In this post:
- How The Ring Floodlight Cam Works
- How Long The Lights On The Ring Floodlight Cam Stay On For
- How Light Schedules Can Help Your Ring Floodlight Cam's Lights
- How Long The Recordings Last On The Ring Floodlight Cam
- Can The Ring Floodlight Cam Come On During The Day?
- Would I Recommend The Ring Floodlight Cam?
The Ring Floodlight Cam is a really useful two-in-one smart camera: it has all the usual smart cam functionality that you’d expect from Ring, along with two lights which output a total of 3,000 lumens of brightness (which is quite bright, in case you aren’t too sure how much 3,000 lumens is!).
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But how exactly does this device work? How long do the lights stay on for after being triggered? And how long do any recordings last? Well, the summary is below but there’s a lot more useful information to know about the Floodlight Cam…
The lights on the Ring Floodlight Cam stay on for 30 seconds by default, but this can be adjusted. Video recordings are 1 minute in length, but this is also fully adjustable.
How The Ring Floodlight Cam Works
As I mentioned in my introduction, the Ring Floodlight Cam is quite an interesting smart camera. It has a Ring smart camera (which looks very similar to the Ring Spotlight Cam) at the bottom, but two floodlights too:
Since Ring cameras don’t record 24/7, they instead wait until motion is detected and then they start recording. But in the Floodlight Cam’s case, the two floodlights are also turned on at this time.
This is pretty useful because if a burglar is approaching your property, a bright floodlight will be turned on as they approach, plus they’ll be recorded in full HD (along with you being notified of this): a win-win! And if that’s not enough, you can also choose to manually turn on a siren alarm to scare off the burglar.
In 2021, Ring revamped the original Floodlight Cam (shown above) and bought out the Ring Floodlight Cam Plus and Pro. The Floodlight Cam Plus is very similar to the original Floodlight Cam (everything mentioned in this guide is still the same), although it does have the ability to change the brightness on the lights too:
This all sounds great, but sometimes a bright floodlight is annoying. This leads people to ask how long it’ll stay on for? And whether you have some level of control over the Ring Floodlight Cam’s lights? Thankfully as the following two sections show, the answer to both questions is: yes, you can!
How Long The Lights On The Ring Floodlight Cam Stay On For
By default, the Ring Floodlight Cam’s lights stay on for 30 seconds after motion is detected. However this is fully adjustable. For example, if you don’t want the lights to come on at all, you can launch the Ring app, go into your Floodlight Cam, go to Device Settings and then Light Settings:
Alternatively if you want them to come on for longer than the default 30 seconds, click on “Motion Settings for Lights” and the final drop-down box allows you to increase the time the lights stay on for:
I find that when I go into my backyard at night, it’s often to go into my garage to get something – so keeping the lights on for 3 minutes works well for me. But the full options are:
- 30 seconds (the default)
- 1 minute
- 3 minutes
- 5 minutes
- 15 minutes
Unfortunately you can’t choose anything between these values (i.e. you can’t say 2 minutes or 10 minutes), but the pre-set options here should hopefully be sufficient for most people.
Finally, you can manually turn the light on and off via the Ring app on the main page for the device:
When used in this way, it’s just like flicking a light switch: it’ll turn the light on (or off) and keep it that way. In other words, there’s no automatic switch-off timer when you enable the lights on the Ring Floodlight Cam in this way.
How Light Schedules Can Help Your Ring Floodlight Cam’s Lights
Another useful feature of the Ring Floodlight Cam is the ability to turn the lights on and off on a schedule: a bit like how smart lights and smart plugs can be configured.
This is also done on the “Light Settings” page I shown earlier. Click into “Light Schedule” page and enable the toggle box:
Once enabled, you’ll see the two “Turn lights on” and “Turn lights off” options: this is fairly self explanatory. Adjust them to what’ll suit your requirements, and hit “Save”. Then between those times, your Ring Floodlight Cam’s two lights will permanently be on.
If motion is detected in this time, they’ll stay on even after the “automatic shut-off timer” has expired.
How Long The Recordings Last On The Ring Floodlight Cam
By default, recordings from the Ring Floodlight Cam (which start after motion is detected) will last for 60 seconds. But just like the light settings, this is also fully adjustable.
In the Ring app, go to your Floodlight Cam, then “Device Settings” and finally “Video Settings”. Here you will see a “Video Recording Length” option. Click the “Max Recording Length.” option and you can adjust the recording length upwards or downwards:
As you can see, you can decrease the recording length slightly to 50 seconds or increase it to 90 seconds or 2 minutes. It’s not a slider allowing for fine-grained control, but it’s nonetheless useful to have the ability to make your recordings longer (or very slightly shorter!) if you’d like.
When this option is changed, only new recordings will be adjusted: you aren’t able to see more (or less) footage from your previous recordings via this option. This is because the recordings have already been made and uploaded to the Ring cloud, and thus there’s no extra footage stored anywhere to display to you.
Can The Ring Floodlight Cam Come On During The Day?
When I first installed my Ring Floodlight Cam, I noticed that the lights had come on:
I found this a bit odd and I hoped that this wouldn’t continue… and thankfully it didn’t! It was just part of the setup process.
My Ring Floodlight Cam lights have never come on during day-time. The only time that it would come on during day-time is if you:
- You go into the Ring app and turn the light on via the main device page.
- You setup a Ring light schedule.
In other words, the Floodlight Cam shouldn’t come on during the day unless you (or someone with access to your Ring app) has configured it to do so.
If it is on during the day, firstly check that the ‘light’ option is off within the Ring app:
Assuming that’s off, go into “Device Settings” and then “Light Settings”, and view the schedule:
If this option is turned on and it’s between the listed times, that’s why your lights are on.
If not, it could be worth turning the light on and off again – either via the switch that controls it (if you have a switch in that circuit, of course!) or via your house’s breaker panel if needs be.
Would I Recommend The Ring Floodlight Cam?
Overall, I’m very happy with my Ring Floodlight Cam (as you can probably tell from this article!). Whilst it’s one of the more expensive Ring products, it is sometimes on sale and in my opinion it’s worth the money.
It’s really useful to have a bright floodlight (two, in-fact!) along with all the usual smart Ring features. It’s also nice to have a combined floodlight and camera because you know that they’ll both work together well.
My garage has a separate CCTV (DRV) camera and standard floodlight next to it, and the DRV camera footage gets washed out for a few seconds whenever the floodlight turns on. This doesn’t happen with the Ring Floodlight Cam: footage is viewable before, during and after the lights coming on.
I previously had a 800 lumen motion light in my backyard which barely lit anything, so the upgrade to a 3,000 lumen floodlight cam which also helps protect my property via its full HD recordings has been a big improvement.
