Basic questions - Essential Outdoor Gen 2

[faret]

I have a few Arlo Pro 2 cameras that have night vision; they do this without projecting a visible light. My Essential Outdoor Gen 2 seems to use a visible spotlight. Is that for night vision or COLOR night vision?

I have the solar panels for my cameras. We had several days of rain and therefore clouds. My camera dropped, in 2.5 days, down to 40%. The solar panel would only indicate charging intermittently. Because of that, I swapped a different camera (which was at 80%) in its place and it constantly charges it would seem. Is that because the other camera was so low?

[jguerdat]

Yes, the spotlight is used for color nighttime recordings. If you prefer, you can turn off the spotlight and use the IR illuminators instead in the camera settings under Night Vision.

Solar charging is not only dependent on the available sunlight but also the amount of recording the camera sees. The spec for battery life is <5 minutes total per day. Activity zones can mask the true amount of recordings since the servers will delete the videos deemed to be in those zones so you may want to temporarily remove them to get a true sense of the amount of recording. I don't believe switching cameras had any effect on the solar panel effectiveness but only on the issues raised above.