Custom mode - spotlight. And nightvision without turning on IR LED?

[king_tut]

I've been trying to set up my 2x Arlo Ultra 2, but it looks like they don't support what I want to do... Could anyone help me out? Or does it just not support my use case? Background is that camera1 is head height, looking outwards, but behind a window, and camera2 is directly above the area being monitored, at about 5m.

Firstly, is it possible to trigger the spotlight to be turned on in a mode? I.e. if detect activity on camera 1, turn spotlight on on camera 2?

Secondly, is it possible to turn on night vision mode without turning on the IR leds on a device? When turning on night vision for camera1 all I get is a view of the reflection of the camera... Night vision is working great on the other camera (camera2) though, which is covering roughly the same area - so I was wondering if I could turn on camera1's night vision, but use camera2's IR led...? Worst case I may apply some warranty-invalidating techniques to disable the IR LEDs on camera1, but this should be controllable via software...

Thanks,

Ian

[StephenB]

Overall, the Ultras aren't the best choice for your setup (although they are the only option if you need 4K).  

Using the Pro3 floodlight outdoors and perhaps one of the indoor cameras behind the glass (Arlo Essentials Indoor or the older Arlo Q) would have worked out better. 

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@king_tut wrote:

Firstly, is it possible to trigger the spotlight to be turned on in a mode? I.e. if detect activity on camera 1, turn spotlight on on camera 2?

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No.  You could do that with the Pro3 Floodlight model, but that's the only camera that gives you direct control of the light.

But I don't think that will help your use case.  Camera2 (behind the window) normally won't trigger on motion, because the PIR sensors don't work well through glass.  So that can't be used to trigger the outdoor camera (camera 1) light.   

And of course you'll get too many reflections when you turn on the light on camera2.  So having camera1 trigger camera2 won't give you a usable recording on camera2.

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@king_tut wrote:

Secondly, is it possible to turn on night vision mode without turning on the IR leds on a device?

Again, no.

But you shouldn't need to do anything that invalidates the warranty - putting some tape over the IR leds should do the trick.

[king_tut]

Thanks for the quick feedback!

Camera2 (above) does detect reasonably well, so turning on the spotlight on camera2 would work as well - camera1 would likely have enough light to get enough of a picture... But I think that's also not possible. I did consider the Pro3 floodlight but I'm in a dense residential area, and the cameras are monitoring close to the street, so it would be overkill I think - I know I hated when neighbour's overly-bright floodlights trigger at all times during the night.

re: The IR LEDs, yeah - I'll give that a go. Just need to make sure the tape blocks IR, and doesn't reflect any back into the camera...

[king_tut]

An update on this - tried blocking the IR leds with tape+paper, but it turns out the entire area around the camera radiates - I'm going to try blocking the whole thing but am not holding my breath. EIther a software fix or warranty-voiding procedure appear to be needed. I'm going to contact support about the former, but am not holding my breath.

On the plus(?!!!) side, I did manage to record a car clipping my parked motorbike this morning, so the cameras are proving useful... All of 15 hours after I first parked it outside... FFS.

[StephenB]

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@king_tut wrote:

An update on this - tried blocking the IR leds with tape+paper, but it turns out the entire area around the camera radiates - I'm going to try blocking the whole thing but am not holding my breath. 

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Would it be practical to mount the camera outside (perhaps on the window sill)?   The camera uses a standard mount thread, and there are lots of mounts out there. 

[king_tut]

There is no window sill, or anything to rest the camera on outside unfortunately. And it's a rental property, so I can't drill any holes into the wall to mount anything securely.

It's not an ideal situation overall - but necessary to monitor a parked motorbike. If I could just disable the IR LEDs on that device, then the overall arrangement I have would be fine. It's just annoying I cannot - solely due to limitations in the software.

[jguerdat]

You can disable the IR LEDs - turn off Night Vision in the camera settings.

[king_tut]

Unfortunately that's functionally equivalent to saying "You can turn off the IR LED - turn off the camera"... as without night vision mode, the camera cannot see the plentiful IR that is out there, and there is no ambient visible light for it to see.

I've had confirmation from Arlo support that it's not possible to turn off the IR LEDs but have the camera in night vision mode. Next step will definitely be warranty invalidating, unfortunately.