Hello Ring community,
I had a feature request I wanted to offer to the community, partly just to see if I was missing something in my understanding of the system. This is a similar question to the June XXXX " [Turn on floodlights at night when motion is detected by camera (not by PIR)]" question that seems to have gone unanswered. A few weeks ago, I upgraded my old camera system to a Ring system; 5 Floodlight Cam Pros with 3D motion sensing, Pro (2) doorbell with 3D motion sensing, and their Pro alarm system. So far it has been a nice upgrade with many great features.

However, one thing I have encountered and, from searching this form, many others seem to be encountering is the odd integration of the “floodlight” with the “camera” part of the Floodlight Cam Pro. Let me explain as best I understand it; Ring’s latest generation of cameras, doorbells, and floodlight cameras (the Pro) are able to utilize AI video discrimination combined with a built-in radar sensor capable of detecting the actual distance and angle to a motion event. That is a pretty neat capability that no other vendors have that I am aware of. Of course, the “birds-eye” view output of that information is not all that useful, but what it does allow you to do is set a very precise physical range boundary outside of which the camera will ignore all motion (more sophisticated than just motion zones within the video window). I have used this this successfully at my front door where I can immediately trigger the camera as soon as someone steps on the walkway to my door, while simultaneously ignoring all the large vehicle traffic that otherwise goes by on the street directly behind them. Something I could not do with typical video motions zones with any other camera system previously.

However, let’s talk about the “lights” on the Floodlight Cam Pro. As best I can tell the “Floodlight Cam Pro” is really composed of two largely disconnected systems. First, it has this great, 3D motion sensing Ring camera with tons of configurability (video motion zones, radar range, angle, general sensitivity, AI people detection, etc.). But then they coupled that highly advanced camera and radar system to a rock-dumb floodlight which just uses a passive infrared (PIR) sensor (XXXX’s technology) to trigger the actual light part of that Floodlight Cam Pro. That PIR sensor causes many of us all kinds of problems as best I can tell from the forum (under or over sensitivity, little directivity, frequent false alarms, no camera recording when the light triggers, etc.) For example, the light part of Floodlight Cam Pro was unusable at my front door. It kept false trigging all night long due to thermal reflections off my windows and bushes moving, regardless of how I angled/positioned the sensor, to the point where I just had to disable the light part of that floodlight system entirely (not ideal).

But then I had an idea; Mounted near this Floodlight Cam Pro was my Ring Pro 2 doorbell, which also has full 3D motion sensing for its camera (just no PIR sensor or light). So, in the Ring app I simply disabled the motion light part of the Floodlight Cam Pro and I instead linked the activation of that same light to the motion alerts on the Pro 2 doorbell…… Like waving a magic wand, that fixed all my problems with the Floodlight Cam Pro. Now, I can have the light part come on using all the great motion sensing and discrimination capabilities of the 3D motion sensing in the doorbell, all while effectively ignoring the horrible PIR sensor built-in to the Floodlight Cam Pro. So here are my questions:

1. Why in the WORLD can’t I link the floodlight activation of the Floodlight Cam Pro to the camera’s 3D motion sensing capabilities on that same Floodlight Cam Pro? I know this is technically possible, as I can link it to the camera’s 3D motion sensing on my Pro 2 doorbell or even a different Floodlight Cam Pro placed near it to control those lights! But I can’t tell the lights on the Floodlight Cam Pro to only trigger when the camera on that same Floodlight Cam Pro triggers??!!! It is absolutely mystifying to me why this is not currently possible. Even the NEST floodlights allow you to select a setting where the floodlight only turns on when a person is AI detected in the video feed vs. just relying on the PIR sensor. I am not asking for that level of complexity, just give us an option to elect to use whatever sensors and settings trigger the camera, to now trigger the light part of the same Floodlight Cam Pro!

2. I can’t really fathom why a user would want their floodlight to activate its lights and NOT have the camera trigger for motion recording anyhow. Other than the fact that the PIR sensor on those lights is highly prone to false alarms (so why not allow users to leverage whatever sophisticated motion sensing the camera is doing to limit those PIR false alarms if they choose?!) Yes, I realize the PIR has a detection angle of ~270deg while the camera is only detecting over an angle of ~140deg. But ok, I would rather have 140deg of controllable, functional motion sensing than needing to shut of my 270deg PIR motion sensing light entirely, because my specific constrained mounting location makes its PIR sensor simply not reliable.

3. When I do link the light on the Floodlight Cam Pro to a different Ring camera (Doorbell Pro, another Floodlight Cam Pro, etc.) I do need to set a schedule for it, so the light does not come on with motion events during the daytime (or I would just be wasting power during the day). In the Ring app I can set that schedule, but the app makes me pick start and end times. It would be nice if the schedule for such linked devices eventually allowed you to select “dusk” and “dawn” instead, so the user did not have to constantly update that schedule with daylight savings time and as the days get shorter and longer over the year.

4. There does seem to be a bug with linked lights and motion sensors/cameras. If I have guests coming over and I manually turn on the Floodlight Cam Pro’s light (using the Ring App), it will come on as expected. But, as soon as its linked device sees actual motion (the doorbell Pro in my case) it will start the turn off-timer of the linked light. That will cause the Floodlight Cam Pro to turn its light off after the motion timeout of the link, despite the fact that I manually told the Ring app to turn that light on and keep it on. The Ring app will also think the light is still on (a light symbol shown in the video feed) even though the light has turned off after the timeout via the linked device. I would prefer the manual activation of the floodlight overrides the device links and the light just stayed on until it is manually turned off, as the app also seems to expect.

Can we have enhanced integration with the light aspects of the Floodlight Cam Pro like this, please? Otherwise, the general Ring system has so far been a great system and really does work well as far as the camera feeds, camera motion detection controls, and app are concerned. Just the floodlight part could be so much better with some seemingly trivial firmware/software updates.