Floodlight Cameras
Installed Across
the Hudson Valley

Hudson Valley facts that shape a floodlight install

• Westchester: electricians need a county licence. “Plumbers and Electricians must obtain a trade license from Westchester County in order to work in the county,” says the county's Department of Consumer Protection, which lets consumers search licence holders online.
• Four electric utilities split the region. Orange & Rockland serves Orange, Rockland and Sullivan counties in New York (about 300,000 electric customers including northern New Jersey); Central Hudson serves about 315,000 electric customers from the northern suburbs of New York City to the Capital District; Con Edison serves most of Westchester; NYSEG serves much of Putnam and northern Westchester towns such as Bedford, Lewisboro, North Salem, Pound Ridge and Somers.
• Village lighting codes already ask for shielding. New Paltz (fully shielded fixtures, no more than 0.25 footcandles of light trespass at the property line), Cold Spring (full cutoff for single-family houses too) and the Town of Chester (mounting height tied to distance from the line for floodlights over 900 lumens).
• A statewide shielding bill is pending. A4615 would require shielded outdoor fixtures after January 1, 2028, but would allow non-shielded lights that are switched off from 11 p.m. to sunrise or are motion-activated for less than fifteen minutes with automatic shutoff.
• Bears are part of the night picture. DEC's range maps put breeding bears in the Catskills, southern Orange and Rockland and the Taconic Highlands into Putnam; DEC names bird seed and feeders as the most common attractant that brings bears close to homes.
• Storm outages are measured in tens of thousands. On the morning after Tropical Storm Isaias in August 2020, NYSEG had 34,150 of its 38,693 Putnam County customers without power, Daily Voice reported; a June 2024 line of thunderstorms knocked out a combined 60,000 Orange & Rockland and Central Hudson customers, according to the Times Union.

River-city houses: close neighbours, visible fronts

The older housing of the river cities behaves more like the Bronx than like the countryside around it. Houses sit close, yards are small and the back of one house faces the back of another. Newburgh's East End Historic District, which the city describes as the second largest designated historic site in New York State, and Kingston's five local historic districts both review exterior work that the street can see; in Kingston the Historic Landmarks Preservation Commission looks at it before a building permit is issued. So on these streets we keep the visible front modest — a compact light with a camera, or an existing lantern left in place and a small camera tucked beside it — and put the real floodlight at the back, aimed down into the owner's own yard.

Suburban lots: the garage is the centre of the plan

On a typical Rockland or central Westchester lot, the floodlight that matters most is the one on the garage, lighting the driveway, the side door and the gap between garage and house. The garage often has power already, either from the house panel or its own sub-panel, so the question is less about power than about aim: the driveway usually runs along the property line, and a light pointed straight down it lights the neighbour's side windows too. We mount high enough to look down the drive, turn the heads inward and set the motion zone to stop at your side of the line. Where the garage is connected to the house network by nothing at all, a single PoE cable from the house is usually more reliable than stretching Wi-Fi across the yard.

Wooded lots and long drives: distance, not walls

North of the Tappan Zee and the Bear Mountain Bridge, the properties that call us most often are the ones where the light needs to be a long way from the house: at a gate, a turn in the drive, a parking area or a detached garage several hundred feet back. Network cable can carry power and video only so far — Ethernet's standard channel is 100 metres, about 328 feet — so beyond that we look at the outbuilding's own power with a wireless or fibre link back to the house, or at a solar or battery camera where nothing else reaches. Trees shape the plan as much as distance: leaves block Wi-Fi in summer, branches trigger motion in wind, and a lamp aimed down a wooded drive lights a tunnel the camera can see but a neighbour on the hill above can also see.

Choosing Between the Six County Pages

Our house sits right on the Westchester–Putnam line — which county's rules and price apply to the floodlight?

The county your property is assessed in, which is the one on your tax bill, not the one on your mailing address. Hudson Valley postal towns cross county lines often, and a Mahopac or Brewster mailing address can sit in a neighbouring town for tax purposes. The county decides which electrical licence applies to any new wiring and which price factor we use; the town or village decides the building permit, the inspection agency and any lighting rule. So for a property near the line, send us the tax-bill municipality along with the address. The utility is a third, separate question: NYSEG and Con Edison territories both run through northern Westchester, and the supplier can change from one side of a road to the other.

Why does the same floodlight cost more to install in Kingston than in White Plains?

