Thank you 5150Joel. Your input was very valuable as that confirmed a few observations I experienced.
One rep had me ‘reconfigure’ the Gen 2 motion sensor - that seemed to help.
Several situations where the Gen 2 sensor wasn’t able to detect motions, my impressions so far:
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it performed worse in a bedroom, vs in an open area in a living room
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it performed worse when I was walking from right to left across the sensor (vs from left to right)
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it performed worse, when the sensor was at an angle from my position (vs facing me straight)
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it performed worse in the evening vs during the day
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the Gen 2 sensor seemed to try to detect motion - when the motion stopped, not when motion started
Note: I did not observe any of these issues with the Gen 1 motion sensor.
On the installation height,
I was talking to Ring Advanced Support one hour ago. And the 2nd support rep also mentioned about Gen 2 sensor needing to be installed at 7.5 ft above ground as well.
Ring is the first company to require that high installation height for a motion sensor product to work properly. This is a really really odd requirement.
PIR motion sensors have been around in many applications for centuries, and there was not one PIR motion sensor product that required to be installed at 7.5 feet or above to detect motions. The main thing needed is a clear line of sight between the sensor and the moving object.
I have other PIR motion sensor products at home, installed at 4 feet, 3 feet above ground, installed along corridor, in the garage. All work perfectly fine.
Normally PIR motion sensors have very excellent accuracy to detect motions of live objects (humans/animals). But so far the Gen 2 motion sensor doesn’t seem to be living up to this performance.
A year ago, I installed the Gen 1 motion sensor, at 5 feet above ground. Sensitivity at ‘medium’ setting. It was working perfectly in detecting motions. Only one false alarm during this whole time.
With Ring’s Gen 2 motion sensor I experienced a much shorter range, and it couldn’t detect motions 50% of the time. Sometimes not at all. I have the Gen 2 motion sensor installed at 6 feet high, and the Advanced Support Rep said that was not good enough.
Something is really off. This indicates some functionality weakness that requires this peculiar installation height.
It’s day 3 of me trying to get the Gen 2 motion sensor working to detect motions. I spent 3 days of my life - first time ever, to get a PIR sensor product working properly.
Ring needs to do a better job than this. When using Ring’s Gen 1 motion sensor, I only had one false alarm in the past year using ‘medium’ sensitivity to remove false alarms. Everything worked perfectly fine. 100% detection of motions.
Perhaps Ring overdid something in trying to reduce false alarms. Now it’s not detecting motions 50% of the time on the Gen 2 motion sensor - even at the highest sensitivity setting.
Ring wants to make sure its Gen 2 motion sensor is detecting true motions effectively - at least as good as its Gen 1 ‘medium’ setting, which was working really well for me.
I’ll have a 2nd test session in the evening with Ring Advanced Support. Will see how it goes.
Can Ring revive the Gen 1 ‘medium’ setting?
We don’t have pets, so perhaps Ring needs to have a Gen 2 ‘High’ setting for households without pets.
Also, some households would still want to have the high sensivity setting in Gen 1. Ring can keep this as the ‘Super High’ sensivity in the Gen 2 motion sensor. As I’m seeing some reviews saying not able to detect motions in a larger living room (> 20 feet from wall-to-wall).
Perhaps the motion sensor settings should have 2 separate selections:
That’d potentially solve a LOT of the issues I’m experiencing (and others as well) now, if it allows a wider range of situations and environments to work within.
In any case,
the Gen 2 motion sensor should not be doing worse in detecting motions compared to Gen 1 motion sensor.