Ring Base Station

Products Ring Alarm
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Whenever we leave our house, we arm the Ring system in away mode. After returning home we forget to disarm ring. There is no Siren, alerting us that a device was activated. We don’t recognize this until we see the Red light on the base station. Then I ask Alexa to disarm Ring. Why doesn’t the siren sound immediately?

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Hi @skeet0848. If your Ring Alarm is not sounding right away when you enter your home, you may have an Entry Delay setup. An Entry Delay gives you a little bit of time to make it to your keypad and Disarm your Ring Alarm before the loud siren goes off. You can find out more about the Entry/Exit delay feature in this Help Center article here. Let me know if this helps!

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Tom_Ring
Thanks for the help, but my delay is set for 60 seconds. Just yesterday we had been home for over a hour when I noticed the flashing red light. I instructed Alexa to disarm. Everything went back to normal. No siren. It must be something else.???

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Hello @skeet0848 ,

I understand your concern for believing that your home is protected while you are away, but then you discover that when you acted like an intruder, that your alarm did not act as you expected. Because I don’t know specific details on what type of sensors that you have (Contact for Doors & Windows; or Motion Sensors for rooms & entryways) or where you installed the sensors, I’ll write in generalities to get you pointed in the right direction. By double checking all your alarm settings, you’ll probably discover why your alarm acted the way it did (or in your case, the way it didn’t) :slight_smile:

  1. Alarm Contact Sensors can be used on doors and windows. Contact Sensor have 3 available “Placement” choices for you to set/designate:
  • Main Door : When armed, you’ll have a time Delay (by your set Entry/Exit Delay times) to reduce false alarm.
  • **Secondary Door ** : If opened when armed, the siren will sound immediately.
  • Window : If opened when armed, the siren will sound immediately.

Your primary doors you normally use to enter/exit you house should be set as “Main Door.” Any other door with a Contact sensor that is not typically used for entry/exit can be designated “Secondary” or “Main Door” (depending if you desire the alarm to trigger immediately or utilize for the set Delay time).

  1. Alarm Motion-Detection Sensors have 2 available “Placement” choices for you to set/designate:
  • Room : Alarm sounds immediately when Motion Detector senses motion.
  • Entryway : Alarm is delayed (by your set Entry/Exit Delay times) when Motion Detector senses motion, giving you time to disarm your system. You should designate any motion detector within the detection-range of entry/exit doors that were designated as a “Main Door.”

First check to ensure all your Alarm sensors are properly connected to your Alarm Base Station and properly assigned.

  1. Check all assigned " Placement" on your Contact and Motions sensors:
  • Select Main Menu (the 3 blue horizontal lines, upper-left-corner of Dashboard page) > Devices > Alarm Base Station > select your desired Contact or Motion Sensor > Setting (the blue Gear icon, upper-right-corner) > select “Placement” while on this ‘Device Profile’ page > then tap your choice > Save (upper-right-corner).
  1. Now you should go back to check Sensor settings are correctly tied to your Alarm Modes of both “Home” and “Away” which are Armed Modes capable of triggering the alarm siren. This is something that you should have, or did do, to complete your alarm installation setup. You have to ‘pick & choose’ what sensors you want to be able to trigger an alarm response.

Let’s start with the Alarm Mode “Away”, which is used when nobody is in the residence:

  • Select Main Menu > Settings > Modes > Away on this Mode Settings page.

Now you are on the “Away Mode Settings” page which lists the number of “Sensors” and “Cameras” and the number of these should total the be equal to the number of sensors/cameras that you have.

  • "Chirps" is typically set to ON (if not, tap on “Chirps” and then toggle right (enabled) and it should then be colored blue). Then individual Chirp selections can be enabled or disabled on the sensor itself. Some people like to have their doors sound a Chirp when opened.

