Ambient/motion light

[Rightsideup]

Is there a way to have the spot light turn on with a lower power light setting to use as a yard light and have the spot light go to full bright when motion is detected?

[jguerdat]

You can manually do this by live viewing and turning the floodlight on, followed by setting the light level that pops up. Otherwise, it only triggers on motion and follows the settings in Default Mode Settings in the camera settings. You don't have to record so you could set up a mode with such a rule but you'd need to switch modes as desired.

[JamesC · Accepted solution]

There are actually a few different ways you can go about doing this.

For temporarily turning the floodlight on, you can use the above suggestion by jguerdat or simply tap the light toggle on the floodlight widget on your dashboard screen or device card. This way you wouldn't need to live stream the camera. Both options will allow the floodlight brightness to be adjusted as desired.

If you're looking for a more automated approach, this can also be done through setting up a schedule in routines to tell the light to turn on for a scheduled time at the default brightness. You can then set your floodlight triggers for motion within modes to turn the floodlight on at a different brightness. To do this, navigate to routines > modes > Arm Away and/or Arm Home > select your Wired Floodlight > Add an action > Customize device > select the wired floodlight > modify settings > toggle light settings > adjust the brightness as desired.

This path is a little more complex but it would allow the light to always be on during the schedule at the default brightness (adjust as needed within your camera settings) and then when the light is triggered the brightness would go up or down depending on what you've set that setting to within the modes.

JamesC

[Rightsideup]

Ok this was a great help but I'm having a bit of trouble fine tuning. I have the light turn on at 25% at sunset. During that time it is understandby mode and will not activate to 100% brightness. Is there a way to make it kick on. To 100%. At 9pm I have the system kick into arm away and everything works as I'd like it to. At 6am to 7am I go back to standby and it shuts off the 25% light. Any way to keep it on? I feel like I had it working right for a day or two. Your help is appreciated

[jguerdat]

I'm using schedules to turn the light on at sunset and off at sunrise. Those schedules are very easy with the sunset one simply turning the light on and also using the Adjust the Device Settings action to set the light to 25%. The sunrise one is even simpler, just turning the light off.

As for any time you want a recording, your active mode must have a rule for the floodlight and the Default Mode Settings in the light's settings can/should be 100%. That way, as long as the rule includes turning on the light one (using Add an Action to turn a light on), you'll get a recording using 100% (or whatever you set the default to) .

To be clear, I'm using 2 schedules to simply turn the light on and off. Your normal schedules (9PM and 7AM) takes care of the rest.