Getting a little frustrated with Ring’s floodlights and spotlights. This thread is about the Spotlight Cam Plus.

I bought it to replace a Stick Up Cam that overlooks an area that I wanted to put a motion activated light and camera in.

This particular area has a pretty dim path light (not a Ring path light, just a regular light on a pole about 6 feet high) on the walkway.

The Stick Up Cam had no problem going into night vision mode facing this path light.

But the Spotlight Cam Plus refuses to go into Night mode. I’ve narrowed it down to how directly the camera points at the path light. If the path light is close to the center of the camera’s picture, it will not go into night vision mode and the entire picture is mostly black except the small area around the path light.

What can I do to fix this? I can point the camera away from the path light but then I miss a good 20 feet of area I need the camera to cover. Also, this doesn’t entirely fix the problem. Even pointing it so the path light is closer to the edge of the camera’s picture, if the spotlight turns on, it sometimes takes several minutes to switch from day mode to night mode after the spotlight turns off.

I also have a Floodlight Cam Plus pointed at roughly the same area but the path light is closer to the edge of the camera’s picture. There are also other lights on the other side of the Floodlight Plus and despite there being ambient light on both sides of it, it goes into night vision mode just fine.

I’m attaching a screenshot showing snapshots of the Floodlight Cam Plus and Spotlight Cam Plus pointing towards the same general area - the Floodlight points a little more towards the right, the Spotlight a little more towards the left.

As you can see, the Floodlight’s night vision works great. The Spotlight, pretty much pitch black other than the area around the path light.

Both pictures show the camera’s image with no other lighting. The floodlights and spotlight are off. Only lighting is the path light you can clearly see in both, and the smaller path lights on the right side of the Floodlight Cam’s image.

BTW, turning Color Night Vision on or off makes no difference.

So, what can I do to get the Spotlight’s night vision mode to turn on in this scenario? Pointing the spotlight more to the right would defeat the purpose since it would basically see and light up the exact same area as the Floodlight. I’d really like to cover that additional 15 or 20 feet to the left of the path light.

Maybe cover the light sensor on the Spotlight Cam (where is it anyway?)

If there’s no solution I will just send the Spotlight back and re-mount the Stick Up cam.