Years ago I remember parking lot lights coming on the same time and going off the same time everyday. Even when it was cloudy or getting dark out they wouldn't come on until the programmed time. Now with the shoebox light fixtures they seem to come on everyday at different times depending on the weather conditions. My question is, were lights years ago programmed from the inside of a store or where did they program them from? Second question is, do the shoebox lights have a sensor on one in the set that make them all come out at the same time or what? Just curious?

I would guess only the timer switch for the whole lot was replaced by the photo switch.
The installation would be in some cabinet, maybe indeed in or on the store building.

In Israel, lights are allmost always group-switched from central location, and usually there is nothing "interesting" in the pole bases or in the light fixtures - the control is located in its own location

In case of time switch, DIN rail mounted switch is used - so its in the same panel with the breakers, contactor (if switching more than few lights together), etc. The panel is most likely in the related building, or outside in a cabinet nearby

In case of photocell, the cells used are usually like this and installed in a place exposed to daylight. If there is a building nearby, look for an oddly located (high, inaccessible, redundant etc) incandescent light fixtue on the building (they use the emptied enclosure from a cheap watertight incandescent fixture to install the photocell in), and then wired to the circuit breakers / contactor etc in a panel in the building (which can be quite far from the said fixture). If the system is in a cabinet outside, there usually is a window or the "incandescent fixture" on the cabinet itself



In other countries (i seen it in pics of lighting setups from UK and US), gear is sometimes located in the poles themselfes - either a time switch, or a photocell on the top of the pole or on the light fixture. It can have a wire that goes back from it so that the gear in 1 pole can control several others

Also in other countries it is common (very rare here) that the underground supply is live all the time, and each pole has a control of its own - in this case the lights will switch on/off each at somewhat different time

That is correct Ash, in the UK, most power supplies to street light posts are live all the time, and controled by photocells.
We were very late to make `with gear lanterns` in the UK, and quite a lot of 60/70/80s street lighting had the gear in the bottom of the column, with the old Sangamo time switches.

Originally near all lights here used to be with external ballast, though i seen internal ballast ones that date back to the 60's

In enclosed metal poles it was inside the pole base (i never seen UK style post top ballast boxes here). I even seen a setup with Eclatec Optispecs when enclosed metal poles were carrying overhead grid, so the cable in each pole ran down to the door to protection and ballast, then back up to the mercury lamp

In open metal / concrete / wood poles it is inside a box installed on the bracket, like this. The boxes were generic made of sheet metal or cast aluminum (probably later and rare), or sometimes top cover sheet metal and the rest plastic cylinder that ataches to it and cover the gear (very rare)

Then internal gear fixtures were getting more common

In the 90s very few fixtures were made with internal gear (though some globes still were)

In the 2000s one manufacturer (Steinitz) still listed some external gear floodlights, but the latest ones i seen of this model were installed in the 80's so i doubt whether they even manufactured them any more, or just forgot to remove from the website

There really are four basic ways that parking lot lights are controlled in the USA (and probably in most other countries).

1. Manual switch. Simple and effective, it is surprising how many places, even new buildings, just have a regular light switch inside the store. Our relatively new McDonald's restaurant (can you even call it a restaurant?!) just has regular light switches.

2. Photocell, either on the pole or on the outside of the building somewhere. This is probably the most common where I live. Simple and effective. This is likely what the OP is seeing in recent installs. At work, we have a photocell on the roof that activates contactors that control our parking lot lights.

3. Standard timer, usually inside the building somewhere. This is probably the second most common control where I live. The disadvantage is that the timer doesn't adjust for changes in season or weather conditions. This is probably what the OP used to see years ago.

4. Astronomical timer inside the building, can be mechanical but usually are electronic. These are becoming quite popular. They are nice because unlike a standard timer, they adjust for seasonal changes. I recently installed one that replaces a standard light switch and fits in a one-gang electrical box. It is also quite versatile. For instance, I programmed it to turn the lights on at 7:00AM, off at sunrise, on at sunset, and off at 8:00PM only Monday through Friday. It was also quite affordable! More advanced models have multiple zones as well.

Astronomical timer behavior can be achieved by connecting a standard time switch's contacts in series with the photocell output. For the "days off" add a manual switch in series with all that

At the Park & Ride sites I look after here, the lights are controlled from panels remote to the lights themselves.

