@Carl Well, I went ahead and taped over the lights on the Tapo camera, and the result was a dramatic improvement in nighttime performance, using an external IR light source. Two major improvements:...

@Carl I had already disabled the status LED. I got an external IR light source and went back to IR night mode, and the results were very good, an offset light source is very effective. Now if I could...

@Carl Well, that did not actually solve the basic problem, I am still getting false detections from near-field items. Shifting to color night mode turns off the ir flood, but it leaves the optical...

Any fog or mist at night results in an overwhelming streaming of streaks across the field of view, and triggering of motion detection. This is because the on-camera IR light souce preferentially...