Cumulus Support

Do any of you disable the IR lamps on your cams?

My Webcam has built in IR illumination which is pointless for a camera that's aimed at the sky, so thinking I might open the camera up and disable the IR illumination. I'm sure that without it you might actually be able to see the sky at night, where as with it the IR obliterates everything excepting falling rain which it illuminates rather well!

Can you not turn it off in the camera setup? I was helping someone with a Foscam the other day and the IR can be switched off but defaults to 'on' after a reboot.

No, I just checked and definitely no software option to turn it off. Looks like I'll need to unscrew the front and snip a couple of wires.

It was easier than anticipated. Unscrewed the front, popped out the IR lamp board, unplugged the 12V feed, popped the board back in and screwed it back together. Nice and simple. Will see what difference it's made later.

Update: Much better at night wothout IR illumination whiting out the image. Can even see the clouds moving past at gone 23:00. A noisy image due to low light, but can be seen ok.