Because our county prices are set by a published multiplier rather than quoted case by case, and the multiplier rises with travel time and with the kind of work each county usually needs. Westchester carries a factor of 1.25 on our Brooklyn base, Rockland 1.30, Orange 1.40, Putnam 1.45, and Dutchess and Ulster 1.53. So a straight swap onto an existing box starts at $375 in Westchester and $459 in Ulster. The difference is not only the drive. Northern jobs more often involve a long cable run, an outbuilding, a solar unit or a battery backup, and those are built into the higher factor rather than added as surprises. The multiplier also means a quote for a Kingston house and a White Plains house can be compared line by line, because the work items are the same.

We own a house in Rockland and a cabin in Ulster — can both floodlights live in one app and be installed by one crew?

Yes, and it is worth deciding before either is bought. If both properties use the same brand of floodlight camera, or both record to recorders from the same maker, one app shows both places and one set of alerts can be tuned per property. We install both under the same plan, priced at each county's own factor, and usually on separate visits because the travel between them is long. The two sites will not need the same hardware, though: the Rockland light is likely a hardwired unit on the garage, aimed tight to stay off the neighbour's yard, while the cabin may need a network-powered light at the end of a drive, a battery backup and settings that cope with days of nobody home. Same app, different equipment.

Power When the Light Is Far From the Panel

Is a solar floodlight camera bright enough to be worth it on a shaded Hudson Valley slope in December?

Sometimes, and the spot decides it, not the brand. A solar floodlight camera depends on how many hours of direct winter sun its panel sees, and in December the sun is low, the days are short and a slope facing north or a stand of evergreens can leave the panel in shade nearly all day. In that case the battery drains, the camera drops to fewer clips and the light is the first thing the camera rations. Before recommending one we look at the panel position in winter terms: what will shade it when the sun is low in the south, and whether the panel can sit apart from the camera on a longer lead where the sun is. Where the answer is poor, a battery camera swapped and charged on a schedule, or a network cable, is more honest advice than a solar unit that works in June and fails in January.

How far from the house can a network-powered floodlight go before the cable stops working?

About 100 metres, or 328 feet, of cable from the switch to the camera, which is the standard limit for an Ethernet run carrying power and data together. That covers most suburban garages and many gates, but not the far end of a long rural drive. Beyond that distance there are three good options. One is a PoE extender part-way along, which needs a weatherproof box and sometimes its own power. Another is to bring the network to an outbuilding that already has power — by fibre, which has no practical distance problem on a property, or by a point-to-point wireless bridge — and power the camera from a small switch there. The third, where nothing else reaches, is a solar or battery camera. Whatever the route, the outdoor cable must be rated for burial or sunlight as the run requires; ordinary indoor cable breaks down outside.

Can the floodlight run off the lantern post at the end of our front walk?

Often, if the post is wired the way it looks. Many Hudson Valley houses have a lantern post at the walk or the drive with an underground feed from the house, and swapping the lantern for a post-mounted floodlight camera reuses that power. Three things decide it. The feed is usually on a switch or a photocell, so the camera dies whenever the lantern would have turned off; that has to be changed to a permanent supply, which is electrical work. The post has to be stiff enough to hold a camera still in wind. And the camera needs a network: a post forty feet from the house is usually within Wi-Fi range, a post at the road often is not. Where the old buried feed is old enough to worry about, an electrician tests it before anything is connected.

Shielding Rules, Glare and the Neighbours

Our village asks for fully shielded fixtures — do any floodlight cameras actually qualify?

Some do, but most twin-head floodlight cameras as sold do not, because their lamp heads can be aimed above the horizontal. New Paltz village defines a fully shielded fixture as one that lets no light shine above a horizontal plane through the lowest part of the fixture; Cold Spring asks for full-cutoff fixtures with the light source fully shielded and directed downward, including at single-family houses. A floodlight camera can meet the intent if its heads are fixed pointing down and the fixture is mounted so no lamp face is visible from next door, but whether it meets the letter depends on how the village reads its own code. The cleaner answer in these villages is often two devices: a shielded, full-cutoff light fixture that plainly complies, and a separate camera beside or below it. We bring the cut sheets so the building department can see what is proposed before it goes up.

If Albany passes the Dark Skies Protection Act, will the floodlight we install this year have to come down in 2028?

Not necessarily, and not on the bill as written. Assembly bill A4615 in the 2025–2026 session would require outdoor lighting fixtures to be shielded after January 1, 2028, but it would allow fixtures that do not comply if they are switched off from 11 p.m. to sunrise, or if they are motion-activated lights with a duration of less than fifteen minutes and an automatic shutoff. Most floodlight cameras already run that way: dark until motion, then on for a set number of seconds or minutes. The bill would also not apply in a municipality that has its own equal or stricter lighting law. It is a proposal, not law, and the final text may differ, so we install now in a way that would comply either way: heads aimed down, motion-only with a short timer, and no all-night operation at a home.

