Posted in: Internet of crap, Projects

Ring flood light cam to dumb motion sensor

The worst ideas come to us when drinking too much, and having access to purchasing power when drinking is probably never a great idea.. but alas, here I am.

Links, always forget the links. Link to camera

Apparently drunk me decided that I wanted to follow through on a project that I was thinking about doing for some time. Originally utilizing the ring doorbell, but then once the flood light camera came out switching gears. The plan was to use the ring sensor to trip regular lights in the same way as an infrared motion sensor does. that way I get to keep the lights I have on my garage, and still monitor the driveway for the random cat or raccoon.. er robber attempting to assault my kingdom!

How hard could it be, drunk me seemed to say as i looked at the unopened box on my dining room table. So i decided to dive in.

First up, the disassembly. Sober me, thinking sure, I can take a crack at this, popped open the box, and promptly started tearing the thing down.

The LED lamp arms came off easily enough

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I started poking around inside. and trouble began.

My first thought.. nay, hope was that the white box there was a big beefy relay.. no, that was not to be the case. that there is the LED driver for the lamps. which means that it’s kicking a large voltage off to the arms, it also means a regular LED light bulb, which also has an LED controller isn’t going to work. so, back to the drawing board.. sort of. I’m also thinking maybe I just go full on “there i fixed it” by tieing off the LED driver wires, and sharing power across the existing motion sensor and the camera.

Will update as I dig deeper.

update: the “there i fixed it” method worked, in an unexpected way. You see, the LED driver takes standard mains voltage. So i says to myself, there has to be a way to trigger this thing that I am missing. Turns out I was right. The camera was set to close the circuit when the lights were requested to be on.. So i removed the driver and wired internally

red – light fixture black
white – all whites bundled
black – line

Suddenly, everything was working.. and I only once climbed up the ladder without double checking the breaker(realized before touching anything thankfully)! I’d call that a win.

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