So, I’m sharing this in case it helps someone else. My backyard wired floodlight cam is just far enough away from my router that it won’t reliably connect, so I bought a Chime Pro to use as an extender. That solved that issue, but now I’ve had a different issue: the Chime Pro kept getting kicked off my WiFi network. I’d look in my app and it would say it was offline, along with the backyard cam connected through the Chime Pro. I’d have to manually reconnect it.
SIDE NOTE: After pressing the reset button x 5 seconds, it would alternate flashing between green and blue (instead of just blinking green like it is supposed to!). None of the documentation I’ve seen mentions this color combination, and the app would be unsuccessful in trying to reconnect when I would try. I’d have to unplug the Chime Pro, plug it back in, press the button x 5 seconds again, and THEN it would flash just green and allow me to reconnect.
OK, so anyway, I called Ring support, they tried to connect to it online, said it was defective, and sent me a new one. It worked well for 3 days and then…flashing blue light again. A LOT. I’d reset it and within 15 minutes it would be offline again.
I thought maybe it was having a problem with my WiFi router automaticaly assigning it a local IP address, so I thought I’d try changing it to a fixed local IP address that would never change. Turns out it is already set up that way, and cannot be changed. So that wasn’t it.
I thought, certainly this is happening because something is changing in the WiFi, I just don’t know what. Well, I was in my router settings web page (AT&T Uverse router), and tried clicking to scan for the best WiFi channel and as soon as I did a scan, the Chime Pro got kicked off the WiFi. Aha!!
So, I dug into the router settings and was able to manually set my WiFi to a fixed channel, so it will no longer auto scan for the best (aka the least congested) channel. I also changed the channel bandwidth from 20 to 40 just for good measure.
Well, since I did that last night, the Chime Pro has worked all day and had not gotten kicked off. I am hopeful this is a long term solution.
SIDE NOTE #2: Hey, Ring company: PLEASE consider making it such that if I have to reconnect a device, that I can do it WITHOUT having to be physically present at home!! If your slogan is “With Ring, you’re always at home”, then you should support this. If I’m away at work and one of my cameras gets kicked offline, right now I’m hosed until I can get home and fix it–not good it my house gets robbed in the interim!! I also am not fond of having to repeatedly climb a ladder to push the reset button on my floodlight cam! Thanks!