Interestingly, this has a little white rotary switch inside. You can stick your slotted screwdriver in there and turn the switch left or right. Not sure what it does. Maybe to adjust the ftc level?

EDIT: yep, it's to select the sensitivity of the PC! Awesome!

Did you try it? I tried turning that screw on a Ripley before years ago and it didn't seem to do anything.

Yes, turning it clockwise makes it more sensitive/later turn-on and turning it left makes it come on earlier.

Oh wow, I never noticed that with these controls. Although we don't use these, I bet the foot candle selection could help in areas with high nighttime light gome parking lots and stuff that mess with our controls. I've been sent to lights that were reported out but when I get there, everything is working just fine lol.

Oh boy do I wish we had these. Lol it would make so many calls easier.

Do you guys ever try just rotating the receptacle another direction so that the photocontrol doesn't see ambient light?

Yes, but in some cases that's not an option. Very rare but would be a nice feature. Or even the adjustable shade like on the older Fisher Pierce PC's.

Is that why they put those metal shields in them? Were they designed to be adjusted in the field?

I'm not 100% sure if they were designed for that but it was easy to do. There were times where it was done.

You gotta open these up to adjust the settings, and this was a bit of a pain to open. Plus it's guess-and-check with the sensitivity of the unit so if you're on duty working on the light, you probably won't have the time to fiddle with the controls inside (you'll need a mini flat head screwdriver used with electronics too BTW) but it sure is nifty. Works for them too, as they can just make one PC for all ftc ratings. (except FAA I guess).

@ Ryan: True, but what if the light is coming from all over? (i.e. it's just a brightly lit area). Those Sun-Techs they use here are so sensitive that they don't work right in downtown areas. I've seen NGrid put a ring of tape around 2/3 of the eye to make the PC less sensitive. In urban areas the ambient light level is just too high for energy-saving 1ftc PCs. Gotta use the 2.6ftc ones.

Yeah true. I was only referring to if there was ambient light coming from one direction. Like a nearby car dealership. Sorry, wasn't very clear on that lol.

I think Sun-Tech changes the footcandle setting on their photocontrols with plastic filters. I've had Sun-Tech's that had a higher setting, like 2.6, and it had a plastic filter. And it wasn't an infrared filter because it wasn't that type of unit. I used to think they changed the footcandle settings in the electronics.

I guess if you wanted to change the footcandle setting of a Sun-Tech in the field, you could get large sheets of differently tinted plastic and pre cut a bunch of them, and keep an assortment on the truck. They would just insert between those two post thingys in front of the eye.