1st gen floodlight camera shuts off before schedule

Products Security Cams
23

I called ring support about this issue and they walked me through a reset, checked some settings on their end, monitored my activity and followed up the next day to be sure it was fixed. It has been working since. Hope this helps you.

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24

rjward -

After seeing your post, I tried some experiments.

I created a new dusk-to-dawn light schedule. Amazingly, it turned lights off minutes after turning them on.

I then created a new light schedule using custom start/end times that more or less simulate a dusk-to-dawn scenario. The lights stayed on longer than the dusk-to-dawn light schedule, but turned off before the end time.

It’s ridiculous that Ring products keep going “backwards in time”… where features that previously worked no longer work.

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25

Mine was resolved with a hard reset on the light. Took less than 10 minutes, and the support staff from Ring were amazing. Hope this helps you.

26

@Frustrated427 I have linked Floodlights and this same issue is happening to me. It started around the time this thread started (about a month ago). I’m just now getting so frustrated trying to solve it that I finally ended up here on the forums.

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27

RING COMMUNITY MEMBERS:

  • Thank you to all the Ring Community members who took the time to post information/observations in this (and other) threads regarding SERIOUS Ring Floodlight Light Schedule problems. A special thanks is due to the members who were essentially able to “put a pretty bow” on the information/observations supplied by other members.

RING MODERATORS:

  • It appears that at this point, Ring has possessed the necessary information to troubleshoot/fix serious bugs relating to Ring Floodlight Light Schedules (and perhaps, other Ring Floodlight light problems) for WEEKS (or longer).
  • It is truly shameful that Ring has seemingly been unwilling to expend even a small number of MINUTES to test (valuable) information/observations provided by Ring Community members. Had Ring been willing to do so, it would have presumably been pretty obvious that Ring Community members were, indeed, correct.
  • Interestingly, I decided to perform a couple of tests using (TEMPORARY) workarounds in an attempt to avoid the SERIOUS (design flaws and/or) programming bugs that appear to be causing problems. Fortunately, my experiments seemingly proved to be successful. For example, for the first time in WEEKS, the Ring “Dusk to Dawn” Light Schedule I created seemed to work properly.
  • Sadly, one has to wonder what it is going to take to get Ring to fix these problems. (One can only speculate as to why the troubleshooting/fixing of problems that cause serious SAFETY/SECURITY issues for customers does NOT seem to be considered a top priority by leadership.)
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28

Hello, apologize if this topic covered elsewhere, could not find…

Very recently I began to notice that at night, when my several outdoor floodlights are already on from dusk to dawn, that when I ARM the system, i.e change from disabled to either home or away, that the lights all go off.

I then turn them back on one by one, and they each TURN off again after about one minute…

It took me awhile to figure out a work around, but I think if I go into device settings for each floodlight camera, turn OFF the dusk to dawn light schedule, and then turn each back on , that they stay on.

If I had already changed MODE to home or away PRIOR to dusk, they go on correctly and stay on.

Any thoughts/help? Is this a new phenomenon anyone else has noticed?

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29

alanc-

Thank you for taking the time to post your (detailed) observations.

As you may have noticed, Ring Community members have pointed out VARIOUS types of floodlight light problems related to:

  • Ring Floodlight (1st Gen) devices
  • Light Schedules

Are your Ring floodlights “1st Gen”? If not, it implies that Light Schedule problems have now spread to one (or more) additional models of Ring floodlights (presumably, due to an automatic firmware update).

Clearly, Mode changes should NOT (secretly) impact Light Schedules. Users should be able to change Modes whenever they want either manually (or using a schedule) without impacting the status of floodlight lights.
Since Light Schedule problems cause serious safety/security issues for Ring users (as well as a great deal of inconvenience) – one would have hoped that ALL of the floodlight Light Schedule issues would have been solved by now. (It’s ridiculous that Ring Light Schedules do not perform as well the Dusk-to-Dawn features in cheap porch lights. It’s even more ridiculous that Ring keeps “breaking” features that worked in the past.)

Again, thank you for taking the time to post your (detailed) observations.

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30

alanc -

As you may have noticed, there are now a number of Ring Community threads that contain posts related to Ring Floodlight Light Schedule problems (as well as Ring Floodlight light problems, in general).

