Sleep, screen lock, and restarts

Detection continues normally while the screen is locked and while the display is asleep — neither stops the Mac from running.

OdinCam prevents the Mac from going to sleep on its own while it's running. It does not keep the display awake — the screen is left to go dark on its own schedule, since a lit 27-inch panel all night serves nobody and the camera doesn't care either way. Choosing Sleep from the Apple menu still works, as it should: a power assertion has no business overriding a deliberate instruction.

The gap that remains is a restart. After a reboot — a power cut, or an automatic macOS update overnight — the Mac sits at the login window and nothing records until someone logs in. OdinCam can relaunch itself at login, and it reports how much scheduled time it missed, so you're never left assuming a quiet night was genuinely quiet.

On a machine dedicated to monitoring, turning off automatic macOS updates is worth considering.