Ring spotlight cam pro, light switching, light control sun below horizon

[danielp777]

Hello!

i test now since about two weeks, sometimes i thought i got it... But it isn't so right now!
(till now also 2 chats and three calls with the ring support)

My biggest problem is:
i turn on the light (integrated in spotlight cam pro) over node red when the doorbell or the spotlightcam detects motion.
motion detection, turning on and turning of is all clear and funtionally!
but when the spotlightcam begins to record befor the light is on, the spotlightcam turns off the light after recording!
When the doorbell recognize motion first, the light is on befor recording on the spotlightcam then the light stays on till my automatication turns it off.

I didn't found a solution, tested so much! Motionlight option is OFF in the app
Only thing is to disable motion detection for the spotlightcam but then i have no videos recorded....

An other way was to make a automatication to start recording over node red "manually", but also the cam turned off the light after the record.

the support said to me today, theese lights are not build for long time on (max 15 Minutes)!!!!

I said when i turn on the lights befor motion, i can have them on 20 minutes, i tested..
I said there is a option in the app to turn on the lights from dusk till dawn, so for the whole night?

Yes that is both possible, but not that what i need!!!

And another problem i have when i only use the ring app is,
that i can (in Austria) only select "turn ON lights from dusk till dawn", so they are on the whole night.
or the second option is "turn off lights from dusk till dawn, also motion light is disabled" SO NO LIGHT IN THE NIGHT?

so i only can change the time in the morning and the evening myself manually??? Who does that manually?

is there a possibility to change the time table automatically with node red over mqtt?
or is there an other possibility?

Maybe, someone can help me in any way to get a good solution!?

Thank you!
Daniel

[tsightler]

I'm not sure why this question was asked here as it does not sound like it has anything to do with this project. Nothing in ring-mqtt can change the native behavior of the camera and how Ring designed it. Overall, your problem seems more of an automation question, which is generally best asked in some forum with expertise in your automation platform.

Overall however, it seems quite simple, I would just create an automation that turns the camera on when you want and off when you don't, and a second automation that, if the camera turns off on its own during this time, it will turn it back on. That's about the best you are going to get but, if the camera turns itself off, there will be some delay before it turns back on since Ring does not update light state immediately, generally it takes ~30 seconds.

From an automation perspective, there are many ways to do this, probably the easiest is to use a virtual switch to track the current "desired" state, and then the other automations are triggered based on this. So, for example, if the virtual switch is "on" then the light is turned on, and, if the light turns off, it always triggers the automation to check if it should be on or not and turns it back on if so. This would be trivial with something like Home Assistant, and I'm assuming would be possible with Node Red as well, but I'm not a Node Red user so difficult to give specific advice there.