/Multi-Location | MSWCL-OP153M-WH | White

Why it’s good to be dim
This Lutron MSCL-OP153M motion sensor dimmer costs more than others, but if you are sensitive about your home environment, it may well be worth it to you. I have installed 3 of these in my home during the past few years, and am very pleased with them. I was on the verge of purchasing a fourth switch when amazon offered me a free one as part of the vine program, in exchange for writing a review – an offer I just couldn’t resist.If your light switch is in a favorable location, you can replace it with a motion sensor and the lights will turn on automatically when you walk into the room. Very handy in places like garages, laundry rooms, workshops – basically any room you tend to enter with your hands full.The most obvious thing setting these Lutron Maestro sensors apart, is the pleasant, soothing, fade-to-on and fade-to-off effect. When we come home at night, our hall lights smoothly fade to on as we walk through the front door. We no longer need a constantly burning night-light in the bathroom: as a guest enters the room the lights gracefully fade-on, and then turn themselves off just as gracefully a few minutes after the room is vacated.Other, less expensive occupancy sensors can do a similar job, but the big downside is they snap on, and snap off abruptly. They are a good choice if you are on a tight budget, or if your lights cannot be dimmed (most fluorescent tubes cannot). There are many brands of this harsh style switch, including Lutron (I installed one in my mothers laundry room with non-dimmable fluorescent lights and it works fine). But don’t kid yourself, the experience of this abrupt on-off style switch is far inferior compared to the Maestro dimming sensor. In most applications, I would probably re-lamp the room with bulbs that dim in order to use the Maestro.The Good:Clear, comprehensive instructions come with the switch, detailing the most common installations. Plus you can look up additional details online for special cases.The wiring job is easy, and straight-forward IF you are replacing a single-switch-controlled light. Just wire it in exactly like the switch you are replacing and it will work fine.Can be wired into situations where more two switches control a single light (curiously called a “three way” configuration in the electrical trades). This situation is a bit tricky so you will need to follow the instructions carefully, but it can be done (if I can do it, probably you can too!). This extra complexity isn’t really a knock against Lutron, because even regular, mechanical 3-way switches can be a challenge to many DIY folks, especially those who don’t like to follow instructions.Lutron also makes a companion control that simplifies the 3-way situation, but I have no experience with that.Configurable in numerous ways to suit your taste, or the situation. The switch can function as an occupancy sensor (lights go on when you enter a room, and off when you leave, automatically), a vacancy sensor (you manually turn on the lights, and they go off automatically when you leave the room), and in many other ways. (More details about this below).Completely silent when turning on and off. Less expensive, non-dimming sensors usually use relays – if you have sensitive ears you will hear them click on and off.Lights can be set to any level. The dimmer part of this sensor consists of Lutron’s highly regarded Maestro dimmer. See reviews of that particular product for complete details.These switches are available in multiple colors (I have a Burgundy colored one in my wine-room, for example).These are thoughtfully-designed, sophisticated, well made switches – typical of the Lutron brand. I have numerous Lutron switches – some more than 10 years old – and cannot recall encountering a single defective one.The switch gives you ample warning that it is about to turn off the lights by dimming them many seconds before things go dark. This is a wonderful, useful feature – something cheaper, on-off style sensors simply cannot do.The Bad:Your existing switch must be in a “favorable” location. Basically the switch needs to be able to “see” you in order to work it’s magic. (More details available in Lutron’s online document.)These switches are a bit bulkier than simple mechanical switches. Not a problem in most cases, and no bulkier than regular dimmer switches, but maybe an issue if you’ve got a really small, tight, overcrowded electrical box.Summary:Any light that can be dimmed can be automatically and gracefully turned on and off by this sensor switch, as long as it can “see” you in the room. It will work with most bulbs that are dimmable, (including LEDs, Halogens, etc.)If your bulbs cannot be dimmed, this switch will not work – consider re-lamping with appropriate bulbs, or use an on-off style sensor (e.g. Lutron’s MS-OPS2).Other Details:What is a favorable location? A switch located inside the room, next to the doorway is often a very good location. Many switches in bathrooms, laundry rooms, and garages are oriented this way.A less favorable location is a switch that sees too much. For example I have a hallway light switch that sees into another room. It was a challenge to set up because it would turn on when one walked from the kitchen to the living room. I was able to get it working quite nicely by partially covering the sensor with a small piece of tape (basically “blinding its view to the left”).Configurability. Wow. There are so many ways to configure this switch I will cover only a few of the cool things you can do:Turn lights on when a person enters the room, and off a short time after everyone has left the room. This is often called an Occupancy Sensor.Do NOT turn lights on automatically – only do it if the On button is tapped (like a regular switch). But, once everyone leaves the room turn the lights off automatically. This is often called a Vacancy Sensor.Never automatically turn the lights on during the day – only do it when the room is dark (uses an ambient light sensor for this trick).Turn lights on automatically when someone enters the room. If that someone turns the lights off, don’t turn on again automatically until everyone has left the room. You might use this in your TV room.Set the highest and lowest levels the dimmer can be adjusted to. (Useful for certain finicky LED bulbs that don’t dim all the way down, for example).Adjust the level the lights go to when the switch automatically turns on (default is 100%).Adjust the rate at which the lights fade on and off.Disable the small, discrete, indicator lights on the switch (not even I am fussy enough to have tried this one – yet!)Set timeout duration to (1, 3, 5, 15 or 30 minutes). This is how long lights stay on after the room is vacated. Default is 5 minutes.Adjust the sensitivity of the main sensor (high or low). If this isn’t enough, you can cover part of the sensor with tape, as I did for my hallway switch.For additional details about this switch, goto the Lutron website (lutron.com), and search for the document entitled: 048480a.pdf. This 23 page document provides a wealth of information about the sensor range, settings, and myriad configuration options.Buy the way. If you really must know, my latest Lutron switch is going to automatically control the lights in our walk-in closet.Hope you found this review useful.