Have you, by any chance, seen the thread titled “1st gen floodlight camera shuts off before schedule”? (At this point, it may be the thread with the largest number of posts on the topic.)

Interestingly, in that thread, you’ll notice a post by Ring Community member “user20851” that mentions their observations regarding how selecting Home Mode immediately turns off the lights on their two oldest Floodlight Cams (out of three).

Since in may be helpful to have as many posts relating to a topic as possible in a single thread, have you considered:

  • Asking moderators to merge your thread with the above-mentioned one and/or
  • Adding a post of your own to the above-mentioned thread
31

alanc,

Brilliant post. I will test this tonight on my system.

I too noticed similar behavior. I was going mad as I kept seeing my lights go off at 11pm like clock work. I have my alarm auto arm at 11pm to Home and never made the connection that this might be the issue.

There is a serious bug on the light schedules for sure that was recently introduced. I had mine running for 2+ years with no problem, then suddenly it’s all messed up without me making any changes.

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32

Hi neighbors. We have passed the information in this thread onto our team already. However, it is recommended to reach out to our support team directly if this persists despite all troubleshooting attempts. Our support team is able to review this more deeply and log any applicable information for our teams that are investigating this concern.

In the meantime, please review the following information:

  • Verify that your Floodlight Cam has a strong and stable connection by reviewing the RSSI in the Device Health page. You can learn more about RSSI and what it means here.
  • If you have a Shared User with access to your Floodlight Cam, ensure that they are not toggling the lights on or off manually.
  • Take screenshots or recordings to demonstrate the current Light Schedule compared to what you’re experiencing with your Floodlight Cam. The support team may ask for examples to accurately log what’s going on.

Please give our support team a call at one of the numbers available here. If you are outside of the US, please visit here to see how to contact support. For now, I will be marking this reply as the solution in order to make this information easily accessible to any neighbors who may be experiencing this concern. Thank you for your continued feedback and patience.

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33

Caitlyn_Ring -

Thank you for merging several other posts into this one and passing the information on to your “team”.

I strongly disagree with you, however:

  • Marking this thread as a “Solution”. The problems in this thread have definitely NOT been solved. Perhaps you need to create a new type of “thread status” such as “Currently Being Invested by Ring QA Dept.”.
  • As far as I can tell, there is absolutely NO REASON for ANYONE to contact your Support team regarding these problems. Doing so will probably only stress out the user, waste their time, and lower their privacy/security – for no reason.
  • As far as I can tell, there is also NO REASON for Ring users to perform any of the other tasks you suggest in your post. What would be the point?

Just to be perfectly clear… I can EASILY and CONSISTENTLY reproduce the Floodlight Light Schedule problems in this thread (as well as perform a TEMPORARY workaround to counteract the design flaws and/or programming bugs causing the problems) – using any one of a number of different strategies. I assume that other Ring Community members can do so, as well. It’s definitely NOT rocket science (particularly, if you’ve glanced at the posts in this thread first). If the members of your “team” are unable to quickly/easily do so, perhaps your company has FAR LARGER problems than you realize (and/or are willing to admit).

Fortunately, the ability to quickly/easily troubleshoot these problems applies whether you perform a “Quick Test” (of a Floodlight Light Schedule using Custom Start End/Times) or an overnight test (of a Light Schedule using a “Dusk to Dawn” strategy). You can probably perform a “Quick Test” in FAR LESS than ten minutes (particularly, if you decide the method you plan to use before you start a test). In fact, if you know what you’re doing, you can probably perform a “Quick Test” in a few minutes (or less). Performing a TEMPORARY workaround is very quick and easy, as well.

Interestingly, I noticed that there was a new Ring app update available this morning (i.e., iPadOS Ring app version 5.53.1). I decided to perform a “Quick Test” both BEFORE and AFTER I installed the Ring app update. Sadly, both tests failed, as expected. In other words, the Ring app update seemingly did nothing to solve the problems.

As you know, Ring users have no control over automatic firmware updates (which may have caused the problems in the first place). Unfortunately, Ring does not provide “Release Notes” for Ring app updates and/or automatic firmware updates (nor does it provide firmware installation dates for each device) – which causes all sorts of problems.

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34

Regarding lights turning off when alarm switches to Home Mode, I confirmed this is happening with my FIRST Gen Ring cameras as well.

