I purchased a used camera to try out the ONVIF support with my ring alarm pro. It is a 5 year old camera and it seems to meet all the requirements that I could find. It works for several days, then the ring app says it is offline. My router (an eero) indicates it is still online and transmitting data. The only way to get it back is to unplug it from my PoE router for a few seconds. Also one time I set it up, motion detection worked great, I had the issues of it going offline so I reset the camera to start fresh and since then, the motion detection did not work. The camera is a Nuuo BL3102 model. That might be my issue but I wanted to see if anyone has actually gotten this to work properly.
Hi - yes I did see those articles and the cameras I have seem to meet all the requirements. I was hoping others have actually tried and had experience with ONVIF cameras. I am hoping that they will be as reliable as when connecting them to a physical nvr. Thanks!
I was able to get my Lorex cameras to work fine. My configuration however was to put the eero in bridge mode as I need my existing router to be the main router on my network. In bridge mode, ring would pick up my cameras however the ring alarm would go into backup mode every few hours. I turned everything off until I decide what approach I will take.
While I had it on however it worked fairly well. Ring was not perfect at people detection but overall it was not too bad. My only gripe was I wish there was a way to trigger motion in Alexa so I could use my routines to turn on lights etc. Only the ring native cameras work for this.
So all in all I give it a B- because in general it does work but would love greater support out of it.
Yes. I’m having problems.
I have AXIS P3225-LVE MKII cameras. I also have a Triplett CamView IP Pro-D 8073, which is an ONVIF camera multimeter device that I use professionally to setup cameras over onvif.
According to Ring, the requirements are…
- Camera supports ONVIF
- Camera supports a 1080p stream.
- Camera support H.264
- “Have a valid password set”
I can connect the meter to the same switch port as the eero interface of the Ring Alarm Pro and it immediately locates all of my cameras, so ONVIF is working and the network isn’t causing any problems for it. The cameras default (and max) resolution is 1080p, so check. I have been using H.264 with BlueIris and Xprotect Pro for years, so check. Finally, I have passwords set for the default “root” account, I have a user account for myself and I have setup a “ring” account in the basic accounts section for each camera, as well as a “ring” ONVIF account. All of the accounts have been tested and work.
I have tried with the following layouts.
- Ring Alarm Pro connected to the same network as the cameras
- Ring Alarm Pro and EERO connected as they are most generically going to be, where the device is my router and the EERO “inside” interface is on the same network as the cameras.
- EERO in “Bridge” mode.
The very unhelpful error message “Hmmm. Something went wrong.” is all we ever get.
A packet capture in promiscuous mode, as well as a packet capture with my capture device in the middle, shows no attempt to communicate with the cameras, and nothing that looks like a scan or broadcast beacon. Basically, there is no indication that the Ring/eero ever tries to locate onvif cameras.
However, when I call Ring, they just tell me that I will need to contact the camera manufacturer. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to ask Axis to help with. I can’t exactly call them and say “can you help me with my Axis cameras that work with everything except for Ring?” I’m pretty sure they’ll ask me to contact Ring.
hi quebirt I also have Axis cameras and after several frustrating tries, was able to add to ring alarm pro. the most reliable way I found is to first reset Axis camera to default then add onvif user for ring, then try to add onvif cameras in ring app. I also found ring needs to install an Amazon signed certificate on the camera for https.
I totally agree ring’s onvif support is half-baked at best, and mostly for marketing purposes.
100% agree. It was only marketing. From my perspective onvif support does not exist. I have 5 cameras that work perfectly /w my NVR and ring 1) Says one or more are offline (LOL), 2) Motion/Human detection is weak at best 3) Live view never works and I can go on and on.
Thank you both.
I eventually decided against it for two major reasons.
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All the talk about Ring giving footage to authorities upon request is unsettling. While I don’t believe I do anything illegal, and, on the surface, I’m not worried about it. It’s the same principle as a lawyer will always tell you not to talk to the police. You may accidently incriminate your self, even if it’s falsely.
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Ring Alarm Pro is a requirement, and I don’t want EERO. Since EERO can’t be disabled independently, I switched back to my gen2 non-pro alarm unit.
I do appreciate the insight though. Maybe your tips can help someone who find this thread searching.
For anyone using Axis cameras (this is probably true for other cameras too), you MUST turn on Motion Detection in the Axis Camera. To do that just login to your cameras web page and go to system, then apps, turn on the motion detection app by toggling it on to start the app. You will now get motion events in Ring.
Based on my testing, it looks like your IP camera must send motion events over ONVIF to trigger Ring to start processing video. Once that motion event is received from the camera’s built-in motion detection, the Alarm Pro processes the video for Smart Alerts. I was able to confirm this by monitoring packets.
This is MOST LIKELY true for all IP cameras. Therefore make sure you have motion detection configured in your IP camera. Most default ONVIF profiles already have motion detection events enabled. You just need to turn it on so the ONVIF profile can send that to your Alarm Pro. I hope this helps somebody else. Lord knows there’s not much information available on it. Ring Folks, please add this to your Support System so that others don’t have to spend hours on the phone with your support team and get nothing accomplished.
On a side note, I’m actually quite impressed with the accuracy of the Smart Alerts. I haven’t quite figured out the ONVIF Profile settings to get my audio working. There’s literally no documentation provided by Ring on what the Alarm Pro is needing from the ONVIF profile to connect audio. I’ll keep playing around with it until I figure it out. I’ll share the info when I do.
Hey neighbors, there are some good troubleshooting tips and tricks in this thread if you’re having any issues setting up your ONVIF cameras with the Ring Alarm Pro. If the information in this thread doesn’t help, we also have troubleshooting steps for ONVIF cameras here. You can also reach out to our support team for more in-depth assistance.