City upgraded to LED street lights

Mr_D

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The tract was built in the late 60's and the lights were probably just as old. They were very dim and orange-ish. The new LEDs are much brighter and probably 4000-5000k. The light is on the pole in the front yard. The difference isn't as dramatic in B&W mode as it is in color.

Driveway.20181104_190000_1.jpg Driveway.20181106_200314292.jpg FrontYard.20181105_190001_1.jpg FrontYard.20181106_190000_1.jpg
FrontYard.20181106_201435592.jpg
 

CCTVCam

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Same where I live. Here's a before and after picture of the same street I found on google credited to info4security, so presumably it shows the view from a CCTV system:




They're becoming more and more common in the UK which has been installing them now for more than 5 years.

The difference in this pic is quite dramatic although it does looks as if it may have been saturated judging from the sky.

One thing about them though that will affect CCTV at different times of the night is unlike conventional street lighting, they can be dimmed. In the UK they tend to be brighter early evening and then dimmed as it gets late.
 

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Another reason you're seeing such a dramatic increase in perceived illumination is because of where the new LED street lights place their light...on the ground, sidewalk and roadway which is where the objects would be that we'd need and want to see.

Old round or tubular shaped HID lighting (mercury vapor, metal halide, low and high pressure sodium) had a reflector behind them and a refractor / lens to help diffuse and direct the light in the intended direction, which is mostly down and toward the ground. But optics not always being perfect, a lot of that light went into the surrounding area and also upward, where it did little good. Some went into our eyes as glare, closing the pupils and lowering our ability to see objects that we can see only by reflected light.

As the signal & lighting maint. supervisor of a city in N. CA., I was never a proponent of the old-fashioned, "nostalgic" post lights installed downtown in the revived shopping area because they only lit the storefronts (great), some of the sidewalk (not very good) and cast glare directly into the drivers' eyes (NOT so good). Furthermore, the cast aluminum pole shafts were delicate and their unit cost was high (twice as much as a "standard" street light).

By design, the new LED's require very little, if any, optics to place their warmer, whiter light where it's needed and desired. Their higher lumen output, lower energy cost and longer life is icing on the cake.
 
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Mr_D

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The old lights were bell-shaped with a lens in open end. The one in front of our house looked like part of the lens was masked off, possibly in an attempt to limit light hitting bedroom windows. The new light has a grid of maybe 16-20 LED which are individually visible. They each may be set in their own reflector because they look pretty big at night. Based on the driveway picture, it looks like they're designed to throw more light sideways, along the road, than perpendicular. The amount of light on the street at that distance is impressive.
 

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@Mr_D ,

FWIW, I lived up north of you in Santa Clara County for 29 years. Years before my arrival in '74, the City of San Jose required that all street lighting that was in the public right-of-way, City-maintained or any large number in a small area be low pressure sodium. Unlike the high pressure sodium (pinkish), mercury vapor (bluish) or metal halide (less bluish), the low pressure sodium was very orange-like but it was monochromatic (one color), not a blend of many colors (polychromatic). This property allowed the astronomers at Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton to use just a filter or two to block out the ambient light from those street lights and improve their visibility of the night sky.

Of course, no one else liked it, especially the cops. It was almost impossible to correctly identify color of clothing, hair, or vehicles. Coolant or other liquids on the pavement looked like blood. Everyone looked yellow with brown lips.

All of the early LPS lamps were Norelco (Phillips) brand and were made in Holland. Later, they were made by more companies.

Eventually, the car lots got a waiver so they could properly show the color of the cars for sale. They used mostly metal halide, the best HID lamp for color rendition at the time. In '94 I retrofitted several hundred traffic signals with LEDs (red, yellow and green LED modules vs. old tungsten incandescent lamps behind red, yellow or green glass lenses). The power for one 12" signal indication went from 150 watts to 25 watts....quite a savings in energy.

When you see one of the old glass lenses for the green up close you'll marvel how blue they were...that was to color-correct the yellowish glow of incandescent so it would appear green!

When I left there in '04 there after 31 years in the field there were no viable LED street lights on the market....I'm glad to see they have arrived. I'm a BIG fan of LEDs.
 
