I’ve had my wired Spotlight Cam for about a month now, but the below behavior started today.
When the spotlight LEDs turn on, the camera stays in IR/night mode. Up until today, the camera switched to day mode exiting night/IR mode any time the spotlights turned on. I still have the LED brightness set to max for the lights and haven’t changed it.
How is this SUPPOSED to work, and why would it change? I checked the last month’s worth of video caught at night. Every single video where the light turned on the camera exited IR mode. I couldn’t figure out tonight why my video had a greenish tint with the spotlights on. Speculating it was staying in IR mode, I temporarily disabled color night vision and re-checked. Sure enough, with the spotlights on, the green tint was gone, but the video was in black and white night vision.
I’ve had my Floodlight cam since about March, and every time the lights turn on the camera switches out of IR mode. My Spotlight has done this too since installing it in Sept until tonight.
The Spotlight cam isn’t exiting night/IR mode because the camera isn’t detecting sufficient light from the LEDs when the lights turn on. Now, that said, we know it’s plenty bright with those lights on, so why sometimes it exits night mode, sometimes it doesn’t is a mystery. I very much agree, the recorded video is not good and washed out when the camera stays in night mode.
For the life of me, I don’t know why a update can’t be coded into the Spotlight cam so upon those lights turning on, night mode turns off.
I’ve since ended up re-mounting my Spotlight cam to the corner of my covered back porch, instead of the center, and it has actually very much improved this problem (but did not totally fix it). I didn’t relocated it to improve the lights, but instead to get a better angle on what I wanted the camera to see. The lights are now slightly reflecting off of the siding of my house, and I attribute this extra light ‘seen’ by the camera causing it to more often exit night mode. I also have nearby landscape lighting throwing off extra light. My point to all this is, now that I have the camera located in a position that lends itself to ‘seeing’ more light when the LEDs are lit seems to allow it to work better.
A friend of mine also has the Spotlight cam, and it’s complete and total darkness where he has his mounted. His never exits night vision mode ever when the LEDs light. He never knew any better until I showed him how mine works.
If it’s feasible, maybe try relocating the camera, and/or angling it differently so it ‘sees’ more light at night when the LEDs turn on. --and I advise this with the mindset that we really shouldn’t have to relocate these to get them to work properly. The firmware should be coded so the camera auto-exits night mode when the LEDs light, regardless of what the device might determine what is/is not sufficient light. Also ensure the brightness of the LEDs are turned all the way up, but I’m betting you have it set as such.
The only time my Spotlight camera switches to day mode at night is when I walk to about 5 feet from it. Otherwise is stays in night mode with IR LEDs lit. The IR night view of people shows them to be all white with no distinguishable features. This really sucks because yo can’t identify who they are. Ring needs to either fix the IR night image to show human features (other cameras on the market do) or turn off the IR LEDs and switch to day mode when the spotlight turns on. The view is ALWAYS better when in day mode at night. Doesn’t the development team ever use their cameras???