KenB

Okay yeah those last shots were during dusk anyway. Here is the Samsung right now without the porch light. But you can kind of see the light from the courtyard light casting a shadow of my car on the wall. The camera is tucked up next to a gutter and I think that's the IR glaring on the side. Is this normal illumination level? I still can't see any glowing red...

I can't see any red glow on my cameras at night and the night vision doesn't work very well, but I am pretty sure the IR LEDs are illuminating SOME because at first I tried installing the camera behind glass, and got a big glare on the window from the IR lights when it entered night vision mode. The other camera is mounted at eye-level, so I went up to it last night and cupped my hands over it ( with my porch light that I'm using as a light source turned off ) and looked into it to see if the LEDs were glowing red. Nope, but then when I checked my email, the motion detection caught an image of my face that was well illuminated, despite the LEDS having no red glow. Is there a limit on amperage and cord length? I am not sure how long one cord is ( probably 100 feet ) and the other is 150. The power supply is only 1A so it's splitting this along two cameras, BUT I tried plugging it in to the eye-level camera directly (so short cord, full 1A current) and it didn't seem to make any difference. I'll see if I can upload some pictures, but so far I don't really have any night shots without the porch lights on to show the lack of illumination, I'll get some tonight if I can't find any. I am also not sure what model cameras I have, one is a Swann and the other is a Samsung, but looks like a cheap re-branded Chinese camera. I will go jot the model numbers down and edit my post later. I do know now though that the Phillips has a mechanical IR cut filter, because when I tested it in my house and it entered a low light area ( under my table ) I heard and felt an audible click when it entered night vision mode. I didn't observe anything like that on the Swann. EDIT: Okay, so the cameras are... Swann Pro 500 Series, N3960 Samsung SDC5440BNC Here's some pictures of the Swann... First is with my porch light on, then the rest with it off. If the IR LEDs weren't working at all would it even illuminate it that much? The Samsung seems to have a little better illumination, but mostly on white surfaces, and I don't have any screenshots of it right at the moment to demonstrate. Still though sometimes I wonder if it's actually the illumination from the IR leds, or from the light that is in my apartment complex's courtyard. I am not sure if this these are with the Swann or the Samsung because I switched them at one point... But here's the back porch.