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CCTVCam

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The old lights were bell-shaped with a lens in open end. The one in front of our house looked like part of the lens was masked off, possibly in an attempt to limit light hitting bedroom windows. The new light has a grid of maybe 16-20 LED which are individually visible. They each may be set in their own reflector because they look pretty big at night. Based on the driveway picture, it looks like they're designed to throw more light sideways, along the road, than perpendicular. The amount of light on the street at that distance is impressive.
Some LED heads achieve light spread by being curved. This is very similar if not the same as the type of LED head in use in my city:



Although there are several different types of head in use which vary by curved for spread, straight for concentrated light, and double for more light / greater spread.
 

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I got a picture of the new light today. The marker says 30 LED but it looks like 16 to me.
The "30" isn't a count, it refers to wattage. From the ground you could look up, see a "25" on a yellow-colored label and know to grab a 250 watt high pressure sodium lamp off the truck before going up in the bucket. A "15" on a blue label meant 150 watt mercury vapor.
_____________________________________

Below is an excerpt from "History of Street Lighting in the United States", courtesy of Wikiwand:

"Fixture type identification

Many streetlights are marked with a NEMA wattage label to aid workers in identifying them.

The system is as follows: The color of the sticker indicates the type of light, the number is one tenth of the power in watts. The higher the number, the brighter the light. Newer stickers also have small letters printed in the lower right corner to indicate the type of light that is used in the fixture.

There are three exceptions to this rule:
•A "17" sticker adds a five to the power rating, and therefore, the light is rated at 175 watts.
•If a sticker reads "X1," it describes a 1000-watt light.
•If a sticker reads "3," it describes a 35-watt light.
•Also MH stands for Probe Start Metal Halide, while PSMH stands for Pulse Start Metal halide.

Sticker colors:
•Blue: Mercury vapor
•White: Light-emitting diode or older HPS
•Red: Metal halide (Probe start)
•Half Red/Half White: Pulse Start Metal Halide (PSMH) and some CMH
•Yellow: Older HPS, LPS, and some induction and some CMH
•Orange: new sticker color, now used for HPS "
 
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J Sigmo

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Another reason you're seeing such a dramatic increase in perceived illumination is because of where the new LED street lights place their light...on the ground, sidewalk and roadway which is where the objects would be that we'd need and want to see.

Old round or tubular shaped HID lighting (mercury vapor, metal halide, low and high pressure sodium) had a reflector behind them and a refractor / lens to help diffuse and direct the light in the intended direction, which is mostly down and toward the ground. But optics not always being perfect, a lot of that light went into the surrounding area and also upward, where it did little good. Some went into our eyes as glare, closing the pupils and lowering our ability to see objects that we can see only by reflected light.

As the signal & lighting maint. supervisor of a city in N. CA., I was never a proponent of the old-fashioned, "nostalgic" post lights installed downtown in the revived shopping area because they only lit the storefronts (great), some of the sidewalk (not very good) and cast glare directly into the drivers' eyes (NOT so good). Furthermore, the cast aluminum pole shafts were delicate and their unit cost was high (twice as much as a "standard" street light).

By design, the new LED's require very little, if any, optics to place their warmer, whiter light where it's needed and desired. Their higher lumen output, lower energy cost and longer life is icing on the cake.
I am so glad I'm not the only person who finds the "rustic-looking" street lights to be ridiculous, nay, asinine!

Here is what my city has elected to go with in many locations where they presumably want to achieve a "folksy" or "olde fashioned" look to the area:



I need to have my cataracts fixed, but have been waiting for the state of the art in flexible lenses to improve because I really really miss having my eyes be able to perform "autofocus". ;)

And I had both eyes experience posterior vitreous detachment a few years back. The result of both this and the cataracts is that I'm easily annoyed by and somewhat blinded by light shining directly into my eyes.

So all of that probably makes me more aware of certain lighting issues, but those ridiculous decorative street lights that emit most of their light NOT onto the road surface are one of my pet peeves. They blind drivers, waste energy, and pollute the night sky. Many places have passed laws banning lighting that ruins the dark-sky with excessive upward-directed light. The lights my city has selected are the very opposite of what one wants. The vast majority of the light they emit is either blinding drivers or just shooting upwards, wasted, and wrecking night viewing of stars, meteors, etc.

