What do I need to buy to get Ring to work correctly?

Products Video Doorbells
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#1

We bought a couple rings (2 doorbells and 2 cameras) for christmas and they didnt work well, so we bought a couple new samsung phones and it didnt work right on that. We installed rapid ring and it made it worse. We bought an hd 8 fire tablet thinking the ring app might work better on an amazon product and we cant get the skill added on to alexa and the app is still super buggy and slow.

I’ve heard so many good things about ring and we really need the monitoring…what do I need to buy to get this system to work as promised? Our internet connection has tested fine everytime I call customer care.

The gal at amazon suggested I buy a echo show to try in case it works but she wasn’t sure if they do or not…does anyone know if this is what I need to make it work a bit? We have reasonable expectations…if we could get it to work for 50-75% of the time we would be content.

What is the best thing to use for viewing/communicating with the ring app and cameras? What other devices should I stay away from?

Or am I being unreasonable and this is just how it works? My main issue is that it takes a couple minutes to load live view when it will and it misses about half the motion events (it’s on the most sensitive setting). Do ring doorbells only work occassionally?

#2

I’d be looking at quality/bandwidth of your wifi as a starting point, particularly if you are just using your broadband providers wifi router without any other form of mesh distribution.
In the app, what ‘RSSI’ numbers are you getting for your ring devices?

#3

I’d be surprised if it’s a wifi issue cause we tend to have really good service. I dunno though my rssi is only 33 so maybe thtas it? My mom rssi was close to 60 when I checked but hers doesnt work any better than mine even though she has higher rssi.

ETA…my moms ring is actually a little better than mine. She doesnt have as many issues with buggy video recordings and false alarms.

#4

After checking my rssi is still dropping. It was down to 22 when I just checked now. Yikes. How do I get this number back up into a good range?

What number should I try to keep it above?

Also worth mentioning…my moms rssi typically stays above 35 and gets up to maybe 60 while I dont think I’ve ever seen mine get that high. My moms router is pretty much directly behind the door where her ring is while mine is off to the side a bit. Could this be why I have a lower score? Should I move my router? It’s still pretty close to the ring doorbell.

Eta…when I called the ring customer service my rssi was only at 25 and the guy said it was ok. I didnt think much of it, does this mean I’m only getting 25% of my signal?

Also my upload speed is 13mbps and the ring website said it had to be at least 2. Is there some other internet speed metric I should check? I only know how to do it through a little speed test webpage.

One more thing (sorry I keep adding so much)…the security camera I have in the back of the house has an rssi of 46 and it is the most reliable device out of all of them. It’s the first time I checked that rssi so I dont know if it’s usually higher but I doubt it cause its farther away from the modem than either doorbell is.

#5

OK, first things first, for RSSI you’ve got your scale the wrong way round in your head. You want a RSSI number as close to zero as possible. -22 is very good.
Your broadband speed is sufficient for the Ring system but if you have people streaming video or gaming on that service, there will likely be a bottleneck and your Ring comms may well suffer. If this could be an issue, I suggest you pause all other users of your wifi for a period while you test the Ring system again.

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#6

Ok, we dont have any gaming or video watching going on. A couple times a month my kid watches youtube, but we arent really a tv family.

#7

Ok, as all that checks out, at this point I would be uninstalling/resetting my kit and reinstalling it one component at a time.
Start simple. One phone (with Ring App only, no Rapid Ring) and one doorbell. Get that hooked up and tested. Is the performance better/good? Try random tests including doorbell rings and live view requests while you are at different positions in the house.
Try live view requests both while your phone is connected via wifi only and then via 4G only.
What scenarios work?
What scenarios (if any) do not work?

If everything is working to your satisfaction at this point, then add another component and re-test (perhaps a little less extensively) to see if any performance drops off.
Having re-read your original post, you mention having two doorbells but only state the RSSI to one. Clearly connection strength to all components will be critical.
Good luck.

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