I have a CCTV security system around my house. It runs on the Synology Surveillance System and uses Reolink cameras and detects motion and an extensive range of other visual events including neighbours house/car alarms flashing.
For some time now I have a mystery light illuminating my front door area at almost exactly 1 hour intervals throughout the night. After a bit of detective work to identify the source of the light I’ve tracked it down to my Ring doorbell! Its light is coming on for two seconds every hour throughout the night around 42 minutes past each hour. This triggers my CCTV to record the event. I can’t determine the color of the Ring light as the CCTV operates in black and white during darkness.
(I have eliminated all other possible events that could trigger the CCTV recording. I have even set up an additional CCTV camera facing the Ring to capture the Ring light coming on and off.)
The Ring (Ring Doorbell 3 Plus) runs on batteries and gets its wifi signal from a Virgin wifi powerline extender. I realise that there could be ‘features’ of the wifi that could be causing the Ring to illuminate periodically(?) but it could also be a feature of the Ring itself? e.g. checking for firmware updates.
I would welcome any ideas about what may be causing these mysterious hourly events on the Ring.
Hi @PaulP1. Is there any way you can provide more detail on what light you’re seeing from the Doorbell? I know you said the CCTV recording is in black and white, but it’s hard to say what is causing the light if we don’t have any information on what color the light is or what pattern it is showing. If you can try to capture a video of this, another neighbor or a member of the team can take a look and offer some helpful suggestions. When attaching this video, you will need to first gather the video and then create a link. You can upload this video elsewhere, such as YouTube, and then share the link to the video in your reply.
I filmed again last night and it is still happening once an hour. I think I have identified it as the PIR lights at the top/side of the camera. It may also be happening during daytime (?) but as its IR light its not visible.
I have extracted 3 frames from the video as still shots showing the full illumination followed by the PIR lights as they gradually dim. I don’t know if I can attach the .jpg files to this post but can email them to you if want to see them. As you will see, the frames captured are from the 7:18am instance which is just after dawn this morning.
Hi @PaulP1. Thanks for sharing that information. I’m not able to view the full screenshots on Pinterest, but it may be best if you contact our support team regarding this. You’ll be able to send them pictures and videos demonstrating what you’re seeing, and they’ll be able to pull up your account in order to take a closer look. Feel free to reference this thread with them as well. You can reach our support team at one of the numbers available here. We’re taking additional steps to protect our team and help reduce the spread of COVID-19, so this has resulted in longer than normal wait times. If you are outside of the US, please read our response to COVID-19 here to see how to contact support.
Thanks for referring me to the support team who I spoke to today. It turns out that the Ring takes Snapshots every hour, or 14mins or 5mins depending on what you set up on the Device Settings page of the Phone app. You can also disable this feature. At night the Snapshot illuminates the scene to get a better picture hence the lights showing up on my CCTV recordings.
To use this feature you have to be the registered owner of the Ring and you have to have one of the payable protection plans and you need to enable it in the device settings…I think it is on by default
The Snapshots do not show in your history but can be viewed in your device timeline view on your mobile phone/tablet…but not on the PC app.
Finally the Mystery has been solved. We learn something new every day?