Essential Spotlight Low Light Settings

[lusterav]

I purchased the Essential Spotlight camera VMC2030. Please help me with a question I cannot find an answer to regarding the Low Light Settings. If I toggle on Spotlight and Color, do I also have to toggle on Night Vision? I also need help with the spotlight: What brightness % is good for a camera on the front of my house where people walk by at night with their dogs? I don't want to scare them to death. One more thing: When I toggle on the spotlight in settings, and I select Constant, does that mean the light is on 24/7? Or does it mean the light is solid during the motion detection only?  Any help would be appreciated.

[StephenB]

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@lusterav wrote:

If I toggle on Spotlight and Color, do I also have to toggle on Night Vision? 

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You don't, but I leave it enabled on my own cameras.

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@lusterav wrote:

 What brightness % is good for a camera on the front of my house where people walk by at night with their dogs?

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I leave the brightness at 100%,  The light isn't really that bright, and at least in my area automatic lighting isn't that uncommon.  

One aspect here - you will see signficantly shorter battery life if you have a lot of detected motion.  It'd be best to arrange the camera so that it doesn't trigger on everyone walking down the street.

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@lusterav wrote:

When I toggle on the spotlight in settings, and I select Constant, does that mean the light is on 24/7? Or does it mean the light is solid during the motion detection only? 

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It means the light is solid when it is lit (instead of flashing or pulsing).  So not 24/7.

[lusterav]

Thanks Stephen. Your answers are very helpful. My biggest problem is that my house is on a busy street and every car that goes by is recorded. I have tried setting up activity zones to cut out the street but as I have come to find out, activity zones don't work and haven't for years. According to the posts throughout this forum, if I set up 3 or more zones the recordings stop completely. So for now I have to have the street and vehicles recorded (every 5 seconds a car goes by). That's why I was concerned with the spotlight at night. But so be it: the light will just have to go on and off all night. I wish there was a way in the app settings to say "don't record vehicles" even though the street is visible. If there is something like that please let me know. Thanks.

[StephenB]

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@lusterav wrote:

I have tried setting up activity zones to cut out the street but as I have come to find out, activity zones don't work and haven't for years. 

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There have been issues on and off, but they do work fine with my cameras.

But activity zones don't improve battery life, since when the cameras are battery powered the activity zone detection is done in the cloud.  Your battery life will be very short if the camera senses motion every 5-6 seconds.

You can try angling the cameras downward, or perhaps find a different location.  Mine are aimed across my porch, so they avoid the street and town sidewalk. I do get some unwanted recordings at night (emergency vehicles reflect enough off my front windows to set off the cameras).  But those are relatively rare.

[lusterav]

I can try angling the camera down but my problem is that the front lawn of the house is very shallow (only about 8 feet from front door to sidewalk). I have the cam mounted on the front of the house at the left end of the house, pointed towards the front door which is about 20 feet away. In that view I see my driveway in the distance. I still get the sidewalk and street in the peripheral field because of the 8 feet front lawn. So I think no matter how I angle the camera, I will pick up motion on sidewalk (which is ok) and the street (not ok). I tried setting the sensitivity to various levels and testing it. Could not eliminate the vehicles at all. So I think I'm stuck with hundreds of videos recording of cars passing by that I just have to delete 3 times a day. I know it's not good for the cam battery but I can't find a fix. Thanks for trying. If you think of anything else, let me know.

[StephenB]

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@lusterav wrote: If you think of anything else, let me know.

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It sounds like you will likely get some of the sidewalk and street no matter what you do.

[jguerdat]

First, are you setting the motion sensitivity in your modes and rules? The motion test doesn't save since it's just a test.

Next, do you have a Smart subscription? You can tell it to ignore cars which at least will minimize the notifications and recordings in your library. Recordings will still occur to be post-processed by the servers to see what the object is and to determine if it should be discarded or placed in the library.

Finally, can you change the location of the camera to help eliminate the street? Don't forget that motion detection only occurs in roughly the bottom 2/3 of the camera view.

[lusterav]

I played around with the motion sensitivity and even at the lowest, cars are detected but people are not. Since I would like the people I pushed the sensitivity back up. I do have a plan so I can tell it to eliminate vehicles. I thought that was only for notifications. But I will go ahead and try that. Moving the camera is nearly impossible as I explained to Stephen because my house is so close to the street (hardly any front lawn). It wouldn't matter where I put the camera on the front of the house. So I will try the mode for no vehicles. Thanks for the suggestion.

[StephenB]

I tried rotating one of my cameras 90 degrees to create a "portait mode".  Unfortunately the app can't compensate, so the videos are all sideways.  But it is one way to get a narrower field of view.

[lusterav]

Very clever thinking. I'll keep it as a last resort. Thanks again.

[Richblack90]

Hi,

I don’t know how long ago you posted but you can toggle the cars off under the smart notifications and this stops the recording of cars. I used to stay on a busy street and this work for me. Also I don’t know how long ago you tried the activity zones but the way they have been working for me is I have my driveway and front garden up to the public path at the front of it set up as a single activity zone by misshaping the zone using the extra point to make it fit to size limiting my setup to a single zone. This means there’s no crashing or other errors as it’s just a single zone and I have found that there is only clips of activity in my activity zone and this also triggers the siren as I didn’t want cars driving up and down the street and it sets the siren of every 5 mins if we’re out or in bed. In the background I have set up continuous video recording which records the entire camera view and then the activity zone highlights specific events that are triggers by anything entering the zone. I have set this to people and all other motion and switched cars and pets off as we have a shed load of cats. Hope this helps as after a lot of tweaking and online reading this seams to be my happy medium.

You could also try turning down the speed sensitivity level so that people walking trigger the recordings but cars don’t as there going at a much faster pace. Before setting my activity zone this worked for me meaning I didn’t get notifications every 5 mins that a car has passed but it meant people walking past would trigger the alarms which wasn’t useful hence the above setup but there’s no harm in changing the sensitivity settings in addition.

[StephenB]

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@Richblack90 wrote:

I don’t know how long ago you posted but you can toggle the cars off under the smart notifications and this stops the recording of cars. 

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Just want to correct this bit.  The smart notifications control only stops the notifications. The recordings are still stored.

You can filter out the recordings when you view the library.

[lusterav]

Thanks so much for the help. Will try your suggestions.