The newer site has a panel with contactors housed within the building itself, using a combination of time-clock and photocell control.  The on-time in the evenings is controlled by the photocell (mounted on the roof of the building if I remember rightly), with a timeclock shutting the lights down (aside from those on the footpaths) around midnight after the last bus has left.  They're then switched back on at around 05:30 in advance of the first bus arrival, and stay on until the photocell switches them off - or at this time of year occasionally it doesn't!

Still remember the first time that lot switched on when I was in the room and it gave me the fright of my life I tell you, was quite quiet, I was just looking for some documents in a nearby filing cabinet when out of nowhere there's this terrifyingly loud bang as the contactors close.  Few minutes later there's another one as the voltage optimiser kicks in and starts stepping down the input voltage to the circuit from the starting point (our mains usually floats around the 245V mark) to a stabilised 220V - it doesn't do this until after a few minutes though to prevent problems during lamp startup.  The optimiser is basically just a whacking great variable transformer controlled by a microprocessor - otherwise known by the less technical people as "the big orange box which hums ominously."  System in this site works well, and save for the odd dead lamp causes few problems.

The other, older site is rather more scattered, and looks to have been altered, updated, bodged, changed, then bodged a bit more for good measure over the years.  It has a control cabinet outside (and on the opposite side of a main road from the site...took me an age to find it!), and I suspect this would have originally contained an astroclock (seasonally compensated timeclock) - this has recently been replaced with a domestic one though, and a manual switch to disable it in the summer (when the lights aren't needed - bus services to that site ending early enough that it's still light in the summer).  We're not entirely sure, but we're pretty convinced that this switch (a normal 5A light switch!) simply isolates the contactor coil circuit, disabling the whole system beyond the timer when off.  The contactor itself hides in a large grey box in the corner of this cabinet.

This caused some confusion recently, as it turned out that there's ANOTHER control cabinet elsewhere in the car park where the supply actually arrives, then branches off into four separate circuits after some isolators.  Certainly caused us a lot of scrabbling around a couple of weeks ago when we switched it over to "winter mode" and nothing happened.  From what I've heard, it sounded like someone had opened the isolators in the second cabinet that we didn't know existed, probably because the lights were burning unnecessarily in the summer.  

I still need to get someone to tell me where that extra cabinet is so I can find it in future if I need to!

Will snap some photos of the gear next time I'm out checking on the sites if anyone's interested, will only take a couple of minutes.

Loud bang, sounds like my house when the automatic transfer switch transfers the house loads to generator when the power fails! If the power outage doesn't wake you up, the auto transfer switch sure will.

4. Astronomical timer inside the building, can be mechanical but usually are electronic. These are becoming quite popular. They are nice because unlike a standard timer, they adjust for seasonal changes. I recently installed one that replaces a standard light switch and fits in a one-gang electrical box. It is also quite versatile. For instance, I programmed it to turn the lights on at 7:00AM, off at sunrise, on at sunset, and off at 8:00PM only Monday through Friday. It was also quite affordable! More advanced models have multiple zones as well.

How much would one of these cost?

How much would one of these cost?

Not as much as you might think! I bought this timer from 1000bulbs.com for $29.00 plus shipping. Programming is tricky, but as long as you don't mind studying the manual and following the directions, its not bad.

Ahh. Thanks.

I am using something simpler for a sign at work, a cheap DIN mounted 24H timer to control the supply. Should handle the load of 700W or so, though I will add a big PFC capacitor to the sign as it has none, only the 12 Vloss Schwabe ballasts.

The surge caused by the xaps will make more arcing in the switch contacts, that may over time degrade or weld them. You might want to reduse the surge (example by using NTC or resistors at startup that are later shorted out) or switch with higher capacity to withstand the arcing

Surges from PFC capacitors are not problems for mechanical contacts, you need only contacts rated for the full uncompensated current (so with 700W it would be around 10A, so take the 15A rated controller).

However solid state switches (mainly triacs) would be highly overstressed by the capacitive load (di/dt, peak current), so I would take care the controller does not use them.

Decent equipment is rated individually for each type of load (inductive, resistive, capacitor compensated), so if you follow that rating, you would be fine.
And if the individual rating is not there, better go away from that, as it usually mean the device is made too cheap to work reliably.