Generally, this area is fantastic for night-sky watching because of the low population. So it's fairly easy to get away from town and find true "dark-sky" areas where you can look up and see or photograph the milky way with ease, as well as other faint objects such as meteors, satellites, etc.

I wish the city council would get their heads out, and see how stupid these lights are. Besides, nobody designed lights this badly even long ago. Back when the light came from gas or even gas-mantel type lights, the light was precious, and not to be wasted this way. So most truly old-fashioned lighting at least attempted to direct the light to the surfaces where you wanted-needed it. These decorative lights are just plain stupid!


@Mr_D ,

FWIW, I lived up north of you in Santa Clara County for 29 years. Years before my arrival in '74, the City of San Jose required that all street lighting that was in the public right-of-way, City-maintained or any large number in a small area be low pressure sodium. Unlike the high pressure sodium (pinkish), mercury vapor (bluish) or metal halide (less bluish), the low pressure sodium was very orange-like but it was monochromatic (one color), not a blend of many colors (polychromatic). This property allowed the astronomers at Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton to use just a filter or two to block out the ambient light from those street lights and improve their visibility of the night sky.

Of course, no one else liked it, especially the cops. It was almost impossible to correctly identify color of clothing, hair, or vehicles. Coolant or other liquids on the pavement looked like blood. Everyone looked yellow with brown lips.

All of the early LPS lamps were Norelco (Phillips) brand and were made in Holland. Later, they were made by more companies.

Eventually, the car lots got a waiver so they could properly show the color of the cars for sale. They used mostly metal halide, the best HID lamp for color rendition at the time. In '94 I retrofitted several hundred traffic signals with LEDs (red, yellow and green LED modules vs. old tungsten incandescent lamps behind red, yellow or green glass lenses). The power for one 12" signal indication went from 150 watts to 25 watts....quite a savings in energy.

When you see one of the old glass lenses for the green up close you'll marvel how blue they were...that was to color-correct the yellowish glow of incandescent so it would appear green!

When I left there in '04 there after 31 years in the field there were no viable LED street lights on the market....I'm glad to see they have arrived. I'm a BIG fan of LEDs.
One thing that is interesting is the human eye's ability to discern contrast between lighter and darker areas. And that's about the best in the amber range of color. So the low pressure sodium lights may make driving safer, especially in adverse conditions, by improving our ability to see somewhat.

Skiers almost always wear amber goggles or sunglasses because it enhances the ability to see the subtle variations presented by snow that is illuminated by dull, diffuse light from a cloudy sky. And it helps "cut through" snow, rain, fog, etc. That is why true fog lights are always amber as well.

But recently, people have begun using headlight bulbs that emit light more in the bluish range (higher color temperatures). This is bad for a number of reasons. First, of course, is that the yellowish light that "old school" headlight lamps emit is far better for letting us see contrast. Next, bluish light is more readily diffused by mist, rain, snow, etc., so it tends to be directed back towards the driver far worse in those conditions. And third, it tends to dazzle oncoming drivers worse.

Add to that the fact that people are buying aftermarket LED replacement "bulbs" for their headlights. These are almost never DOT approved.

The problem is that while a typical halogen lamp for a headlight emits all of its light from a tiny filament (perhaps 1/8" long by 1/32" diameter), which is carefully positioned to be at the focal point or design point of the headlight, the LED replacement lamps have many emitters, typically arranged around a cylinder that can be several inches long and 1/2" in diameter! Obviously this defeats the careful design of the headlight reflector, and a HUGE amount of the emitted light goes out in all directions rather than being concentrated onto the road in a safe pattern. So these aftermarket LED lamps end up blinding oncoming drivers very badly, and not doing what the driver wants anyhow.

Yes, they may be very bright. But 90% of the light they emit is blinding oncoming drivers and spraying out where it doesn't illuminate the areas the driver needs to see.

I've considered building a gadget with an easily deployable array of photodetectors that officials could easily install on a wall somewhere, and then use to objectively analyze the light pattern and aim from a persoon's headlights. As much as I'm not generally a fan of government regulations and interference, I think vehicles suspected of using non-approved headlights, auxiliary lights, etc., should be pulled over and directed to submit to a headlight aim/pattern test.

