Why do lights turn on but no motion recorded on floodlight cams?

Sometimes I see the lights on my outdoor floodlight cams turn on and assume there’s a motion event that triggered it but, in the app there’s no motion event recording and no ring notification. Why would the lights be triggered without motion and a motion event recording? This happens a lot.

Also conversely, there are plenty of times when a motion event is recorded and the camera’s lights never turn on at any point during the recording. The entire motion triggered video clip is in color night vision mode because the floodlight cam’s lights never turned on. Why is that?

Good question @SashaB! As you know, the Floodlight Cam has two methods of motion detection, one for the camera and one for lights. The 270 degree field of view for the lights allows for it to catch approaching heat signatures efficiently. This means that sometimes the lights can be triggered by a motion that does not trigger your Floodlight Cam to record.

Check out our help center article on how to best control the lights of your Floodlight Cam. As an important note, the Floodlight Cam lights will turn on for all events, assuming it is dark enough outside. I hope this helps! :slight_smile:

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I’m not sure why lights can come on separate from the motion. This causes so many issues with bugs and spiders that it is absolutely annoying. Ring should make a feature here where if motion isn’t strong enough to be triggered then the light should not come on.

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Hi @bjdwjd. In the Ring app, under the Light Settings menu, there is a sensitivity slider that allows you to adjust how sensitive the Motion Zones for the lights are. This should help mitigate you lights turning on unnecessarily. I hope this helps!

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My flood light cams turn the lights on without recording events as well.

Why have these two events separate?
It seems simple enough. If the motion zones are able to tell the unit to start recording why can’t it also tell the unit to turn the light on?

You don’t learn this stuff until after you purchase the garbage. And then it’s too late to return.

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This is a terrible feature here. The light should be turned on only when the motion is detected… you are running two motion system, and there are not sync with each other, this is rediculous
where can we report to feature so that ring can make the software updates in the future?

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Hi @user17453. You can submit feature requests in our Feature Request Board, here.

I had a giant skunk travel across my yard. The motion light came on, but the camera never recorded it. This was my first experience with this faulty application and it has been happening ever since. I have not changed any settings and the camera has picked up small cats half the size of this massive skunk. I think it’s a fault in the application.

Personally I want the lights to be able to be separated from recording: It gives you flexibility. I’m in an area where Internet is expensive and capped - and lots of darkness in the Winter (subarctic). There are times I want things to be recorded and times when I just want the lights to work when going outside and not use precious bandwidth.

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Similar situation here. Having made no changes to settings or sensitivity on our video flood lights, our flood lights are lately turning on and off with no recording of events. This seems very suspect and I’m frustrated. It’s also a huge waste of power when it happens every night, all night long.

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Ring keeps breaking what isn’t broke. This just started happening on my cams.

I’m about to toss all the ring cams in the trash. The cams will detect a spider, but won’t detect a guy going through my car after walking right up to the cameras, seen on other cams… at the same time the cams will record my neighbor coming out of his house.

Stupid feature…. Ring, can you add the option for user that control the light when the motion triggers only?

when my newspaper boy came this morning, the light came om but no recording. I also walked up my drive to the car. Again the light came on but no recording. Whats gone wrong?

Hi @Rowletcat1. The lights and the camera portion of your Floodlight Cam have separate motion detection settings. Try adjusting the Motion Zones if you find that visitors are your property are not being recorded. It’s also important to check the Modes settings to ensure motion detection is not disabled in a particular Mode.

My floodlights also constantly turn on at night. There should be a feature to turn them on only with motion that activates the camera (in sync). Unfortunately this happens so much that it makes the five floodlights i purchased absolutely unusuable. $200+ unit and monthly subscription that gets beat by my old $30 mption detector lights.

I wanted to love these, and theyre great during the day. But such a hard miss on the most basic function means these are going back to Ring.

Was there a software change? I have 3 wired floodlight pros and all seemed to be working more or less as they should for about a year. At some point in the last couple months, I’ve had to disable the motion lights because they trigger nonstop. Most of these events are ocurring without the camera triggering. It really feels like this is a new bug, far worse/more frequent than last year. It used to be rare for the lights to come on without a camera motion event and I only had to disable motion lights during a super windy night.

Same issue here… we’ve had two lights (one was damaged during a hurricane here in FL) and only recently when we came down here did we notice that the lights were turning on constantly without a motion event triggered. I went out to wipe off the lens and motion detector in case bugs were crawling on them, but it continued to do it, even with little to no wind. I went to the settings and there is only three possible settings “Min - Normal - Max.” The “slidebar” isn’t infinitely adjustable… I think a simply slider switch in the app to “sync motion event with light” would give the user the flexibility they desired based upon the users’ feedback in this thread. I think there needs to be a software update to address this “bug” in its programming.

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