The Town of Chester ties floodlight height to the property line — how does that work out on an ordinary lot?

Chester's outdoor lighting chapter says that a flood or spot fixture rated at more than 900 lumens may be mounted no higher than three feet plus one third of the distance in feet to the nearest property boundary, and never above 25 feet; it must also emit no direct light above the horizontal. On a lot where the garage wall is thirty feet from the side line, that works out at thirteen feet, which is about where a garage floodlight goes anyway. Twelve feet from the line, it is seven feet, low enough to change the plan. Floods of 900 lumens or less are not limited by that formula, but must still be redirected if they shine at neighbouring houses or glare at drivers. In practice we size the light to the space first, often below 900 lumens for a driveway, which keeps both the formula and the neighbours out of it.

Our light sits on a rise above a curving road — what keeps it from glaring at drivers on the bend below?

Aim, cut-off and a light that only comes on when it should. A floodlight on high ground facing a road shines straight into the windscreens of drivers coming up the hill, and on a dark rural bend that is a safety problem, not only an annoyance; Chester's code, for one, says a flood that glares at drivers on public ways must be redirected or dimmed. We point the heads down at the drive and the parking area rather than out at the view, use a fixture with a sharp cut-off on the road side, and draw the motion zone so that traffic on the road itself does not switch the light on. If the camera needs to see the road for licence plates, it can do that with its own night vision while the light stays off.

Bears, Deer and Everything Else That Walks Past

Bears have started visiting our trash in Westchester — will a floodlight help, or should the money go elsewhere first?

Fix the trash first; the floodlight comes second. Teatown, the Westchester nature preserve, calls securing garbage “the single most important step” and suggests taking bird feeders down from April through November, while DEC names bird seed and feeders as the most common attractant behind conflicts between people and bears. A floodlight does not keep a hungry bear away from food it has already found, though a sudden light may move it on for the night. What a floodlight camera does well is show you what came, when, and from which direction, which tells you where the attractant is and whether the bins, the shed or the deck is the problem. We set the camera to record animals but keep the light for people, so a bear at the bin is filmed rather than spotlit every night.

Is it better to let the light come on for animals so the camera always gets a colour picture, or keep it dark and rely on infrared?

For most rural Hudson Valley properties, keep it dark for animals. A light that switches on for every deer, fox and raccoon spends the night flashing, which the neighbours across the valley notice, which the dark-sky villages discourage, and which teaches the wildlife that the light means nothing. The camera's infrared or low-light mode will still record the animal in black and white or muted colour. Where the camera can tell a person from an animal, we tie the light to people only, so a person approaching the house gets full colour and a sudden light. Where it cannot, we narrow the light's trigger zone to the door, the deck and the drive near the house and let the camera watch the wider ground on its own.

Storms, Outages and Four Different Utilities

After a long Central Hudson or NYSEG outage, why do some floodlight cameras come back on their own while others sit dark?

Usually because of what happened to the network, not to the light. When power returns, the floodlight boots in seconds, but the router and modem may take several minutes, and some cameras give up looking for the network and wait until someone power-cycles them. Others come back but lose their time setting and follow the wrong schedule. Network-powered cameras are at the mercy of the switch: if the switch is on a circuit that tripped, every camera on it stays down. We test this on every rural install by switching the house off at the main breaker and watching what recovers. The fixes are settings that make the camera retry, a battery backup that keeps the router and switch alive through short outages, and a switch on a circuit the generator covers.

Is a whole-house standby generator enough to keep the yard light and camera running through a storm?

Only if the circuits behind them are on the generator panel, and only after the generator has started. Many Hudson Valley houses with standby generators have them wired to a selected set of circuits — heat, well pump, fridge, a few lights — and the garage or the outdoor lighting circuit was left off. There is also a gap of several seconds to a minute between the grid failing and the generator taking the load, which is long enough for routers and some cameras to reboot. So we check which panel each floodlight, switch and router is fed from, and put a small battery backup on the network equipment to ride through the transfer.

Who Does Which Wiring, County by County

Westchester requires electricians to hold a county trade licence — does that cover the person who connects our floodlight?

It covers whoever does the electrical part. Westchester's Department of Consumer Protection says plumbers and electricians must obtain a trade licence from the county to work there, and it tells consumers to ask for the licence card or search the county's online list. Taking down an outdoor light and connecting a floodlight camera to its 120-volt wires is electrical work, and so is adding a new box or circuit, so in Westchester that is done by a county-licensed electrician. Mounting the camera, running network cable, setting up a PoE switch, the recorder and the app is low-voltage work, which is what our New York State licence covers. Our written quote separates the two, names who does each, and lists any town permit or inspection the electrical part needs.

