I have 2 chimes. They are located in 2 seperate rooms.
Chime 1 keeps disconnecting almost every day for a few hours, then reconnects. Chime 2 ist stable. RSSI is around 50 for both.
For testing I switched chime 1 and 2. Again chime 1 (now at the other location) is disconnecting and chime 2 is stable!
So it’s clearly a problem of chime 1 and not related to the location or distance to the wifi router or anything like that.
I can see many posts about disconnecting chimes but none with a solution. So what do I have to do to get this fixed?
Hi @srudin. Great call on swapping the location of the Chimes to narrow down where the problem lies. I’d recommend trying a full reset on your Chime by holding down the reset button on the side for about 20 seconds. After that’s done, complete a new setup in the Ring app using the steps under Set Up a Device. Monitor the Chime and see if this concern persists. If it does, I would suggest following up with our support team at one of the numbers available here. If you are outside of the US, please visit here to see how to contact support.
Thank you, but I tried that already - twice. Reset finishes nicely but problem is back a couple of hours later.
Ok, I might try to connect support. Let’s see if they can help…
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Tried to reset the chime once again and now it wouldn’t even reconnect to my wifi network at all anymore. Tried it multiple times in several locations, red flashing only, no success.
So I called Ring support. They took me through the setup process (again) for like 30 min. and then decided the chime was broken and must be replaced. They took another 10 min. to collect my data - and after finding out that I am located in Thailand they said they cannot send a replacement here. So I payed for a 40 min. call, I would have needed to pay for forwarding the replacement chime from another country and also I would have needed to send back the broken chime - which altogether adds up to more than just buying a new one. What a waste of 40 min. of my life.
So the learning is (once again): Forget about Ring support, they are useless. If your device works, enjoy it, if not, fix or replace it yourself. Same as always - see my other posts.
Hi @srudin. Ring devices are not sold nor shipped by Ring in Thailand. Therefore, Ring devices are not officially supported in your region. We may offer troubleshooting steps to help you with any of your concerns, but the Ring devices are not guaranteed to fully operate as they should in your area. Be sure to check Ring.com in the future to see if your region is supported.
Why does it matter to Ring if they write Singapore or Thailand on the parcel? I fully understand that they don’t offer surveillance in every country but sending a replacement for a broken device should not matter in any way.
Followup:
I ordered a new chime on my own expenses to Thailand, connected it - same problem. So it’s not a defect, it’s rather a bug - and that bug seems to be related to a specific chime production series (which is why one of my chimes is working and the other two are not). Clearly Ring has messed up something here. If you search the net and see how many people are having similar problems that doesn’t come as a surprise - but of course Ring will never admit it nor support their customers by providing a working solution.
I switched to using my old router and found out that no disconnects were happening with either one of the three chimes. However as said before when using my new Asus Wifi6 router only one of the three is working stable. So it seems to be related to some wifi setting - I will play around with my router settings to see if I can find a workaround.
@srudin If your Asus Wifi6 router is dual band, you could try creating a guest network that only provides a 2.4GHz connection for the Chimes specifically. I have seen other neighbors try this for various connectivity problems with their Ring deices. It may be worth a try given that everything seems to work well with your old router.
Thanks for the suggestion. I actually did that already and I also disabled the mesh functionality and attached the chimes to one dedicated mesh node. All of this had no impact.
The problem is related to some wifi6 setting. If I completely turn off wifi6 support I don’t have the problem anymore, however I loose many improvements regarding the connection to all other devices so I would like to narrow it down and only disable those settings that are causing the issue.
Of course a firmware update by Ring fixing the problem would even be better but from my previous experiences so far there is little hope that they care.
PS: I cannot enable/disable wifi6 support seperately for guest networks.
Followup and solution:
It took me more than 3 months to figure it out but I finally nailed it! As usual without any relevant help from Ring support or Ring community. However I will keep up the idea of a community and post my solution so that maybe someone else for once can get some help from this forum.
First let me summarize the situation:
I had 2 chimes of which 1 was working and the other not. I switched their position and still the same one was working and the other not. Thinking that one is broken I then bought a third one only to find out that it showed the exact same behavior as the second one (that I assumed to be broken).
Side notes: Resetting often ended up in a completely broken connection that could only be fixed resetting many, many times again. And everything was working fine when connecting them to my old router.
Now let me explain the problem:
I have a mesh wifi network with 2 nodes. Depending on what node was used for the very first connection the chime sticks to this node and can only connect to this node forever. Even when doing a reset it remembers this node and won’t reconnect to another node withtin the same SSID.
My network is set to automatically organize the devices to use the node with the best connection. Therefore it may at random times redirect a device to the other node. Whenever this happened to one of the chimes its connection was lost. Whenever it reconnected to the initial node it worked again.
The solution was to hard reset the chime (15s reset, 5s reset will not do!). Then make sure it connects to the proper node. Then bind the chime to this node in the router settings so the network will never try to redirect it. Working for some weeks now without any connection drops.
Explanations:
So the one chime that was always working was by luck initially connected to the “right” node (with the best connection). Even when I moved it to the other position it connected to the same initial node and therefore worked.
The second and third chimes initially connected to the “wrong” node (not having the best connection). They then were not able to connect at all or connected to the initial node for a while and then were redirected because the network detected that the other node was closer hence making the chimes loose the connection.
Because the chimes remember the initial node even through a 5s reset it was sometimes impossible to reconnect because the “other” node was addressed. Of course none of this happened on my old router as this is a single router without a mesh network.
I was assuming that some wifi settings were causing the trouble: Airtime fairness, Target Wake Time, MIMO, anything.
I also assumed the chimes might be of a different production series and thus have a different behavior.
Turned out I was misled because of the random behavior of the mesh reconnects. As I went for a trial and error approach it took quite a while to finally isolate the real cause. I guess that many people with chime issues actually face the same cause even they don’t have a mesh network: If the chime remembers the node it connected to there may be problems whenever a chime connects to the same SSID with a different router, for example when an old router gets replaced or if the chime is sold to someone else.
Btw - I have no idea how this “node binding” happens - maybe the MAC id? Also I have never seen this with any other device that I have used so far.
From my point of view clearly a bug that Ring would need to fix. But based on my experiences so far I wouldn’t count on that so just go for the workaround posted above.
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Can you tell me if your monitoring subscription works in Thailand please?
I’m moving there soon and would like to use my cameras etc, but would like to save the recordings rather than just rely on the live view only. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks
This was so immensely helpful! I too am having trouble with a Ring Chime on a mesh network. It disconnects every other day or so, and it sits right between the two nodes.
I’m trying out your solution to bind it to one. I’ll let folks know if it works for me or not.
@srudin, I had the same issue and the same frustration. But due to my IT background, the solution had to be in the WiFi configuration.
In my case I had 2 AP’s that had around the same signal strength. In other words, the 2.4Ghz WiFi signals of both AP’s were equally as strong, so the Ring Chime didn’t know to which AP to connect resulting in loss of connection. After rebooting the Ring Chime it came back online. The node story also makes sense.
It is quite clear, the Ring Chime is pretty sensitive on this.
I solved it by creating an iOT WiFi network per floor and point that network to the AP on that floor. After that I reconfigured the WiFi of the Ring Chime to that network and I never had a connection failure again. Afterall, most iOT devices don’t roam so a dedicated AP is pretty logical.
