How would you cover this room?

My living room and dining room are open to each other, like one long room. As I face the common wall, there’s a 4ftx4ft window for the dining room, a door leading to the outside, and a window 4ft h x 8 ft w in the living room. Each window is two separate glass panes: the smaller one is a crank open, and the larger one is a slide open.

Door sensors on the door, of course. I was hoping to use motion detectors to cover the rooms, and I think I can do that in the dining room. There is one wrinkle in the living room – if someone comes in late, or gets up in the night to sleep on the couch, the motion detector will alert, yes??

So is the only answer two glass break sensors plus an opening sensor for this window and room?

Hello @Anon_Y_Mous ,

Typically with Ring Alarm system (Intruder alarm) people set up their Contact (door & windows) and Motion-Detector Sensors in combination with Ring Cameras inside and outside (surveillance system). Then utilizing the 3 Alarm Modes of “Disarmed”, “Home”, and “Away” can tailor and modify the sensors and cameras.

“Disarmed” is not an active arm mode (cannot trigger the Alarm Base Station to siren/call-out) so normal setup would be all sensors will not trigger the alarm, but the Disarmed mode generally has all outside cameras active/recording and any indoor cameras either active or not (privacy). Of course there is exceptions, such as the Fire/Co detector sensor can always trigger the Alarm even in “Disarmed.” “Home” is used to form a protective parameter with Contact sensors on doors and windows enabled, to trigger the alarm but with motion detector sensor not enabled, because you are inside generally asleep in bed. Good planning and placement of motion detectors can also allow some motion sensors to be safely use in the “Home” Mode (for example in a garage, or just downstairs while you only sleep upstairs, etc.). And lastly, the “Away” mode is normally set to have all sensors and cameras enabled, because everyone is away with nobody in the house.

Unfortunately, there is NOT a Glass-breakage sensor available from Ring at this time that will automatically trigger the alarm. You can add your “Thumbs Up” Kudo vote to the several requests for this in the “Feature Request Board” room, to help get the Ring Teams attention.

I would probably use at least two motion sensors, one to cover the dining room and the other to cover the living room. Avoid pointing them at window (to avoid accidental triggering off sunlight), but rather on the same wall that the windows are. I personally like mounting motion detectors in corners which provide excellent coverage. If you do plan on using an active motion sensor in your dining room, insure it is pointing away from the living room so that activity in the living room would not set off the dining room motion sensor, and this can provide more flexibility when you assign which sensors to be enable in the “Home” mode. I highly recommend ‘test mounting’ your motion sensors with temporary tape. Then you can experiment in the test mode to see if you do have sufficient coverage to meet your needs, before you permanently mount them. Here are some other tips & information for motion sensors:

https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022697392-Setting-Up-and-Installing-your-Motion-Sensor

https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005178546-Getting-Started-Placing-Sensors-and-Motion-Detectors

https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040149572-FAQs-about-Ring-Alarm-2nd-generation-

https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039498552-Ring-Alarm-Motion-Detector-Setup-and-Use

https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360028192071-Motion-Detector-Help-FAQs

https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024313132-Testing-Your-Ring-Alarm-Motion-Detector

And these are just some of the many online that are available, with more at:

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

The key is to spend a little time thinking and considering where you should mount your motion sensors to best meet your needs. You don’t need ‘perfect’ coverage of every inch. You want to strive to place them where an intruder would most likely go during a 'break-in."

I hope this information gets you starting in the right direction. :slight_smile:

Thank you for the reply. I appreciate the boost. Especially the bit about sunlight triggering the motion detector - I thought avoiding windows would be due to curtain movement.

I have asked about the beam specifications for the motion detector (https://community.ring.com/t5/Ring-Alarm/Motion-detector-specifications/m-p/58062#M5684) hoping to cut down on the amount of “trial and error”, but have not received any good answers yet.