Hi all, I’ve been looking online at smart activated flood lights and they are all a bit lackluster to be honest, So I was thinking of using an energy monitoring clamp that exposes energy/voltage, so that when the flood light turns on (draws power) the clamp picks it up and automations can be made of that such as camera activation or notifications ect.
Has anyone done anything similar? If so have you had any issues ect?
If this works i’ll do something similar for my doorbell and porch light.
What are you using to activate the floodlights? Do they have a motion sensor on them already?
What about using a motion sensor next to the light, so if it sees motion you can pick trigger an automation?
Or, perhaps use a LUX sensor that detects the change in light brightness.
sorry the floodlight has a built in motion sensor that also has lux sensitivity and i would treat it as a normal floodlight. the “smartness” is effectively a “read only” switch that sets off an automation when it notices the floodlight drawing power (or atleast more power then when its in an idle state).
I see several benefits to this. the smart device doesn’t need to be IP60+ rated as it will be indoors. there will be -much- more choice when it comes to floodlights (for obvious reasons) and they wont be super expensive.
This is an example floodlight as they are all roughly the same in functionality
Cheaper than clamps, you could use Shelly plus pm to monitor consumption. Another option is some device with lux sensor. There are plenty of those around, also battery operated.
I like the idea with the power meter!
As already proposed the shelly plus pm might be a good choice. I see the following benefits:
I read the docs for a shelly device which controls covers. It is more or less a pm and it uses the pm for obstacle detection. The cover draws more power in that case and the pm turns off the output.
So your idea does not seem that uncommon 
give it a try!
Dan