What outdoor lights to go with?

Hardware
1

Hey,

I need a couple of supplemental flood lights for my cameras I saw a couple of options dominant options:
a) Smart relay with regular LED flood lights
b) Mi smart lights.

I do not need RGB or a lot of light cheap chineese motion activated 2W LED blows out the sensors of camera as is.
I have Zigbee wifi and eathernet and even USB available.

I want to run it under my soffits.

Questions:
0) (unrelated to smart home) I hear that low voltage is better but isn’t DC current a higher fire risk because of arcing?

  1. What transformer to go with? 12 or 24?
  2. For smart relays I mostly see affordable Sonoff wifi relays but they do not use Ethernet and relays I saw that were using it were Chinees open board options? Are there safe relays with Ethernet options?
  3. For smart lights I saw FUTC08 is really popular on reddit. How bright is is compared to light in lumens? How far does the light go? How far or close does a controller on ESP866 has to be to control it?
  4. I saw flood light with PWM driver inside… Is that some form of decoder?
2

Eh. Only at very high fault currents which you can use fuses or circuit breakers for. The advantage of AC under these circumstances is that the current turns off every cycle so the arc is easier to extinguish.

Higher voltage = easier to start an arc
Higher current = hotter and harder to extinguish arc (very high currents can maintain long low voltage arcs once started).

At 24V with a current limited and fused supply this is not a huge issue.

This is what I would do:

  1. Buy good quality dumb AC mains powered outdoor flood lights
  2. Buy a zigbee switch
  3. Get an electrician to install them

That assumes you are talking about white light. For IR illumination I have fitted Lifx BR30 Nighvision smart lights that have IR LEDs to my spotlight fittings. I leave the spotlights on permanently (IR only) and switch them using home assistant. They don’t cover a huge area, 3 or 4m at most.

3

I am moving away from IR cameras because of insects just going wild over them so I am looking for some warm 300K and below warmth lights that I could deploy first one probably just pointed at the gate for time periods when it gets way to dark for even Hikvision Colorvu cameras to pick up further away motion.

I have two main options in mind:

AC option
Light and relay Philips project light:
Light:

In comparison table it says it works with bot AC and DC? that is little strange but even better if I move to DC later.

Relay Sonoff Basic R4:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/SONOFF-Wireless-Universal-Automation-Compatible/dp/B0CG8XDJ35/
Something like this I am not supper fan of relay using wifi because it would be in metal box but it should work

Total: ~ 20 EUR (I saw some deals in local supply)

DC Option
Litgh Mi Light FUTC08 :
https://www.aliexpress.com/i/4001144253527.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2deu
Lamp is individually addressable but it needs a controller:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/AZDelivery-NodeMcu-Development-unsoldered-including/dp/B07GYW4T5F

Transformer that I can find in my local hardware store probably something like this:
https://www.amazon.de/Transformer-VARICART-Driver-Constant-Voltage/dp/B0BRQ6Y9VZ/

Total: ~30 EUR

DC option looks to be less reliable because the controller needs to be able to pennate on the 2.4Ghz band together with wifi for longer distances as it needs to reach all the lamps but it seams to be safer… because I am not paying electrician 50 EUR for for this. Also it would make adding more lights and other fun effects more fun.
AC option looks to be much simpler but less safe yet cheaper.

It is an old house, so I am doing some quick fixes as I slowly over haul systems. Electrical is actually quite high on the list but not yet.