I went into the Ring App, clicked on the camera and scrolled back through the snapshot capture timeline to the time of my scheduled Mode change. You can clearly see the light switching OFF at the same time of the Mode change. My snapshot frequency is 30 seconds.

Also, I clicked on my SECOND Gen Camera and scrolled back through its snapshot timeline, here the light stayed ON (and kept on) at the time of the Mode change.

I only noticed this was happening and came to this forum because I noticed one of the cameras had captured motion but went through a delay period of switching on the lights, when the lights should have already been on. I have Color Night Vision on so I can see a little but it is not the actual lights on.

Last month I had a different issue whereby my lights were staying on late morning (after light schedule should have turned off) and would not switch off, I tried numerous things but that issue seemed to be fixed with a full new setup, which included an update. I spent a long time troubleshooting that on my day off, so I will sit this issue out and hopefully Ring can provide a fix soon, thanks.

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35

Same problem here - all 1st gen floodlights and I have about 8 and 6 new ring floodlight PRO all affected by this : dusk to Dawn or timed light setting goes haywire as soon as ring alarm is disarmed after the start time or dusk.

Just started happening. Very very frustrating as I live in a dark area and rely upon these floodlights working to stay on around my property! Started about a - month ago

PLEASE FIX ASAP RING!!! A hard reset of 14 floodlight cams is not practical . Needs to be fixed w a firmware update

Reading this thread I’m going to try one thing tonight - start a schedule at dusk and end it at 2359 hrs and start another from 0001 to Dawn - as a hobbyist programmer myself I suspect somehow the code crossing over the date change at midnight is the problem — surprising an amateur like mistake cannot be easily fixed by such a big corporation (interestingly Arlo doesn’t allow schedules to crossover midnight either?!)

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36

Unfortunately, at this point, it seems clear that there are a number of reasons why Ring Floodlight Cam (1st Gen) lights turn OFF unexpectedly (if they were turned ON by a Light Schedule).

For example, the latest reason I discovered is related to turning on the Ring Snapshot Feature (with the 3 Minute option). In other words, if floodlight lights were turned ON by a Light Schedule, they will turn OFF shortly after the Ring Snapshot feature is turned ON by the user. I can replicate this problem EASILY and CONSISTENTLY – as is the case with the other Light Schedule problems that I am aware of.

There is seemingly no reason for floodlight lights to be negatively impacted by other Ring features. In other words it’s almost as if Ring programmers specifically granted various (rogue) app features the ability (when triggered by a user or schedule) to ignore the value in a Light Schedule End (time) field and immediately turn off the lights that were turned on by the Light Schedule. This, in turn, creates serious security problems for the user.

Because there is so much useful information in this thread, one would hope that Ring can quickly troubleshoot (and fix) all of the known Light Schedule problems.

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37

i feel like a lamplighter of the old days…every night I have to manually “light” each ring floodlight - of course its like a game of whack a mole until finally every light actually stays on - I’ve found no consistent method yet but after 1030 pm as others have reported they seem to stay on if manually triggered on. Ive tried device health → reboot device and that seems to work … sometimes. Sometimes I delete the schedule on each floodlight and rebuild it.

what a complete waste of time – boggles me that they can’t figure this out. If the API was opened up so we can set up an alexa routine to turn these lights on that would be easier to manage at least, or as a failsafe.

My latest theory for a temporary fix : try making a schedule 1900-2359 and another one 0000-0600 (or whatever times you need, just don’t cross midnight I think that might be the glitch). After that do a device health → reboot device and/or manually turn the light on in the app. Hopefully it sticks.

If anyone has even a temporary workaround I will take it - as going thru all these floodlights that I really need to stay on all night is a mess.

As mentioned in this thread, it MAKES NO SENSE that the floodlight light schedule is impacted by ring alarm mode change from armed to disarmed etc or snapshot capture

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38

shawnwgates -

I definitely agree with your “whack a mole” imagery.

Unfortunately, the TEMPORARY workarounds I’ve tried are truly temporary because:

  • The workarounds are too inconvenient to be considered a “fix” and/or
  • Although they may increase the chance that a given Light Schedule will work properly at a particular point in time, they do NOT necessarily guarantee it and/or
  • Anytime the user, a schedule, a mode, etc. activate a Ring app feature… the user has to worry about whether it will cause the floodlight lights to be turned off (if the lights were turned on by a Light Schedule).