Five of the six counties license electricians themselves — which part of a floodlight job does that reach, and what is different in Putnam and Dutchess?

The line-voltage side, almost everywhere. Westchester issues its own trade licence, Rockland licenses electrical contractors under Chapter 250, Orange requires a county-issued electrician licence under Local Law No. 8 of 2007 as revised by Local Law No. 1 of 2024, Ulster licenses electrical work under Chapter 185, and Putnam’s Consumer Affairs office runs an electrical board that licenses electricians. So in those five counties a new box, a new circuit or connecting a line-voltage floodlight is done by an electrician holding that county’s licence, and a few cities keep boards of their own on top. Putnam goes further, because it also licenses low-voltage and limited-data technicians and names video surveillance cabling, so the network cable to a PoE floodlight falls under a county licence too, starting from an outlet a licensed electrician installed. Dutchess is the exception: we found no county contractor licence, so licensing comes from the state and from what each town requires, and the town’s inspection agency checks the electrical work.

Newburgh lets owner-occupants pull their own electrical permit — can we do the line-voltage part ourselves and have you do the rest?

In the City of Newburgh, an owner who lives in a one- or two-family house can apply for an electrical permit for their own work, provided it passes inspection by one of the city's approved agencies before the permit is closed. If you do that part, we can do everything else: mount and aim the light, run the network cable, set up the switch, recorder and app. Other towns have their own rules, and in Westchester the county licence applies, so check with your building department before assuming the Newburgh arrangement holds where you live.

Getting a Signal Out to the Edge of the Property

Will a wireless bridge between the house and the garage carry floodlight video reliably through the trees?

If it has a clear line of sight, yes; through leaves, not dependably. A point-to-point wireless bridge is a pair of small directional radios, one at the house and one at the outbuilding, that link the two networks over a few hundred feet or more. They work very well when each radio can see the other. Through a stand of trees they may work in March and fade in June when the leaves come out, and wet leaves after rain are worse. So we look for a mounting point on each building that clears the canopy, even if that means a short mast, and we plan the link in leafless and full-leaf terms. Where no clear path exists, a buried cable or fibre is the reliable answer, and a camera that records locally covers any gaps in the meantime.

1. “Floodlight installation costs about $450 on average”

National figures cluster around a few hundred dollars. Inch Calculator's guide quotes roughly $450 as typical, a $250–$800 spread for most projects and $150–$350 a light for the labour; HomeCamCafe puts an electrician-fitted floodlight camera near $650. All of that assumes a box on the wall, or a few feet of new cable to one.

In the Hudson Valley the figure depends first on the county and then on distance. Our swap onto an existing box starts at $375 in Westchester and rises with the published county factor to $459 in Dutchess and Ulster. Where the spot has no power, the range in Westchester is $719 to $1,875 and in Ulster $880 to $2,295, because a light at a gate or barn may need a long cable, a bridge, an outbuilding switch or a solar unit.

An average blends a quarter-acre in Nanuet with a ten-acre lot near Pine Plains, which is why it describes neither. Tell us the county and the distance from the house, and the range narrows to something you can plan around.

2. “Mount the floodlight on the wall near the door”

Standard advice puts the floodlight on the house, over the door or the garage, because that is where a junction box usually is. Manufacturers' guides start from the same assumption: find the existing box, connect three wires, and you are done.

On many northern properties the door is the least useful place to light. A visitor reaches the house by a drive that may be several hundred feet long, passes a gate, a turn and a parking area, and is only near the door at the very end. A light on the house shows who rang the bell; it does not show the car that came up the drive at 2 a.m. and turned around before reaching it.

So on rural Hudson Valley properties we often split the job: a modest light at the house for the door, and a camera — lit or not — where the drive meets the road or the parking area, powered by cable, an outbuilding or the sun.

3. “Brighter is better for security”

The spec sheets lead with brightness: a Reolink PoE model is listed at 1,800 lumens, and a Lorex Wi-Fi unit carries two arrays of 2,000 lumens each. AI summaries pick that up and conclude that the brightest light is the safest choice and gives the best picture.

In much of the Hudson Valley more light is exactly what the local code asks you not to use. New Paltz village keeps light trespass to 0.25 footcandle at the property line and discourages floodlighting outright; Chester limits the height of floods above 900 lumens by distance to the line; Cold Spring wants full cut-off at every house. On a dark rural road, a 4,000-lumen light can be seen from across the valley and ruins the camera's own picture with glare off wet leaves and snow.

