I just had an electrician install the Cam Floodlight Pro above my garage.
In checking out the light I noticed that the center four bulbs do not light up. The rest of the lights work fine and the camera works fine as well without issue. I enclosed a picture of the lights on
Is this how they are supposed to light up normally and the center ones work when there’s detection or do I possibly have a bad unit? I have contacted support and have both reset the camera from the app and shut the switch off and turn it back on. They’re having it looked into by a specialist but I wanted to check here see if anyone else may have possibly experience this.
I don’t have a Cam Floodlight Pro, but looking at your image and some of the specs, my guess is that the four LEDs in the center of each panel are for the IR illumination. Although the output wouldn’t be visible to your eye, I imagine that if you turn on night vision and IR lights and go look at it with your phone’s camera when it’s dark, you probably see those LEDs illuminated in the center of each panel.
Certainly is a plausible theory and it makes sense now that you mention it. I have scoured through reviews and while the majority of them don’t show the unit lit up, some pictures that do show the lights lit up like mine and then others show blasting with light similar to the selling pics for the unit.
Since I literally had it installed this morning I’ll have to see what it is at night to be sure.
Yes. The middle 4 in each light are IR lights (so 12 total).
That is 100% correct.
I wish that were true. Unfortunately, this is 850nm visible “Far” IR spectrum, which I hate because it is visible (when you look at the lights in the dark when only the IR is on). But it makes sense to use it for this use case because the Visible IR will go farther than the invisible “Near” IR spectrum at 940nm which I normally prefer.
He was correct. You can verify this to feel relieved it’s working okay: At night, turn off the floodlights and ambient light entirely so the white light won’t come on and set the settings to tell it to use the IR and nightvision and you will see the center lights glow a little from the IR in the center. Now you will know it’s just the IR lights in the center.
Trust me, these are my favorite camera. I have 7 of them.
I appreciate you letting me know this and it does make me feel better. So the pictures that show the entire light glowing brightly does not happen for real, then?
I think it is. My understanding is that the light output itself at that frequency is invisible to the human eye but that the LEDs themselves can have a reddish glow as an artifact of the IR light’s generation. This is what I seem to see with some night vision cameras. Probably what I should’ve said is that the generation at the source might be visible in a dark enough environment with IR enabled and other light sources off but that the illumination itself that’s output shouldn’t be (if the LEDs are operating according to spec). A phone camera can be a helpful tool for seeing that “invisible” light more clearly, though.
I get what you mean, though: It’d be nice not to have that additional clue that a camera is there and active for a more covert monitoring solution. Is that why Cam Floodlight v1 includes both wavelengths, or is that more of a “broaden the spectrum to improve illumination range” thought?
That is correct, but I hate the visible glow. by contrast, my 940nm IR does not have this same issue, and I thought you were saying it along those lines. So I get what you mean too.
I haven’t used the V1 since the FLPro’s launched, but IIRC, the only reason V1 has both Wavelegths is because it uses the Cam V3 which already included both because a V3 could sometimes be used indoors where Near IR is preferable. If it was just for the outdoor floodlight, they would’ve only included Far IR as they have for every single camera since the V3 (which I cry over constantly )
I think that’s MOSTLY because of 2 reasons: 1) overlapping glare that makes it appear to light up the entire thing, particularly when recorded in certain angles on a camera lens. 2) They probably did make some mistakes when they use modeling software for some of the promo photos or videos. Every once in a while we catch certain mistakes from the modeling stuff such as a floodlight being swiveled in a way that it can’t actually do. This is partially because sometimes they contract out some of the marketing to a business that messes up the modeling and nobody catches it until an extremely detail oriented customer notices the inadvertent incongruency.
Fair enough. I will take a look at it tonight and let you know for sure but I do appreciate your insight and knowledge. Customer service supposedly will get back to me but I’m sure they’ll say the exact same thing you are.
But it makes sense to use it for this use case because the Visible IR will go farther than the invisible “Near” IR spectrum at 940nm which I normally prefer.
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