Ultimately I would like to enter my ZIP code into Security Spy and have it automatically derive the light and dark period daily based on the sunrise and sunset times for my latitude and longitude.
Unless and until that awesomeness is possible I need to create a schedule that is armed from say 9pm until 6am and I am having trouble achieving that without it going almost all armed. Is this possible?
There is a sunspy project created by Mike Harrington that does this, so you might want to take a look at that.
As for the schedule, it should be easy to create one that is armed from 9pm until 6am - could you describe in detail what problem you are having with this?
OK I made a new schedule, clicked once to create a red tick mark at 5:30am, then changed the Start and End time manually so I achieved what I want on Monday but cannot manage to change any other days.
You can drag the end position of each time object to a different day.
Alternatively, when creating a new time object, you click and drag: where you first click determines the start of the time object, and where you let go determines the end of the time object.
The periods in red defines time periods when the camera should be armed.
What you have defined in your screenshot is a time object that starts at 8 PM on Monday and ends at 5:30 AM on Monday. This, by definition, covers the whole of every other day.
Perhaps what you want to do is define one time object for each day, with each of them starting at 5:30 AM and ending at 8 PM? To do this, delete the existing time object, and then create new ones by clicking at 5:30 AM and dragging to 8 PM on the same day.