The better measure is control: lamp heads that point down, a fixture that cuts off at the horizontal, a brightness setting turned down to what the space needs, and a camera that records well in modest light. We size the light to the area, then the area to the code.

4. “No outlet nearby? Choose a wireless model”

Guides often answer “no power at the spot” with a wireless, battery or solar floodlight camera, as if that settles both power and connection. The word “wireless” usually means only that the camera sends video over Wi-Fi; it still needs power from somewhere and a network it can reach.

At the edge of a Hudson Valley property, both are the problem. The house Wi-Fi may reach the porch and fade at the garage, leaves block it in summer, and a battery camera that has to send video a long way drains faster in cold weather. Solar depends on the panel's winter sun, which a north slope or a stand of hemlocks can take away for months.

Wireless is a real option when the signal is tested at the exact mounting spot and the panel's winter shade is checked. Where either test fails, a network cable within its 328-foot reach, or a link to a powered outbuilding, is the dependable answer.

5. “Any licensed electrician can install it”

National advice, including Arlo's installation guide, tells anyone uncomfortable with electrical work to hire a licensed electrician. That is sound, but it skips the question of who licenses electricians where you live.

In the Hudson Valley the answer changes at the county line. Westchester requires its own county trade licence to work in the county. Rockland and Ulster license electrical work at county level, and Putnam extends licensing to the low-voltage technicians who run video surveillance cable. Orange requires a county-issued electrician licence as well. Dutchess has no county licence we could find, and many towns send electrical inspections to approved private agencies; the City of Newburgh even lets owner-occupants of one- and two-family houses take out their own electrical permit, subject to inspection.

So the right electrician is one licensed for that county and familiar with that town's inspection route. Our quote names who does the line-voltage part, who does the low-voltage part and which permit or inspection applies at your address.

6. “Motion detection sends an alert when someone approaches”

Product pages and AI summaries describe motion alerts as if motion means a person. Basic motion sensing reacts to warm moving bodies and changing pixels, which on a city lot is mostly people, cars and the occasional cat.

In the Hudson Valley the moving bodies are often deer, bears, foxes and branches. DEC's range maps put breeding bears through the Catskills and southern Orange and Rockland and reaching into Putnam; Westchester's reported sightings rose from two in 2019 to sixteen in 2021, according to Teatown. A floodlight that alerts on all of it either floods your phone or gets switched off, and a light that flashes on for every deer bothers everyone who can see it.

Person detection, motion zones drawn around the paths people use, and a light triggered only by people fix most of it. We spend part of every rural install watching what actually sets the camera off before signing it off.

7. “A floodlight keeps working as long as the house has power”

Most guides treat power as a given. In the northern counties it is the main variable. The morning after Isaias in 2020, NYSEG had 34,150 of its 38,693 Putnam customers out; Central Hudson reported crews restoring power to more than 19,000 homes and businesses after a slow-moving nor'easter in September 2026.

A hardwired floodlight camera goes dark the moment the grid does, and so does a Wi-Fi model's router. When power returns, some cameras rejoin on their own and some wait for someone to reset them — which, at a weekend house, may be days later. A standby generator helps only if it covers the right circuits.

So on Hudson Valley installs we test recovery by switching the house off at the main breaker, set cameras to retry the network, put the router and switch on a battery backup and check which panel feeds each light. The aim is a light that comes back by itself.

We also install floodlight cameras in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, White Plains, Tarrytown, Ossining, Peekskill and Bedford; Nyack, Nanuet, Spring Valley, New City, Pearl River and Haverstraw; Middletown, Goshen, Warwick, Monroe, Montgomery and Port Jervis; Carmel, Mahopac, Brewster, Patterson and Putnam Valley; Poughkeepsie, Fishkill, Wappingers Falls, Hyde Park, Rhinebeck, Millbrook and Pine Plains; and Kingston, New Paltz, Saugerties, Woodstock, Ellenville and Gardiner.

Already bought the floodlight camera? Labor-only installation

Owners often arrive with the camera already in the garage, still boxed. We fit it labor-only at your county's figures, after checking on paper that it suits the spot: box or plug, range from the router, how far down the heads tilt for a village code, and whether it talks to your recorder. In this region the usual trouble is not a bad camera but a good one bought for a wall with no power or a corner the Wi-Fi never reaches. Supplied equipment keeps its maker's warranty instead of ours. Pricing for labor-only work is set out on our bring-your-own-equipment page.