If the lighting is not acceptable, then the driver should be fined as well as forced to replace the faulty lighting.

I'm sick of being blinded by idiots with aftermarket headlamps, driving lights, etc., who also seem to have no clue that you should dim your headlights for oncoming cars.

There, I've had my rant. I feel ever so much better now! ;)
 
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TonyR

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I They blind drivers, waste energy, and pollute the night sky.
Amen to that. And they are delicate...just a tap from a car bumper and you've got damage, even if that $200 glass globe doesn't touch the pavement. A crack in a cast aluminum or cast iron shaft or base can render it un-repairable and unsafe. And they cost over twice as much as a conventional 30 foot galvanized lighting standard initially and 3-4 times more over it's lifetime. The conventional galvanized ones will take a beating, never need painting, etc. The metal halide lamps give great color for a HID but they are most costly to maintain, lasting half as long as high pressure sodium.
Over the long haul they cost more and create more problems for the municipality.
I'm sick of being blinded by idiots with aftermarket headlamps, driving lights, etc., who also seem to have no clue that you should dim your headlights for oncoming cars.
I got used to living in CA for 29 years where at least the CHP and local cops looked at vehicle lighting, knew at least some of the vehicle code regarding what lighting on vehicles is permitted and made a few stops (that's ALL that I miss). Out here in AL you see people driving trucks with green lights in the grille or blue lights under a lifted 4 wheel drive truck.....most of the cops around here don't know the motor vehicle code at all. You've got ORV's (Gators, Mules, etc.) and 4-wheelers (ATVs) running up and down the road here like regular cars....cops don't even blink.

I wish it was unlawful here as it is in CA for towing companies and wrecker drivers to drive with their disabled vehicle in tow or on the flatbed with their @#$% bright amber rotating beacons or amber/white flashing LEDs on. At night you can't fall in behind them any closer than 500 feet without being blinded! They're out of the road, they're no longer a hazard, they're moving along with traffic at 35 to 60 MPH so what's the frickin' deal? Turn the @#$% lights off so I can see! What are you doing,, trying to show the world that you are a wrecker driver? Who gives a #%^&# ?? You are blinding other drivers ! :banghead:

There, I've had my rant. I feel ever so much better now! ;)
Me too! :highfive:
 
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J Sigmo

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Amen to that. And they are delicate...just a tap from a car bumper and you've got damage, even if that $200 glass globe doesn't touch the pavement. A crack in a cast aluminum or cast iron shaft or base can render it un-repairable and unsafe. And they cost over twice as much as a conventional 30 foot galvanized lighting standard initially and 3-4 times more over it's lifetime. The conventional galvanized ones will take a beating, never need painting, etc. The metal halide lamps give great color for a HID but they are most costly to maintain, lasting half as long as high pressure sodium.
Over the long haul they cost more and create more problems for the municipality.

I got used to living in CA for 29 years where at least the CHP and local cops looked at vehicle lighting, knew at least some of the vehicle code regarding what lighting on vehicles is permitted and made a few stops (that's ALL that I miss). Out here in AL you see people driving trucks with green lights in the grille or blue lights under a lifted 4 wheel drive truck.....most of the cops around here don't know the motor vehicle code at all. You've got ORV's (Gators, Mules, etc.) and 4-wheelers (ATVs) running up and down the road here like regular cars....cops don't even blink.

I wish it was unlawful here as it is in CA for towing companies and wrecker drivers to drive with their disabled vehicle in tow or on the flatbed with their @#$% bright amber rotating beacons or amber/white flashing LEDs on. At night you can't fall in behind them any closer than 500 feet without being blinded! They're out of the road, they're no longer a hazard, they're moving along with traffic at 35 to 60 MPH so what's the frickin' deal? Turn the @#$% lights off so I can see! What are you doing,, trying to show the world that you are a wrecker driver? Who gives a #%^&# ?? You are blinding other drivers ! :banghead:

Me too! :highfive:
I agree with all of that, Tony!

