A sweep done in the wrong order wastes an evening. People reach for an RF detector first because it feels like the technical answer, and then spend twenty minutes finding their own phone. Meanwhile the cheapest devices in circulation have no radio at all, record to a card, and are found with a torch in five minutes.
So this runs optics first, cable second, radio third. Work down it in order. Nothing is stored, so if you close the page you start again.
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Before you touch anything
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Lines of sight and optics
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Power and cable
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Radio and the network
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Close it out
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The order is not decorative. Optics before radio, because a lens sweep costs five minutes and finds the cheap devices that have no radio at all. Nothing here is scored: a sweep is either finished or it is not, and a half-finished sweep tells you nothing except where you stopped.
The two finds that account for most of them
A cable that ends at nothing. Follow every cable to both ends and you will find the small number of devices that need mains power, which is most of the ones left running for weeks.
An object facing the room that nobody ever moves. Smoke detectors, clocks, chargers, air purifiers. Not because these are clever hiding places, but because they are the objects a guest will never pick up, and they sit at the height a camera wants.
On RF detectors
They work, within limits. A detector will find something transmitting while it is transmitting, which excludes anything recording to a card, anything on a schedule, and anything currently asleep. Sweep with your own phone and Wi-Fi off, move at walking pace, and treat a hit as a reason to look closely rather than as proof. The cheap ones alert on the router, the microwave and the television next door.
The router list is the underrated step
If someone has put a Wi-Fi camera in a room in your home, it is on your network, and your router admin page lists it. Write down what you own first, then read the list. Doing it the other way round means rationalising every unfamiliar name into something plausible.
If you find something
Photograph it where it sits, before you touch it. Then stop and think about who had access to the room, because that question is usually easier to answer than it feels. In a rental or a hotel, contact the platform and the police rather than confronting the host: in most jurisdictions what you have found is a criminal matter, and moving it first weakens the case.