I installed a Ring alarm system in my home about 6 months ago with about 30 sensors and motion detectors, and outdoor gate sensors. It took me almost a full day to install this much ring equipment and I am very pleased with the results and the operation of the system. Please note that I have the latest Ring System as of 6 months ago. It does not have the internal Wi-Fi extender because I don’t need it.
My issue is this:
If the Ring Basestation were ever to fail, I am screwed!! Why? Can’t I just buy another Base Station, get it delivered overnight, and I’m back in business?
NO!! It is not that simple. First of all I would have to recreate all of my devices by setting them up in the ring app including naming them all again. This will require another whole day of my time.
How do I know this? I called Ring Technical Support and was informed that the system configuration of your Ring alarm system is not backed up anywhere! Therefore if the base station fails and you have to replace it, you need to perform the tedious task of setting up your system again from scratch!
It was shock and horror when Ring support told me this! I am a professional software engineer with over 30 years of experience and know that not having a backup of the system configuration is an inexcusable atrocity. Even new graduate software engineers understand the need for system and configuration backup.
This issue is completely unacceptable and inexcusable. Amazon the parent company of Ring that sells AWS backup services to enterprise and small business customers, but they can even provide automatic configuration on a simple Ring Alarm Basestation!
This issue in itself disqualifies Ring from being considered as a professional alarm system. Imagine the amount of time and effort that would be required to replace a system in a business with many sensors. It is an unnecessary expense. The lack of a backup for a ring system in an excusable sin and indicates that Ring does not want to be in the professional alarm system business.
Even though I love the design a user interface of my Ring system, I will be switching to a vendor that provides a backup of the Basestation configuration. Ring did everything right, but couldn’t implement a simple configuration back when their parent company Amazon specializes in data backup solutions.
I hope that someone from Ring in an executive position reads this post.