Do you leave your porch lights on all night?

Lots of good info here. The only thing holding me back is that many of my cameras will not be able to stay in color with lights out, but i think I'm going to get some bulbs and go dark after 11.

There is a community integration for many of the Govee products. @Mavrrick58 is maintaining.

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The Hue Outdoor motion sensors are a little sensitive - mine still react to squirrels but they are typically not active at night. I have a couple of local cats and a fox that trip them as well. Got a great fully lit video of a person trying to break into my Wife's car on the carport - shared it with the local PD.

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IMHO based on what I've been told by a husband of a friend who is a cop, if you do the two things below you are very unlikely have personal property stolen:

  1. Lock your doors and windows and close your garage door and front gates to your back yard.
  2. Don't leave interesting stuff on your front porch, front yard, or driveway.

Perps are looking for quick and easy - if you make it harder for them than your neighbor, your neighbor will be the one who "donates." :slight_smile:

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The lights ARE doing something. They are deterring bad people from messing with your stuff and encouraging them to go to your neighbors with no lights on.

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LOL..lets hope so! It's leaving them on overnight every night when vast majority of those nights nothing happens, that makes me crazy (clearly a personal issue). :wink: My family would probably say "crazy" is my normal state. :smiley:

I have nine soffit lights on the front of the house. At sunset three of them come on warm white at 40%, at midnight they go to 1%. If a gate is opened or a motion sensor is tripped they all come on at 100% bright white. It keeps the low hanging fruit at bay.

For the holidays they change colors based on the holiday but still come on full white if anybody enters on the property.

It’s home automation. May as well automate it.

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I leave one low wattage high ish brightness LED light on all night with supplemental delayed lighting brought on by PIR’s. It has taken a lot of work to make the PIR’s / beams dependable and not annoy others,

I live in an urban area and do get unwelcomes on my driveway, often trying car doors. I have good video of such incursions and police have identified people from such footage.

I have an adjacent rental property and the tenant was prone to leave his car unlocked and I managed to video a break in and (fuelled by some wine) I physically apprehended the guy. The full brightness lighting coming on had no impact :frowning:

I was reprimanded by the UK police for this action based on not knowing if they might have a knife etc but all was OK and the papers reported it as a good citizens arrest (no disclosure of who or where) and a short prison sentence for the ‘doped up to the eyeballs’ offender.

So not sure if the automation was good or bad but unknowns walking up my driveway do turn around when more lights come on.

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I used to have 12 outdoor floods around the house, in the middle of a wooded nowhere.

I reduced the bulb count down to 8, then replaced with Hue outdoor floods. I have 1 in the back on, just because. Put up 2 square outdoor Hue color wall lights on the front of the house. Those I have in complementary colors, but low brightness. The rest of the lights are in two groups, each triggered their own group of sensors, as we might walk outside 2x a night for this and that (AND, firewood [g]). They;re set to turn off after 4 min. of inactivity.

None of the lights are set greater than 60% (most significantly lower), and brightness for motion triggered and the 3 overnight lights is reduced further after midnight.

Moving to LEDs, and limiting their use. . . I never compared, but did get a sense attention to things like that has mattered. Biggest difference was in having Nests in each of the 7 locations (elec. baseboard heat), but I digress. . .

FWIW :+1:

This topic caught my interest. I have a few dimly lit outside lights that go 100% with motion. It occurred to me that I would like the garage outdoor lights to get bright when we open a garage door between sunrise and sunset. Thinking about creating a rule I wondered if "capture and restore" were options. Turns out it is a thing and it works perfectly. Doors down lights at 20%, door up 100%. Door down back to the previous level. If for some reason I had them brighter because of an activity they would return to that.