Pros and cons of enabling the spotlights on my security cameras.

[corneileous]

Hey guys, just curious if there’s anything negative to consider when it comes to enabling the motion detection LED spotlights on my cameras. Right now I have them all disabled and just rely on the night vision technology but for awhile now, Ive been thinking about enabling them. 

Thoughts? 

[StephenB]

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@corneileous wrote:

Hey guys, just curious if there’s anything negative to consider when it comes to enabling the motion detection LED spotlights on my cameras. Right now I have them all disabled and just rely on the night vision technology but for awhile now, Ive been thinking about enabling them. 

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The main downside is of course that the spotlight is visible.  It will alert intruders that they have been detected (not necessarily a bad thing).  There are other reasons why you might not want that for a particular camera.

• it could annoy neighbors if the light is visible from their property
• it could create unwanted glare if covering your driveway

No harm in turning it on for a while, and see whether you find it better than IR or not.

[corneileous]

Yeah, those are pretty good reasons to consider being that there are other houses all the way around mine that are pretty close. I mean, I don’t know why my surrounding neighbors would care- if they actually do. I’ve never heard anybody complain but because in all actuality, my cameras are also doing them a favor as well if somebody comes messing around their house that more than likely one of my cameras is gonna see it. 

But my main concern about setting them up so that when they detect motion and the little LED spotlight turns on, is giving away their position to somebody who could attack them which, I know, whenever they record, they have those two little red lights that come on which I’m assuming is for the infrared but still, that bright spotlight makes them a lot more noticeable than the two little red LEDs do. 

I don’t know, I might try it for a while because at least one thing about it though, I don’t have to really worry about them running the batteries down quicker because two of my cameras already have a solar panel charger for each one of them and even though I just bought a wired doorbell that I’m gonna get reconfigured to run on the doorbell wire to keep it charged, the camera that was watching the front door is now watching the backyard of the house and I’ve already got Another solar panel ordered for it.