It’s obviously ridiculous that so many different Ring App features are seemingly allowed to negatively impact Light Schedules. Why should ANY Ring app feature be allowed to turn floodlight lights off – unless it was specifically designed for that purpose (and is doing so with permission from the user)?

One would think that Ring leadership would be so embarrassed that the company keeps “breaking” Ring app features that they would ensure that :

  • Such problems stop occurring
  • If such a problem does occur, it is quickly fixed
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39

The fact that Ring Floodlight Cam Light Schedule problems seem to currently be restricted to 1st Gen devices seems very significant.

For those of you who have been experiencing such problems:

  • Do you have a Ring Bridge… or another device that is capable of functioning like a Ring Bridge (such as a Ring Doorbell Pro 2)?
  • Is the Sidewalk feature turned ON or OFF in your Ring app?
  • Have you turned on Ring’s End-to-End Encryption feature for one (or more) Ring devices?
  • Are you also experiencing problems with other Ring features? For example:
    • Does the method you use for turning floodlight lights off (if they’ve been turned on manually) make a difference? Is your experience noticeably different if you compare doing so using the “Lights” toggle switch on the main screen for a particular floodlight versus using the “Lights” Shortcut (tile) on the Ring Dashboard? (Does the latter method provide a slow and buggy experience?)
    • Does Ring keep replacing the rightmost Shortcut (tile) on your Ring app Dashboard with a different one? I find that this problem keeps occurring no matter where the (rogue) shortcut previously appeared in the “Hidden Shortcuts” list. Unfortunately, I am unable to carefully monitor the Ring Dashboard 24x7, so I don’t know the exact time this occurs in each instance. It does seem, however, as if the problem may be directly (or indirectly) associated with floodlight Light Schedule problems.
40

OK I think I figured something out!!!

So in the ring app go the the floodlight. If the floodlight picture on the floodlights page in the app has a disarmed or armed logo on the floodlight — its not going to follow the light schedule. This is an example screenshot of the page in the app I’m talking about - the main screen for the floodlight: https://content.nexus.support.com/5b557b9559124044bb566bfc31a09c80/9c20bf5023fd11e89e803f2bea5063c1.png – the floodlight in the top left has an icon superimposed above the left flood light - either a calendar or the armed/disarmed mode symbols.

IF you have the calendar icon on the floodlight’s picture then the schedule will be followed. I’m surprised ring support couldn’t figure this out. They must have changed how the behavior works in the various modes.

So if you’re missing the calendar logo on your ring floodlight page (and you have the armed/disarmed logo there instead), simply go to MODE SETTINGS in the floodlight’s page (top right tile for me) - at the bottom you’ll find something that says “DISABLE MODE SETTINGS for DOORBELLS AND CAMS” - THAT IS THE FIX!!!

Good news is that the ring alarm can still use each floodlight for siren and lights - that seems to be unaffected by changing this setting. I guess the reason they even have this setting is so that you can prevent the floodlight from recording when disarmed ? This might be needed if you have indoor cameras that you want off / not recording in certain modes – Anyway, hardly necessary for my case since mine are all outdoors and I suspect others. At least the light schedule is now fixed!!! No more stupid floodlights turning OFF when the ring alarm is disarmed or armed etc.

EDIT: If you still can’t get the calendar icon, try delete the schedule and re-make a new one. If that doesn’t work, device health and reboot device. Or turn on the mode settings and then disable mode settings for doorbells and cams as above. I’m also noticing now NO ICON on several of the cameras == I’m guessing that if the schedule is not active times the calendar might not show? I’m starting to think there could be more than one issue here…Maybe the calendar icon is okay if it doesn’t show - I’ll post an update depending on how it works tonight.

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41

I still have this issue on my 1st gen floodlights. The light schedule has not worked for a long time now. I have tried the temporary fixes without luck. Is there any update from Ring on a real fix?

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42

I’m having the same problem too. I have first gen floodlight and ring alarm. If I change alarm modes my floodlight lights turn off and won’t adhere to the set light schedule for the rest of the night. My mother in law with the same setup is having the same problem. No where in the app is there a link between alarm modes and light settings that I can find.

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