Here, lots of people drive pickups. And that's great. But so many of them are young kiddos, so we end up with a lot of decorations, etc., here too! And it does seem that the cops here either don't know the codes, or just don't want to bother with enforcing them, or perhaps we just don't have some of those lighting-related codes at all.

Ever since the outfits that make light bars and the like have found LEDs, the flashing lights on cop cars and such are also quite a hazard. Yes, we're proud of you. You can make an EXTREMELY BRIGHT flashing light now!

But you have to hold you hand up in front of your face, and shield your eyes to be able to see well enough to even slowly drive around a cop car that has someone pulled over! Someday, a cop or citizen will get run over by someone just trying to navigate past the stopped cop car, and maybe then something will happen.

This is 2018, for crying out loud. I put light sensors and auto-dimming on all of the LED display signs and scoreboards I designed back in the early 1980s! Tell me it wouldn't be super easy to have ambient light sensing to adjust the brightness of a light bar on an emergency vehicle in these times? Sheesh!

Some of the cops have figured this out, and they shut off some of their emergency lights to make it a bit less painful and dangerous to themselves and other drivers, but most have no clue. This should be automatic and part of the light bar or lighting system on any emergency vehicle. It's a shame, and ironic when the emergency vehicles themselves are creating an unsafe situation by means of their "warning" lights! And like you say, when some bozo leaves his flashing lights on when there is no hazard, and they're just driving normally, that's either trying to show off, or ignorance at work.
 

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This is 2018, for crying out loud. I put light sensors and auto-dimming on all of the LED display signs and scoreboards I designed back in the early 1980s! Tell me it wouldn't be super easy to have ambient light sensing to adjust the brightness of a light bar on an emergency vehicle in these times? Sheesh!
I hear ya..
The programmable visibility traffic signal heads made by 3M that I installed and maintained '73 through '04 had a 150 watt sealed beam, 120VAC lamp, lens and optics so you could mask off areas (lanes) where you did NOT want the drivers to see the display. Because of the optics that thing would put your eyes out at night so it had a photoelectric dimmer on it. Regular 12" signal heads also had a 150 watt but it was incandescent, only a reflector with no optics so it was OK at night.

Yeah, most LED sign manufacturers offer a dimming option but I think it should be mandatory. Those things are next to the roadway, for good reason, but can blind a driver at night.
 

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Looks like the proper LED security lights for the front of the house might be something to look into. Any thoughts on which LED lights would be best? Such as color etc.
 

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Looks like the proper LED security lights for the front of the house might be something to look into. Any thoughts on which LED lights would be best? Such as color etc.
Around natural daylight probably as cameras see light more analytically than we do. So, 2 words of caution here:

1. Cameras see a different spectrum to eyes so it's possible to get a light that looks OK to the eyes but paints a colour cast on a photo / film

2. Colour temperatures, (the true measure of a lights colour), seem to often vary wildly from manufacturers claims. I'm guessing poor Chinese manufacturing controls with some brands. In my experience, one manufacturer's 7K is anothers 4.5K! To this end, there is an element of trial and error / hit and miss with lights. Daylight is technically often said to be 4.5-5K but that's often yellowy in my experience. The best result for a white daylightish light tend to come from lights of 5-6.5K, although as I said, it's difficult to know what you're getting because there seems to be so much variation in the market. I tend towards 6-6.5k usually, but again I'm not using these with CCTV.

I have a 38W LED on my house and although it's sufficient for my needs, for CCTV, you'd probably want it brighter. If it's not on all the time, then you could go with a 100w or more LED. However, read other threads about the time delay between a light coming on / the camera switching from night to day mode - you may want early detection / switching or a camera permanently locked into day mode. I'll let others comment more on CCTV specifics, as I'm not using cameras with mine.
 

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And LEDs provide a discontinuous spectrum of light. So what might look "white" to the eye may be "seen" differently by a camera for that reason, too.

Plain LEDs emit light at fairly specific wavelengths. So you can have red, or green, or blue, or yellow (or pretty much any wavelength you want) LEDs, but not anything that looks white.

