Hotel, Corridor & Staircase Sensor Lighting
Hotel projects split into two different jobs: wireless or battery lighting that can retrofit without inter-unit wiring, and room-occupancy control that interfaces with mains lighting or air conditioning. Define which system you need before choosing the sensor, output and commissioning plan.
Define observable behaviour before choosing the equipment
The U.S. Department of Energy's Lighting Controls Solutions research and selection guidance identifies installation and configuration complexity as a barrier, and recommends considering control objectives, system capabilities, networking and documentation. These are research and selection resources, not a mandatory hotel certification or a promise of energy savings. For a room or corridor pilot, turn the intended behaviour into a test the project team can observe.
The matrix below is a suggested project worksheet. The project team defines the acceptance criteria before testing, including the required light state, response and hold times, acceptable false triggers and relevant operating modes. Record the installed position, selected settings, connected loads and sample identity with each result; the scenarios do not prescribe universal timeouts or savings.
| Pilot scenario | Project team defines before testing | Commissioning team observes and records |
|---|---|---|
| Occupied movement | Intended approach routes, coverage boundary and required light response, including a slow guest carrying luggage. | Route and speed, first trigger position, response time and any unlit section or missed movement. |
| Low activity or still occupancy | Room-use scenarios such as reading, resting or sleeping, and how the system should preserve the occupied state. | Activity and duration, any unintended dimming or switch-off, and whether the agreed presence logic worked. Corridor motion alone does not prove this case. |
| Vacancy | How vacancy is established, the agreed delay and the required light/load state after departure. | Departure, any door event, last detected activity, actual transition time and re-entry behaviour. |
| Daylight and ambient light | Required behaviour under the intended day/night conditions and agreed threshold settings. | Ambient conditions at the sensor, settings, output state and any repeated switching as conditions change. |
| Adjacent-space false triggering | Areas that should be excluded, such as the next room or traffic beyond a door or partition. | Movement in each excluded area, partition/door condition and any unintended activation; repeat after adjustment. |
| Manual or housekeeping override | Who may override, the required override state and how automatic operation resumes. | Control used, resulting state, duration and return to automatic operation. |
| Power restoration | The required state and settings after a planned power interruption, with the project's qualified electrical professional approving the test. | Light/load state on restoration, settings retained or reset, and recovery of the agreed automatic behaviour. |
Assign one person to close each failed or untested scenario. Retest affected scenarios after changing placement, settings, firmware or the load interface, and hand over the final settings and observation record with the installation.
DALI projects: specify the controller as well as the sensor
The DALI Alliance's sensor and input-device overview identifies occupancy sensing as Part 303 and light sensing as Part 304; an input device supplies information to the lighting-control system. This industry-association technical guidance describes an optional control ecosystem, not the capabilities of the TUODI products below.
The Alliance's technical note on instance types and controller support warns that not every application controller supports input devices and directs buyers to check the controller supplier and product database. Treat the protocol name as a starting point: ask the integrator to demonstrate the chosen devices and controller against the pilot criteria. These references do not establish TUODI DALI support, certification or compatibility.
TUODI formats to assess against your project brief
- Follow-the-person lighting: TUODI's interlinked 2.4G wireless sensing lets one sensor trigger a chain of wall and footlights — light travels ahead of the guest down a corridor or staircase without wiring between units.
- Wall & surface formats: the Surface-Mount PIR Light Bar (TDL-7126S; 3 m PIR, 140°, 4 × AAA, 305 mm, IP20, adjustable bracket and induction angle — white, black or silver) and sconce-style wall lights with adhesive or screw mounting — no conduit, no channel cutting in finished walls.
- Recessed PIR Ceiling Switches (TDL-9956J, TDL-9959J) and the Microwave Ceiling Switch (TDL-1915) — 5.8 GHz, AC 85–250 V, detection adjustable from 2 to 16 m, delay from 8 seconds to 12 minutes and the daylight threshold from 2 to 2000 lux, all on rotary trimmers — to drive existing corridor luminaires. The adjustment range is the point on a corridor job: one part number commissions differently at a lift lobby, a mid-corridor run and a back-of-house stair. (Microwave switch detail, including where radar is the wrong choice →)
- Battery formats for retrofit: AAA/AA-powered formats include the AAA-Battery Sensor Light Bar (TDL-7120) and the 14-inch Sensor Panel (TDL-7126B-A — 180 lm, or constant power over 5 V USB) where recharging cycles aren't practical for housekeeping.
- Guest-room touches: the Detachable Bedside Light Tube (TDL-8192), sensor night lights for bathrooms, and hotel key-card power switches from the group's electrical line.
- Daylight thresholds and hold times tuned so fixtures ignore daytime traffic and hold long enough for a slow walker with luggage.
Hotel-room occupancy control as a system brief
A guest may be asleep or still for long periods, while corridor motion outside the room may be frequent. A safe retrofit therefore has to define presence logic, door state, delay, override and the load interface together. Use the fields below when asking for an occupancy or energy-saver controller:
| Detection logic | Presence technology, detection zone, sleeping/low-motion scenario, door-contact input and how occupied/vacant state is decided. |
|---|---|
| Delay & override | Vacancy grace period, re-trigger behaviour, housekeeping/manual override and what happens after power loss or a sensor fault. |
| Control output | Dry contact, transistor/24 V coil drive or internal relay; normally-open/closed state and fail-safe behaviour. |
| Building load | Whether an external contactor is part of the design, the coil/load being controlled, inrush/derating and isolation from the sensor electronics. |
| Installation | DIN-rail or wall-panel format, supply voltage, wiring diagram, enclosure, service access and destination electrical requirements. |
| Acceptance | Pilot rooms, day/night scenarios, false-off/false-on limits, event log, exact documents and sign-off by the project's qualified electrical professional. |
For key-card retrofits, prove the credential reader—not only the panel
Hotel inquiries often ask whether one energy-saver switch reads both 125 kHz and 13.56 MHz cards automatically. A catalogue that offers both frequencies may still mean two separate SKUs. The production sample should identify the exact reader hardware, accepted card/credential types, enrolment or whitelist behaviour, and whether dual-frequency operation happens in the same unit without a mode change. Demonstrate each requested card on that same serialized sample and include the result in the room-pilot record.
Also fix the receiver's default/fail state, switching interface, load/contactor arrangement, backup behaviour, wiring diagram and state after power loss in the project quotation. Do not rely on a generic family description for these installation-critical points.