Hey all - first off, thank you so much for all of the incredible information on this forum. I became a new first-time owner of a beautiful 6 month old female a few weeks ago, and thanks to your info and guides I was ready with a nice habitat right away when she got home! Temps/humidity are still a bit of a work in progress to reach a "hands-off" / autonomous point, but I'm pretty pleased with where they're at most of the time and never let them fall below minimums (50%, 78' cool side 87' warm side). Successfully feeding f/t rat pups with no issues, and even handling is going well as far as I can tell.

So, that all said, I'm already looking at my next steps for the enclosure, since it's definitely more of a display case than a hide bin (glass tank with lots of fake foliage). The first step is that I would like to set up some lighting. However, I'm trying to be cognizant of the ball python's natural day/night lighting patterns. There are a few guides on here for installing LEDs into an enclosure, but are those intended for night time use? Will the LEDs seem too much like daylight, and throw off the nocturnal instincts? (I would keep them a cool dim color)

The second step is potentially creating a nightvision camera to check in on her when I'm out, since she pretty exclusively comes out at night. It looks like the most common way to DIY a nightvision camera is to remove the infrared filter from a regular webcam and flood the target area with infrared light. Infrared is invisible to the human eye, but I have no idea if the snake can see it. Would it seem like a bright spotlight, or would they interpret it as heat, or something? Has anyone done anything similar?

Oh, and obligatory picture - this was at the expo picking her up for the first time. Much less shy now, and getting more comfortable every day!