There are many times I want to turn on my Front Door camera as I leave or return home, due to safety issues where I live. The 30 seconds you get when it detects motion is often not enough in my case. I’d like the option to turn on one or more cameras, then lock my phone and put it in my pocket and the cameras would keep filming. I understand this could easily drain your batteries if you forgot about it, but that would be the user’s responsibility. Perhaps this new feature could allow you to set a time (e.g., 5 minutes) to film, then shut off. It’s difficult for me to turn on my cameras as I leave on my bike, and keep them filming until I’m out of harms way; the camera often shuts off if I bump the wrong part of the screen, put the phone in my pocket, etc. Thank you for your consideration.
Maybe the new “Snapshot Capture” feature might meet your needs to keep the camera on? It takes a single snap picture in repeating regular intervals that you set on your camera between motion events. Then when you select “Live View” you can scroll back the time bar to view the past events, which will now also play the multiple Snapshots that were taken inbetween the events. It will appear like a sped-up Time-Lapse video.
To set up this feature, go to “Device Settings” on the camera, select “Snapshot Capture”, turn on the Snapshot Capture and select the Frequency (with my cameras, I can select the interval for every 3 minutes, 1 minute, or every 30 seconds … and with my doorbell, I can select snap intervals of every hour, 14 minutes, or 5 minutes). I currently have mine set on the shortest available settings.
I haven’t been able to download any of the snapshots, like you can do with Event Video recordings. I think currently Snapshots can only be viewed for the 60 days with the “Protect Plus” plan.
I wish Ring could make downloading of individual Snapshots possible too. I find that sometimes I discover something interesting that occurred between the regulars video events.
ahhh … another Ring Neighbor showed me that it IS possible to download Snapshots. It’s the same process as downloading a Motion or Live event. Position the timeline over a snapshot area and use SHARE to download to your mobile phone. Several Snapshots (e.g., 11:02 am - 11:17 am) are concatenated into a short video file.