topic Re: Need Better Light Control in Arlo Wired Floodlight Camera

Need Better Light Control

Schwibs — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 14:56:21 GMT

Pro installer here.

I’m hoping that there is or will be a better way to control the lights on the new Wired Floodlight Cameras. Here is my use case for a client:

4 existing floodlights wired on same light switch.

Want to be able to create a lighting group and at least a shortcut widget to turn all lights on and off simultaneously in the app (not through just a motion routine either). Just on and off for the lights.

I would normally accomplish this easily through Alexa, but it looks like Arlo doesn’t support separate lighting control for floodlights in Alexa so I cannot create a “backyard lights” lighting group for voice control either.

Am I missing something? If not, can we please come up with a solution? This isn’t just one customer, I have numerous scenarios throughout the year where I need this functionality and other brands support it. Sometimes people want a light to be a light and it not be cumbersome to turn on more than one at a time.

Want to be able to use Arlo though when it is the right choice for a customer, and right now this limitation will force me (and surely others) to look elsewhere.

Thanks!

Re: Need Better Light Control

StephenB — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:12:37 GMT

@Schwibs wrote:

Want to be able to create a lighting group and at least a shortcut widget to turn all lights on and off simultaneously in the app (not through just a motion routine either). Just on and off for the lights.

Sometimes people want a light to be a light and it not be cumbersome to turn on more than one at a time.

This is a hole that hopefully they will fix.

You can create a widget for each floodlight, but you can't create a widget that turns on all of them.

You can also create a schedule automation that turns all all four lights on/off, and you can run that manually using the "test automation" control in the automation itself. (You can also keep the schedule automation disabled if you don't want it to run on schedule). But that isn't very fluid, and I don't that will work with Alexa either.

Re: Need Better Light Control

Schwibs — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 16:39:55 GMT

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the tips and that is how I’ll set it up for now, but as you mentioned, that’s not a very elegant setup, especially compared to turning on a light switch.