Using a lamp socket on an existing motion activated flood light

So I live on a busy street and i have an existing motion activated flood light that constantly goes off due to false motion. I’ve wanted to add a wyze v3 cam to my frontyard and use the floodlight to power the camera. The lamp socket seems like it would work but now it bypass the existing motion sensor on the flood light or would it contradict each other?

There are a few possibilities and depends on how the existing floodlight detects motion…for example, I have had floodlights that have their own PIR sensor that then turns on the regular floodlight bulbs if it detects something. I have also had floodlights where the bulbs themselves had some kind of motion sensor in the tip of the bulb and so the bulb itself did the detecting.

Some things like that can make a difference.

But in most cases, it’s likely your floodlight has a sensor which cuts off all power to the bulb socket when there is no motion and only turns it on when it senses motion. In this case, the Wyze socket will not function properly because the floodlight will cut all power to the socket, making it so the camera cannot get any power to record or see anything, and thus not function at all until the floodlight sensor thinks there is motion, then it will turn on the socket and the socket will turn on the light and the camera. It will take the camera some time to boot up, but before the camera finishes booting up and determines the situation at hand, it is possible that your floodlight will cut the power to the socket again, and the camera won’t be able to save recordings or decide what to do about motion. The power to the camera will be cut out by the floodlight.

That is the most likely scenario based on how most of them work. But it is possible it is working differently, such as the possibility of the motion being determined by the bulbs themselves or some other option.

What you might be able to do is check your floodlight to see if it has any switches or settings on it. Some of them will have an always-on setting. If you can switch it to always-on, then you will be able to have the Wyze cam and Wyze socket take over control of the lights themselves as you’re wanting since the camera and the wyze socket will now have control over the power. That is what I would suggest trying to find in your floodlight for this to work the way you want it to.

I hope that helps.

You will, however, need multiple Wyze sockets if your light has more than one bulb. Otherwise, one or more bulbs will be on all the time.

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