To achieve what will look white, the usual practice is to use an LED that actually emits in the blue or violet range to "pump" various phosphors. Those phosphors then emit visible light as they "relax" from the excited state to their ground state. To get a white look, phosphors that emit at various wavelengths can be blended to give a white-look to the light. But if you compare the spectra from these white LEDs to sunlight, you'll find that instead of a relatively smooth curve of brightness versus wavelength, they may actually emit light at several peaks. Newer white LEDs are better than old ones due to better phosphors or blends of phosphors. But they still don't produce a continuous spectrum like sunlight.

This is surprisingly similar to the way fluorescent lamps work. They, too, use a system that actually produces ultraviolet light, and then a phosphor coating to give us the visible "white" light we want.

Another way to get white or whitish light from LEDs is to use arrays composed of LEDs that emit at different wavelengths. So you might get a white-looking light by combining Red, Green, and Blue LEDs. Some of these lamps can be adjusted to produce different types of light by adjusting the drive to each color of LEDs separately. Fancy ones are sometimes used in art galleries and the like to allow the qualities of the light to be adjusted. Or inexpensive systems can let you set the "mood" in your house. And other uses are for aquarium lighting where you may want to adjust things to stimulate plant growth or provide a "moonlight effect" at night, etc.

I've got some fairly cheap "work lights" that have a knob on the back to adjust the color temperature. They incorporate two types of "white" LEDs. One group is warm white while the other group is more blueish. The knob adjusts the relative proportion of current fed through the LED arrays. There's another knob to set the overall brightness as well. Cranked to about the middle for color temperature, they actually allow photography with my particular digital cameras (Canon DSLRs and mirrorless units) to get rather good color images. How they'd work for other cameras would have to be determined by trial and error. These were cheaper than the fancy lights they sell for photographic use, and work amazingly well.

But the thing is, as @CCTVCam points out, the way any particular camera "sees" the light from any of these lights might be different than what you expect because the ways the sensors in the cameras actually measure and quantify the light falling on them.
 

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"But the thing is, as @CCTVCam points out, the way any particular camera "sees" the light from any of these lights might be different than what you expect because the ways the sensors in the cameras actually measure and quantify the light falling on them. "

Exactly. It would be interesting to see what LED works best with our IP cameras for the best night recordings. I think you two have given a direction in which to go. The one I have now has two PAR 38 bulbs. I will have to look into this more closely. Thank You.
 

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Looks like the proper LED security lights for the front of the house might be something to look into. Any thoughts on which LED lights would be best? Such as color etc.
I tried some low-profile LED motion lights recently and by the time they clicked on, they just wound up overexposing anyone in the front yard. I do have some bigger ones in the back which have much better range, but I'm not sure I want them on the front of the house.

I have these: https://smile.amazon.com/Sunforce-Detection-Distance-Resistant-Exterior/dp/B0751B5J85/

Two of them light up the whole back yard nicely though.
 

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Something to consider, especially given the very low power consumption of the LED lamps, is just running the white light all night. A simple "dusk to dawn" fixture fitted with LED flood lamp bulbs or an LED fixture that already incorporates the photocell, can be operated for very little expense.

Having the light on constantly all night eliminates the sudden change in brightness so the cameras don't need to adjust. That means that you never miss getting good images at that critical moment.

You can often run the low-light cameras (starlights) in color mode at all times that way. Or force them into black and white based on time of day. In Blue Iris, you can switch this based on dusk and dawn times. You may even be able to use BI to switch the lights on and off at the same time it switches the cameras from color to B&W mode. Lots of possibilities!

I have a porch light that stays on all night. My cheap-o cameras still switch over to B&W at dusk. My Starlight cams won't ever switch to B&W on their own, even at the most sensitive (least sensitive?) setting. I have to switch the porch light off to get them to switch if they're in auto mode.

And there can be good reason to run the cameras in B&W mode even with such a light on, because you can sometimes see more distant areas where your porch light doesn't reach, better that way. You have to play with it all to figure out what you prefer.
 

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I already have a dusk-to-dawn light on the driveway (just left of frame) and the porch light doing the same. I run those cameras in color mode 24/7. The front yard was darker since the old street lamp was so dim so I ran that camera in auto mode. I switched it to color mode after the new light went in. More light is always better but I'd have to rely on solar which means motion activated. Also, I don't really want the house lit up like a stadium at night since its a suburban tract with houses close together.
 
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