Ring Changed to how Light Schedule Works

[user27019]

Two days ago during the early evening, I walked out my back door and my spotlight cam lights came on which was very odd. For over a year my Spotlight cam and front Floodlight cam were on schedules, which I created for them to only come on during the scheduled times via motion detection(11pm - 6am) which worked nicely. The lights would only come on between my scheduled period if there was motion, and then go off after 30 seconds.

I live in a neighborhood with foot and vehicle traffic, which dies down after about 9pm. And I like to spend time in my backyard during the evening, so the Ring Light Schedule worked out great. I also don’t want to be a nuisance to my neighbors. The theory was, after 11pm, everything is pretty quiet, so if the lights come on, there is usually a pretty good reason beyond a dog walker.

I noticed that the the app and schedule had completely changed. The schedule had my lights set from 6pm to 6am. (No the lights aren’t linked). I started editing the schedule and making adjustments. The one new setting I noticed was:

Keep Lights On (Lights will stay on when this schedule is active)
Keep Lights Off (Lights will stay off while this schedule is active, even if motion is detected.)

I played with the light settings and schedule for over an hour. I gave up for the night. The next evening I decided to get after it again, and this time I switched every conceivable switch I could. Still no luck. I rebooted the devices and even reinstalled the application. Still no luck.

Again, the end goal was to get back what I had configured, lights turn on due to motion detection between 11pm and 6am. After several hours I called support and was routed to L3 who stated Ring removed the ability to do what I once had setup. L3 was great to work with, understood the configuration I had, and stated she was going to escalate to the developers.

For the time being, I have completely disabled the lights as they are completely useless to me in the new configuration Ring has created.

It boggles my mind that Ring changed the scheduling to be either all or nothing. Either the lights are always on, or off, via schedule, or you leave them on motion detection with no parameters of time.

The feature they need to add back in the schedule section is:
Keep Lights On Motion: (Lights will only come on due to motion, then go off after 30 seconds when this schedule is active) That would be a splendid addition, considering that’s how I had it setup prior to this latest update.

If anyone else had their lights configured like mine, I’d love to hear from you.

[Fulabeer]

Same here!!!
Last week, my three Spotlight Cam (mounts) suddenly came on, and stayed on 24/7???
This problem ISN’T affecting my floodlight cam wired Plus.

Nothing i did turned the lights off. Totally ignored any setting in the app. (except unplugging them etc)
I rebooted/reset/re-installed the cameras from new. Re-installed my iPhone app.

NOTHING worked. The camera light just came on and stayed on. Nightmare for my neighbours at night. So i just unplugged everything. That meant i had no security apart from the working floodlight cam at the side of the house.

After trying everything, i found that a “update” must have broken the “Light Schedule” feature.
That is why all three cameras were affected at the same time.
I found if i turned off the “Light Schedule” feature, the cameras returned to normal operation.
However, the “Keep Off” function now didn’t work.

Like the poster above, i had the lights “off on motion” between dusk and 00.30am.
This was to stop the lights constantly coming on and off when people walked past or visited house.
Also, the front of the house is lit with feature lighting which is spoilt if the security lighting comes on.
Later in the evening (after midnight), the feature lighting turns off, and the security camera lighting can then work etc.
I hope Ring know they broke the firmware for Spotlight Cams.

[Justin_Ring]

Hi @Fulabeer. Since you’ve tried the basic troubleshooting steps, I’d recommend calling our support team at one of the numbers listed here for further assistance if the lights on your Cameras are staying on despite a Light Schedule telling them to stay off. If you are outside of the US, please visit here to see how to contact support.

[Fulabeer]

No thanks Justin. Customer service is terrible. I will just be wasting more of my life talking to somebody who has no clue what i’m talking about. I posted here for you to contact the firmware team and alert them to this glitch. Thanks fulabeer

[userAlfred]

They just make it hard to find. You can set it like this: go to the device that you want to trigger your lights on, the click the Linked Devices, then find the light group you want to come on when this device detects motions
Then you should see a yellow bulb or the bulb icon, tap it and then the times are there and you can scroll the wheel to set come on time of day and the end time for this group to come on when that device that has this group linked detects motion.

I found this myself when i added another pathlight and realized it is the LINKED Devices button that determines when you can tell it what hours to make these come on when motion is detected.

I edit mine a few times a year because the days get longer then they get shorter for daylight near end of summer.

Alfred