Although not scheduled until next week, we noticed someone had connected the wires sticking out of the garage to the electric pole. The meter was on, so I flipped the circuits in the box, and the lights came on!

There's a Jeep in my way, but it'll be a minor task with a small step ladder to plug the garage door opener into its outlet and I can remove the extension cord from the house. One less minor annoyance, and a few less opportunities to forget it's hanging there as I walk by.

The Ring spotlight camera saw the network and rejoined the house, so now I can see on the alley side of the garage, and fully expect lights to pop on when people approach. It looks pretty much like it did before, but has a little wider view as it's mounted a few feet higher than before. I adjusted the motion zone so it won't pick up every car that drives down the alley, like it had before. It just needed a little tweak because of the new angle.

Later, I'll move the interior Ring camera back into the garage, and mount it somewhere we can keep an eye on what happens inside. This used to be for ensuring the garage door was closed, but now the door opener can confirm that for us. Now we'll just use it to keep an eye on whatever happens inside the garage. Since we had someone wander in there before, it'll let us get a little better view of anyone else who wanders in.

I tried to pair the Lutron light switch for the yard-side exterior lights, but they won't turn on. I peeked at the installation directions, and it has this sad note:

Of course, it's about -4°F right now (up from -11°F earlier), so I thought maybe it just isn't appreciating the cold weather. I'm assuming the "indoor use" is to indicate it isn't going to work well with precipitation, and it is technically inside the garage.

As I peeked at the installation instructions, I also noticed a safety switch in their diagram, so I went to check if that was off. It was not, but while tinkering, I toggled on the interior lights to ensure the power was still on. The interior lights turned on. And after whimsically bonking the toggle, the exterior lights turned on, too. I turned off the interior lights, and the exterior lights also turned off. I tried a few different combinations, and the exterior lights work as expected, but only if the interior lights are on. It seems they wired the exterior switch in line with the interior switch, which won't do at all, as we don't want to leave the interior lights on all the time. There are only three bulbs in the garage, and they're LEDs which should draw minimal power, but they should only be on when it's dark in the garage and someone wants it to not be. And I have designs of putting a different array of LEDs in the sockets, especially in the loft.

The exterior lights should be able to be toggled separately, so you can turn them on as you leave the house or garage in the dark, and then hit the switch on the other side to turn them off. That should be independent from the lights inside the garage. I could maybe accept it if all the lights toggled with the remote switch, but if that was the case, there shouldn't be two switches, as it'd be really frustrating to have someone turn out the light with the switch that disabled the whole thing. Since they're mounted in the same box, I could see that happening a lot.

I sent a note to the electricians to come back out to fix that. I'm sure I could figure it out, but we paid extra for them to do this, so it should be done right.

Somewhere in all this, we'll let the city inspector know and get our final inspection, so the garage can be finally released and we can finish putting our stuff back in it.