Pets & Arming Modes

Hi -

New to Ring Alarm and hoping someone can help me out here. I bought Ring to replace a current alarm system in my house. Currently there are 4 “modes” that we use:

Disarmed - Everything disarmed (Motion & Door/Window)

Home/Night - Door/Window armed; Motion disarmed; and NO Entry/Exit Delay.

Away (Dog Home) - Door/Window armed; Motion disarmed; and Entry/Exit Delay of 30 Sec.

Away - Door/Window/Motion armed; and Entry/Exit Delay of 30 Sec.

It seems that with Ring Alarm there is no way to achieve this same setup. I can do Disarm/Home/Away but no way to get all four. This seems like a pretty big miss to me on Ring’s design. As I can’t be the only person with a dog to have this issue, I am curious to see how others have solved the problem before I box the system up and send it back.

Thanks

-Ken

@kxb177 wrote:

Hi -

New to Ring Alarm and hoping someone can help me out here. I bought Ring to replace a current alarm system in my house. Currently there are 4 “modes” that we use:

Disarmed - Everything disarmed (Motion & Door/Window)

Home/Night - Door/Window armed; Motion disarmed; and NO Entry/Exit Delay.

Away (Dog Home) - Door/Window armed; Motion disarmed; and Entry/Exit Delay of 30 Sec.

Away - Door/Window/Motion armed; and Entry/Exit Delay of 30 Sec.

It seems that with Ring Alarm there is no way to achieve this same setup. I can do Disarm/Home/Away but no way to get all four. This seems like a pretty big miss to me on Ring’s design. As I can’t be the only person with a dog to have this issue, I am curious to see how others have solved the problem before I box the system up and send it back.

Thanks

-Ken

Hello @kxb177 ,

Yes, Ken, I’m sorry to say that the Ring Alarm system currently has only 3 Modes, the “Disarmed”, “Home”, and the “Away” Alarm Modes. Only two modes (Home and Away) are armed Alarm Modes. It does not have the 4 modes that you had with your previous alarm system.

But before you box the Ring Alarm system up and send it back, let’s think about this for a second. From what you said, you would like an Armed Mode that your pet dog won’t set off while you are away. You want the Motion sensors ‘not enable’ while the dog is home but you are away. You could use the current Ring “Home” Mode for this (for when he is home but you are _away). _ From what I can see, the only setting that would be not as you desire is the zero Entry/Exit Delay for when you are home for night. But you would have to have your Ring Entry/Exit for the “Home” Mode set at 30-seconds (I actually do have my Home Mode set up with a 30-second delay and one of my Motion Sensors enabled in the garage).

I know that is not what you prefer, but when you think about it, maybe it is not as big of a thing to tolerate? Yes, while you are home with your pet, or getting ready for night, you would have to listen to the 30-second ‘beeoing countdown’ during arming. There would not be any ‘countdown’ to listen to for going to “Disarmed” Mode because that occurs immediately when done (either via keypad or Ring App). And this same “Home” armed Alarm Mode can accommodate you leaving your pet home while you are out or returning still.

If you still do find “countdown” sound from the Base Station & Keypad sufficiently annoying, you can adjust the volume settings to lower the volume independently on either the Base Station and/or Keypad too. Also consider, even with the volume low, there are visual lighted cues on both the Base Station and Keypads to still give you ‘countdown’ status, along with a visual ‘countdown’ displayed on your Ring App.

But what you are talking about is similar to some requests that current Ring Owners have been asking for. There have been many requests for an additional Armed Mode, like a “Disarmed”, “Home 1” and “Home 2” and “Away” for something like that for a total of 4 Modes. Or in your case, “Disarmed”, “Home”, “Away1”, and “Away2”. So you are not alone in your desire for another armed mode.

The names of the Modes don’t really matter, because the Ring armed Modes allow you to configure whatever Contact or Motion sensors that you want to enable to trigger the alarm system. For example, you could configure the “Home” Mode with Motion sensors enabled, and “Away” Modes with the Motion sensors not enabled, so in essence they operate backwards/opposite to their names. So that you could have a “Home 1” tailored setup and then have another quick Mode button “Home 2” that has already been setup up for another combination of Contact and Motion Sensors and Entry/Exit Delays, which I agree is a cool idea!

Although there are several regular forum posts already (like here in the Ring Alarm forum) about this additional Armed Mode, the Feature Request Board forum is where Ring Team look to see what people might want. And the more “Thumbs Up” Kudo votes they see there will better get their attention, increasing the chances of them providing that request. You should add your Kudo vote, if you like the requesting author’s idea (add you “Thumbs Up” Kudo vote on the left side of the author’s starting post), to help get the attention of the Ring Teams on the links below. Just the 3 links below have about 80 Kudo votes already, a relatively high number for the Feature Request Board forum, and it’s climbing (these are similar requests for an additional mode , and I’ve probably missed quite a few others):

Submitted by TheAmazingDento :

https://community.ring.com/t5/Feature-Request-Board/Additional-mode-s-please/idi-p/41984

Submitted by Riveter :

https://community.ring.com/t5/Feature-Request-Board/Ring-needs-a-NEW-mode-badly/idi-p/24168

Submitted by Fredman701 :

https://community.ring.com/t5/Feature-Request-Board/Custom-Modes/idi-p/28074

With an additional Armed mode, then you could better tailor your enabled sensors and Entry/Exit time Delays too. With the Ring Teams being pretty responsive to the Feature Request Board, maybe soon you could have your 4th Mode! Might be worth waiting for awhile, and until then just tolerate the 30-seconds on your “Home” Mode (with the ‘countdown’ volume lowered), and use that for your pet or when you are Home/Night?

Ken, I hope you find this information useful. And I sincerely hope you weigh and consider all the other great features of the Ring system and don’t box it up for returning it. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Thanks for the suggestions Boone.

The issue for me really isn’t about listening to a countdown when arming at night. The issue is one of safety. If someone were to break in while my family is sleeping at night, I want the alarm to go off right away. I do not want them to have 30 seconds in the house. In fact if the only issue was listening to a countdown, I would have said that sucks, but moved on with life and probably not even posted to this forum.

I will upvote the feature suggestions, but I find this crazy to think that they missed this feature, and continue to not implement it after all the upvotes received.

Unfortunately, this is a huge gap. They need to add modes or let us create modes to address a PRIVACY issue:

Disarmed=exterior cameras
Home=exterior cameras+contact sensors
Pets=exterior + interior cams+contact sensors
Away= exterior + interior cams+contact sensors+interior motion sensors