Hi!
I have a ring doorbell 2 that I got for Christmas. I live in an apartment that has front steps leading up to the front door. In the distance in the ring’s view is the apartment complex’s road. I’ll get notifications about things that are about 50 feet away. But when I have a delivery, say Amazon delivers, it can’t pick them up. I’ve played around with the sensitivity, and even configure it to ignore things that are greater than 15 feet away.
Why does it pick up cars that drive by that are far away and fails to pick up every single Amazon delivery? It also fails to pick up my family adequately. There are times when it doesn’t even pick us up. It’s rather annoying to get notifications on things I don’t care about while not getting alerts on things I want.
I’m including a picture for details.
Hey @idontknowwhattoput. I think the major concern here is the placement of the Doorbell and how it is facing this area. Since the direct line of sight for the Doorbell is these cars backing up and driving around, it will be keen on picking them up, even if they are far away. Could you try aWedge Kit? This will help point the Doorbell more down and away from this direct line of site. In addition, you can try a Corner Kit as well so that the area that it continues to pick up motion from is out of the direct line of sight. The Corner Kit allows you to see more to the left or right of where it can already see, if you feel you want to see the front door or area in front of the door more.
I already have a wedge kit on it. Where I’m at, I can’t drill into the wood, so I can only use one. Reality I need both. I mount my Ring using Gorilla tape. I put the gorilla tape on the smooth side, and screw the ring into the wedge. Besides, when mounting, I tried to downward facing wedge and it wasn’t pointint far enough down. That’s why I opted to use the other wedge mount.
If there’s a way to mount both without screwing into the wood, that would be helpful. But what is the cause of the fact that it senses things so far away, and not things close up?
@idontknowwhattoput Thanks for letting me know! I am not aware of an official way you can mount both of the pieces without screwing, but you might be able to figure out a more DIY solution. It’s possible you could super glue the pieces together, but of course, this is completely up to you, and not something I have personally seeing yet that is. If you’re willing to get it a try, I recommend it! It’s worth getting input from friends and family too if possible. Some people may be more creative than myself. 
When it comes to the motion detection and where you pointed out where you are getting alerts of motion from in comparison to where you need it, it’s simply because the motion where you need it is very far down and can be out of sight on the camera at first, which causes a delay or loss of motion. In addition, since cars are more frequently coming and leaving than people, you may have a concern with your Motion Frequency. If you have the frequency set to standard, this could cause the camera to have more down time in between motion events. I recommend putting it to frequency to see if you get more of the people you want to see coming and going, on video.
Lastly, I am curious, for the Min to Max slider within your Motion Zones, where do you have these set at? I would love to see where this is set at to see where your sensitivity is at! This can help us figure out a way around this concern further, and good information for me to know. Ultimately, I feel the view of the camera may be to blame in this situation. I’ve had a situation where a neighbor that had two white poles in front of the view of her place were throwing off the motion detection, and she continuously got alerts of the cars in front of her home in between these two poles, but would miss her coming and going. Once she had it face a more open view without these poles, her concern went away. In the event you can conjure up a good DIY solution for your situation, we might need to look into relocating where the Doorbell is faced!
P.S., I’m out on the weekends, so I look forward to your response on Monday. Thanks neighbor!
Look I’m sorry but your response is way too detailed and should be available out of the box or with very little configuration. I can’t believe I’ve been having all of these problems. My mother bought this for me for Christmas because I told her I had concerns over security in my apartment, especially with things that are delivered.
The fact that I have to manufacure a DIY solution is absolutely ludicrous. I wouldn’t mind purchasing another wedge if it is affordable and does what I need it to do. I can’t be the first person to have this issue. As a matter of fact this morning the doorbell went off twice in a 5 minute period. I checked the Ring app on my phone and I didnt’ see ANYTHING. Then I looked on my computer (don’t get me started on how bad the UI is on the computer. Why don’t I have the same functionality on the computer as I do on my phone? Also getting the screenshot for the zones means that I have to screenshot it from my phone, email it to myself, and save it to my computer just so I can provide you with a screenshot). While on my computer, I noticed someone walking waaaaayyyy across my apartment complex, barely noticeable. That’s why it appears that on my phone sometimes it goes off randomly. Why is that? That’s a severe flaw in my book.
The only thing I can think to do is buy a block of wood and have it cut down into an acceptable wedge and screw the doorbell into the block of wood.
I’m to the poin where I just want to uninstall the doorbell and look into alternative doorbells. This is getting very frustrating. I didn’t want to bring it up, but I have to also disable all of my alerts overnight so my chime doesn’t go off while I’m asleep. This means when I wake up, if I don’t get a notification, I assume nothing happened. But I have to turn off notifications. Then there’s the fact I have TFA turned off and I STILL have to input a code every time I login to the website. I think what I’ll probably do is dismount this and sell it on Facebook, and get another product.
It’s also worth pointing out that I changed the setting to be not as sensitive. I went out for a walk, and it didn’t pick me up when I left, nor when I came back up. So I have to have it set to a high sensitivity to even pick up people when they are super close to the camera.
I have a Ring doorbell 2 and also conducted some research. It appears that the doorbell 2 has problems detecting motion. I’ve found a Reddit post where a user complains that their ring will detect leaves, debris, small animals, etc. But it has a terrible time picking up actual motion. Not sure how much it’s changed since it was last posted. It was also pointed out there that when a ring is connected to battery vs. hardwired, the detection gets thrown out the window. Is this true?I don’t care how much battery it drains because I always have a full battery to replace the doorbell.
If it is, I’ll certainly sell this and get a competitor. It’s not worth the headache anymore, considering Consumer Reports ranks the Ring doorbell lower than competitors.
Hi. The maximum height off the ground should be no more the 48 inches. Steps or even the slightest sloping driveway plays havoic with motion dection.
I measured, and it’s right at 48 inches. But I don’t think this addresses why it still won’t pick up when there are deliveries and the person is on my porch. It actually doesn’t pick up anything until the person is in the far left of the field of vision.