Works great.
This was what was recommended for an old house with a crappy ground wire. It worked perfectly.

Outstanding.
Very capable motion sensing dimmer switch, with a craftsmanship that reflects well on the Lutron brand. The instructions are clear and there is more in-depth documentation to be found online — search for 048480a.pdf on Lutron site as someone else pointed out, or simply Google it. The product also has one of the highest levels of customization I have ever seen in a motion sensor switch. Lastly but not something to be glossed over, the switch makes absolutely no sound when it turns ON, which is indeed refreshing seeing as how nearly all regular, non-dimmer switches make an audible ‘click’ sound when the motion sensor gets triggered.Plenty of other reviews will serve as a primer to delve into the features and customization settings this product offers, so I will gloss over them for the most part.Installed as a single-pole switch in a bathroom vanity, which controls a total of 6 dimmable LED lights. Thankfully the lights did not “flicker or strobe” unexpectedly at the high- and lower-end brightness settings, so I didn’t need to go into the advanced setup mode to update those levels at all. The switch in this case is facing the direction of the person entering the room, and turns on immediately (and silently) due to the 180° coverage area.All is well, but due to my use-case I did have to make a few adjustments from the default values:* Timeout set to the minimum allowable value of 1 MINUTE, which is how long it waits to turn OFF after detecting no motion* Occupied level set to PRESET (led position 1), so it automatically turns ON to the last manually set brightness level* Nightlight Mode disabled and set to OFF, just to conserve a bit of energy and due to the fact that usually there is no need to manually turn the lights ON, since it automatically does this each time. I also do have the Ambient Light Detection (ALD) disabled, since the room is always dark and I want the sensor to always trigger.One small gripe in regards to the timeout setting: minimum is 1 minute, but I wish 30 seconds was a configurable option (call me vain or perhaps not rational, but I however was curious to see if such a low timeout setting would be feasible at all). Further, while the value set is 1 minute, I have consistently noticed after observation that the lights do turn off a couple seconds past the set timeout — they seem to fade out approximately 1 minute 15 seconds after vacating the room. I wasn’t able to figure out the cause of the delay in the timeout, but it seems internally preset and no way to update that at all.The automatic FADE IN of the lights seem to happen too fast for the human eye to appreciate it – but this might be due to the brand of LED bulbs I have or due to the level I have preset. Currently my preset level is at 50% brightness, and I notice the lights automatically turn ON in <1 second when any motion is detected. In contrast, the lights take about 5 seconds to automatically FADE OUT after no motion is detected. I certainly wish that the automatic FADE IN/OUT values were able to be customized, but these values seem to be internally set which is unfortunate.Lastly, I've listed the Pro's and Con's of this product below. Overall a fantastic product with a few shortcomings that I have noticed.+ Solid, in-depth documentation+ Lots of customization options available+ Completely silent when light is turned ON (no sound of relay being switched)+ Manual ON/OFF is also possible+ Indicator LEDs show the current brightness level+ Able to set high- and low- end brightness "trims" in order to avoid a flickering/strobing effect on some bulbs- Can only set the manual FADE IN/OUT for the switch; unable to set these values for when switch *automatically* turns on- Cannot set a timeout < 1 minute- Hidden delay of 15 seconds or so in addition to set timeout

I have a couple of the Vacancy versions of this sensor, and I just bought one of the occupancy versions. Carefully review the specs so you buy the right one. The occupancy sensor (OP) turns on automatically when you enter the room and turns off 5 minutes after you leave. It also has the dimmer which has about 8 discrete settings. All these things are adjustable, including the sensitivity.I installed this on a circuit of 8 LED lamps in my garage. The idea is it replaces the crappy light on the garage door opener which turns on whenever the car enters the garage. So far it is working beautifully.When you select one of these be sure to calculate your overall power usage. These babies get hot if you run them with more power than they are rated for. Further, if you put more than one in a box, the limit goes down. This is due to how much heat they create . The switch itself is quite large so you can’t stuff any wires in behind it unless you have an extra deep box.Its a good switch at a good price. I recommend. Just do your homework.

I quickly and easily installed this Dimmer Switch in the bathroom, wishing to set a new automatically-dimmed light level for a new very-over-bright LED vanity light. I love the fact that I could adjust the default settings to my preferences (see photo for details, it’s a bit tricky).Now, as I begin to enter the doorway, the PIR motion sensor immediately recognizes the movement and quickly ramps up the brightness to my preferred, roughly-50%, level. Perfect !The light remains on as long as motion continues to be detected. After my preferred setting of 3 minutes without motion, the light level is ramped down to zero. If a different brightness level is desired for a specific task, merely press toggle buttons.I was a bit confused at first, but after noting that if you elect to, or accidentally, manually press the switch to turn the light Off, the auto-on feature will be disabled for 25 seconds, even if motion is detected. This is to provide occupants time to exit larger rooms after manually turning the lights off. If immediately re-entering the room (within 25 seconds), the unit must be manually turned on. After 25 seconds, the unit will return to normal detection operation.