  • "Entry Delay" (Time to enter your home before Alarm sounds) and your “Exit Delay” (Time to exit your home before Alarm sounds). I would recommend, and most people do, set both of these to 30-seconds (and then “Save”) which you will find satisfactory and sufficient in most scenarios & situations. I do not recommend 0-seconds because then you must always use your mobile smart-phone while outside, to arm/disarm your alarm system. Using 30-seconds gives you plenty of time to complete the tasks of using your Keypad & traversing the distance between your door and Keypad. If you later feel very rushed and 30-seconds is too short, you can always increase the Delay times.

  • Sensors (and again later with Cameras ). All your sensors that are attached to your Alarm Base Station will be listed here, and typically, all of them should be toggled to the right (“Monitored” enabled for sensors) and be blue-colored. If any are not toggled to enable each to ‘trigger’ an alarm/siren, then do so. Same logic applies for all your cameras so you should select each camera one-at-a-time and then toggle to the right (enabled and blue-colored) for both “Motion Detection” and “Live View” toggled to the right (enabled) and be blue-colored. Any Sensor NOT toggled & blue-color will still send their status information to the Alarm Base Station, but if they are NOT toggled "enabled’ and colored blue, then they will NOT be used to trigger the alarm. I suspect that you have several sensors that are NOT enabled, which might explain why the alarm wasn’t triggered. The “Away” Alarm Mode is used when nobody is home at all, you want every alarm sensor and camera enabled and functioning.

For Alarm Mode “Home”, which is used when people are inside the residence, we want to form an protective alarm perimeter to surround us.

  • Select Main Menu > Settings > Modes > Home on this Mode Settings page.

Repeat the same procedures that you used for the “Away” Mode, except you will intentionally toggle to disable the interior Motion Sensors. You want the Door and Window Contact Sensors to trigger the siren, but you don’t want the Motion Sensors to trigger the siren, as you move about inside. But if you like, you can enable a Motion Sensor in rooms you will definitely not go into while in “Home”, such as the Garage. Or some people only activate the “Home” Mode while sleeping upstairs, and therefore they can enable some of the downstairs Motion Sensors (but remember to “Disarm” before entering the detection zone of an Enabled Motion Sensor).

Additional Information:

  • The Base Station center light will be illuminated Blue when in “Disarmed” Alarm Mode. If in “Home” or “Away” Alarm Mode the Base Station will be illuminated Red.
  • Concerning the 3 Alarm Modes: “Disarmed” Mode cannot trigger the alarm. “Home” and “Away” Mode can trigger the alarm.
  • The Alarm is an “Intruder Protection System.” The Video Cameras are a “Surveillance System.” The Video Camera System can not trigger the Alarm system. It less confusing if you try to think that the two systems are separate and independent and just happen to share the same Ring App. Of course there are always exceptions. The Alarm Mode of “Disarm”, “Home”, and “Away” can be used to modify the behavior of the Camera system. But for the most part, you probably want the “Motion Detection Enabled” and the “Live View Enable” on each of the 3 Alarm “Mode Settings” page.
  • All Alarm sensor coummunicator to the Base Station using Z-Wave frequency. Only the Base Station communicates to the Internet Router. All Video Cameras communicate to the Internet Router using Wi-Fi frequency.
  • All alarm sensors are always ON and always communicating any change in their status to the Base Station. The Base Station will, or will not, use that information to trigger the siren, all depending on the settings you used in the App.

Bottom-line: Chances are that not all your Sensors are properly set, and therefore they were never able to trigger your alarm siren (for example: If you only had the Window’s Contact Sensors ‘enabled’ but the Doors and Motion Sensor were disabled, then and as long as you didn’t open a window, the alarm would not trigger).

If you still would like more information, there is plenty of online Ring Support articles available at:

https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us

If you still are having issues, you should telephone Ring Support for help:

https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360036196372-Get-in-Touch

Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19, their available hours have been changed also:

https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041597471-Ring-s-Response-to-COVID-19

I hope this information is helpful to you. :slight_smile:

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