Nest Cam lighting recommendations:

This article describes pitfalls to avoid when locating your Nest Cam or when placing other room lights that may interfere with the night-vision ability of the Nest Cam. A too-bright light source close to the Nest Cam can cause other areas in the field of view to go dark.

This article series describes the Nest Cam installation procedure and includes advice on settings that can get you out of trouble if your camera installation does not go smoothly. To get the very best performance from your Nest Cam (or Dropcam) we give advice on camera location, use of lighting, and securing the cameras and their wiring.

Lighting Advice for Working with the Nest Cam

Watch out: in dark conditions the placement of an artificial light source may interfere with rather than assist the Nest Cam's view of the area it is monitoring. In particular we found that a bright lamp placed too close to the camera's lens will prevent good use of the camera's infra-red capability.

This office view recorded by another of our Nest Cams is lit by a single overhead ceiling light at the upper left. This works fine. But if that lamp in the lower-right foreground were turned on its light would overpower the image without giving enough light over the whole room.

Watch out: Separately at NEST CAM INFRA RED for DARK VIEWS we warn that even with all lights off in a room, objects in the foreground may reflect so much IR light back to the Nest Cam that as it adjusts to that brightness other areas that could be seen in the field of view may be left in darkness.

In the night-scene below, two lights were either left on or were turned on by a timer: in the screen shot's lower left a bright wall light washes out a small area of the image, while at the far end of this space (upper center in the image) a room lamp lights that area.

These lights work well together for night illumination for the Nest Cam in this location. But a single bright light on in part of the field of view that lights part of the area but not all of it may compete with the Nest Cam's IR capability. The result may be the unnecessary lost of parts of the image.

Above we see the same scene with just the nearby wall-light on. Notice that now the far end of the area is almost totally darkened. Now let's take a look - below - at the same scene once again, this time with all room lights off.

You can see that using just the Nest Cam's IR lighting, we actually have a more complete view of the entire space being monitored. I do notice a bit more IR light reflecting off of the left wall. If that reflected light were too bright thte Nest Cam would stop down its image and the more distant room areas would be all black. In that case I'd re-aim the camera, turning it slightly to the right to reflect less infra-red lighting off of the nearest wall.

The space shown above measures nearly 36 feet in its long dimension, a remarkable lighting performance for the infra-red lighting provided by the little Nest Cam.

Finally, shown below and captured by high-mounted Nest Cam, I am writing this article series working at a desk at night.

You can see that small bright lights on the wall illuminate the room and the desk light is so bright that it washes out a small area around my computer. These two lights provided enough lighting that the Nest Cam was not using its IR illumination.

While the precise Nest Cam lighting control algorithm that decides when to turn on or off the IR feather is not public, it's apparent that the Nest Cam software is making a decision about when to turn on the IR - basically almost any amount of in-room lighting from other sources will be relied upon by the Nest Cam system in preference to switching to Infra Red that will show up as a black-and white image.

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Continue reading at NEST CAM RELIABILITY & NEST AWARE DATA LOSS or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.

Or see these

Recommended Articles

• BUILDING SAFETY HAZARDS GUIDE
• LIGHTING, EXTERIOR GUIDE - home
• NEST CAM INSTALLATION & USE - home
  • NEST CAM INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS
  • NEST CAM INSTALLATION SEQUENCE
  • NEST CAM: WHAT's IN THE BOX?
  • NEST CAM INSTALLATION TECHNICAL TIPS
  • NEST CAM DISPLAYS - WHAT CAN YOU SEE?
  • NEST CAM VIEW ADJUSTMENT
  • NEST CAM LIGHTING RECOMMENDATIONS
  • NEST CAM RELIABILITY & NEST AWARE DATA LOSS
  • NEST CAM DETERRENT EFFECTS
• NEST LEARNING THERMOSTATS
• SECURITY / MOTION SENSOR LIGHT INSTALL
• SECURITY SYSTEMS cameras, monitors for home security, intrusion, elder-safety, freeze or water damage monitoring

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