Ring Alarm Pro with ONVIF Cameras but notion motion detection

I just installed a Ring Alarm Pro to play with. I had setup Edge recording with 2 Honeywell Series 30 cameras and everything seems to work perfectly fine except for the motion detection. I can use the Ring App to check my live view of my ONVIF cameras and it works extremely well and is quick etc.

I did notice though that the motion detection never worked. I went through every setting I could find but could never make it work with my edge cameras. I decided to test with a Bosch ONVIF camera and am experiencing the same issue.

I’m using the Ring Alarm Pro in bridge mode using the information in this guide.

NOTE: When using Bridge Mode, you must connect Alarm Pro to your router via an ethernet cable. Additionally you will lose certain Alarm Pro advanced features, such as 24/7 Backup Internet** and Extra Data.** You will however retain the ability to use Ring Edge*** for local video processing.

The guide says Edge should work fine in a Double NAT or Bridge mode setup. It seems to work fine besides the motion detection.

Just curious if anyone else is experiencing this as I have a few ONVIF cameras I would like to use.

Thanks!

Hi @cbiggers. If you aren’t seeing any motion events from your ONVIF-compatible camera, try checking the following:

  • Confirm that your ONVIF-compatible camera is connected to your network.
  • If you have more than one network operating in your house using the same SSID and password, check to confirm that your ONVIF-compatible camera is connected to the same network that your Ring Alarm Pro is on. If you have another network using the same credentials, you may want to consider changing the credentials of the other network to prevent your camera from connecting to the wrong network.

You will also want to verify that your ONVIF-compatible camera meets the following requirements:

  • Being able to stream at 1080p.
  • Supports H264 encoding.
  • You can automatically or manually enable ONVIF support on your camera.
  • You can automatically or manually set a valid password.

We have troubleshooting information on ONVIF-compatible cameras here as well. If that doesn’t help, I’d recommend following up with our support team at one of the numbers available here so they can take a more in-depth look at this. If you are outside of the US, please visit here to see how to contact support.

Thanks for the quick response. My cameras are connected by ethernet and are working correctly, as Live View from the Ring App works perfectly with them, its just no motion detection. My cameras are set to 1080, H264 and ONVIF is currently working other wise they couldn’t of been added and functional in the Ring App and viewable using a Live View I imagine.

I’ll contact the Ring support team.

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@cbiggers - I have 5 Lorex cameras that meet the RING requirements for Onvif. They are connected via POE switches thus there is no SSID I need to worry about. I have my alarm pro in bridge mode as I do not want my security cameras on the ring subnet provided by the eero (long story).

They all can connect to the internet as I have an NVR that has zero issues detecting motion, human motion, live view etc. Ring however…not so much. Ring says 1 or more of my cameras are offline yet I can see them live from anywhere on the internet, the motion on some cameras rarely work and watching anything live is a no-go. Never happens. I’ve learned to live /w the lack of support and just keep the onvif cameras in ring for convenience and use my Lorex app for real security detection until ring gets this working 100%.

From my perspective ring did enough for a marketing ploy but did not ensure it actually worked for security purposes.

Sadly, I agree the Ring support for ONVIF is terrible. The questions they ask make it clear they have never actually set up a standard IP camera before. I spent hours trying to get a Hikvision camera to talk to Ring. I turned on ONVIF, set up ONVIF user - checked and rechecked the login credentials, I can see the IP camera, I can see it is on the same network, it supports 1080P, it supports h264, it supports ONVIF (called HIkvision to make sure), rebooted, tried a different mobile device, and still it will not authorize in the Ring app, even though Ring finds it. = Of course Hikvision is of no help either. They need some kind of way to at least run a basic test for troubleshooting.

Just wanted to chime in here with the same exact issue. I have a couple Uniview Dome cameras that support ONVIF, added to the Ring app just fine, but pick up no motion. Once in a blue moon they will pick up motion. We have people, cars, etc constantly in front of them. Of course, the Ring cameras that see somewhat of the same view pick it up perfectly, but the ONVIF cameras, not at all. For fun, I set the motion zone to the whole frame and cranked up the detection, zero change.

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.

Awesome info! I will try that.