Ring Alarm won’t recover from Cellular backup without manual intervention

Marley_Ring, I have been a software and hardware engineer for 40 years, and I cannot overstate this: THERE IS A SOFTWARE BUG IN THE RING BASE THAT PREVENTS IT FROM RECONNECTING TO WIFI **EVER** IN MANY CASES! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE ESCALATE THIS ISSUE! THIS IS **NOT** USER ERROR, AND IS **NOT** A RARE ISSUE! MANY CUSTOMERS ARE HAVING THIS PROBLEM!!

I installed a Ring at my small business some months back, and we have had many power-outages due to construction at the mall. Once the router powers off and the Ring Base goes to Cellular, it is VERY COMMON (at least 50% of the time) that it will NEVER, EVER reconnect to the WiFi once it comes back up. Many other devices, including Ring cameras, reconnect just fine every single time. The Base DOES NOT. Waiting for hours or even days DOES NOT WORK. The only solution is to press the reset button briefly on the Base, after which it finally reconnects. Incidentally, this is NOT DOCUMENTED - the reset button is documented only as holding it down for a factory reset that wipes all settings. Pressing it briefly to re-boot the device should be CLEARLY DOCUMENTED to save your customers frustration and fear of wiping out settings! Furthermore, it is not technically possible to “power cycle” the Base as you mention in your post, since it has a battery backup. You are confusing users by not talking about pressing the Reset button. Unplugging/replugging the power is what people will think you are talking about, but this is what CAUSES the problem, NOT how to fix it! Finally, it is EXTREMELY frustrating when support casually mentions connecting to Ethernet to test or solve problems - this can be very difficult to do. In my case, it’s a remote business with the Base high on the wall very far from the router… talking a teenage worker through buying a 50’ cable, unplugging another critical device from the router, climbing up a ladder, etc. is simply not feasible for me, and I suspect would be a very big hassle for a very large percentage of your users. It is very annoying for you to “highly recommend” this process so casually, like it’s trivial to do.

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I would like to add that my confidence level in a software problem in the Ring Base causing this issue is 1000%.

I would also like to add that ignoring reports of such a serious issue for at least 8 months is disgraceful. Yes, it’s true that it’s sadly very common for companies lately to (a) make it extremely difficult to get past completely useless Help pages and FAQs to report a serious issue to a human being, and (b) make it 99.9% likely that any and all reported issues will be completely ignored except for canned “have you tried power-cycling?” type responses. Still, for a company such as Ring to ignore such a very serious flaw in their single CORE product is absolutely, positively disgraceful.

This problem should be addressed ASAP, but upper management should take a very hard and long look at how this was even possible. How did the bug get in, and most importantly, how was it not caught in testing? How in the heck are you not monitoring and reporting such issues so you can pre-emptively detect them? For every individual who has taken the time to report this issue, there are thousands who have experienced it. In fact, I bet that the vast majority of your customers who have had power outages or routers that have gone down for a time have experienced it… unless perhaps they have older firmware that does not have the issue. This is a VERY SERIOUS software flaw in your product!

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Thank you for this feedback. We always value our neighbors’ security and experience, and I’ve shared your concerns and feedback with our teams here. If this concern is persisting despite trying the steps mentioned prior, the Base Station may require a reset. As mentioned in our help center article about resetting your Alarm devices, do not attempt to factory reset your Ring Alarm Base Station without guidance and support from a trained Ring Customer Support expert. To perform this step, please give our support team a call at one of the numbers available here. We’re taking additional steps to protect our team and help reduce the spread of COVID-19, so this has resulted in longer than normal wait times. If you are outside of the US, please read our response to COVID-19 here to see how to contact support.

I completely agree… These workarounds are hooky. I have also been in software dev and quality for many many years. For a security system, this is extremely poor standard and it makes for a fragile system which defies the reason it exists. I did reset my basestation after several instances of the base station dropping off the Wifi for days. Reseting the base station is unfortunately throws the entire system into an ugly limbo where you have to hard reset and reconnect all my 20 some devices. No graceful way to reset a base station!!

Also, who uses ethernet cable these days. The support thought I was weird when I mentioned how difficult it is to run an Ethernet cable.

At this point my system is down and I have to call again only to be frustrated by the 101 support steps. Maybe Email Jeff Bezos at jeff@ amazon.com or jbezos@amazon.com

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I would like to add that we’ve had many power outages in recent months (late at night, due to construction at our mall), and lately the Ring alarm usually does re-connect to WiFi once power is restored and the WiFi comes back up… HOWEVER, it consistently takes the Base about 4 to 5 hours before it reconnects! I’ll take 4-5 hours over Never anyday, but this still just makes no sense whatsoever. I’m guessing the software is coded to rapidly increase the interval between attempts as they fail, in an attempt to converse power. But, the algorithm is ridiculous if power being out for 1-2 hours causes it to then wait 4-5 hours before attempting again. Features are restricted when the Base is offline, and it’s extremely annoying and inconvenient that it takes so long. I would suggest the unit should reconnect within 30 minutes if the power is out 2 hours or less, 1 hour if out up to 4 hours, 2 hours up to 8 hours, etc. However, it seems the max time to wait for re-connect should always be no longer than 1-2 hours. It’s very hard to imagine any possible justification for that.

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BTW, pressing the reset button very briefly should reset the base without restoring factory defaults (although this is NOT documented). This worked several times for us when the Base didn’t reconnect to WiFi for days.

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I spoke too soon with my last post… I thought the alarm had gone back on WiFi after a power outage the night before last, but NO. Tried to access the Guest Users, couldn’t, realized the Base is still on cellular backup 37 hours after power was restored and WiFi came back up!! How is it even REMOTELY acceptable to just tell your customers to “wait a few days”, Ring? (Which, BTW, does NOT help!) Your product is CRIPPLED when it’s not on WiFi! This is a very serious BUG that you’ve been just ignoring FOREVER. PLEASE ESCALATE THIS ISSUE!! Why do your customers have to BEG to get a serious flaw fixed? The fact that you also refuse to document the fix of quickly pressing the reset button with a paper clip is just insanity.

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My base station goes off wifi to cellular two to three times each day, it reconnects each time but this keeps happening. The WIFI system is not over loaded, it is a reasonably fast connection. It makes me not very confident in the system, which is important with an alarm system. Is there a software update that fixes this? Can a static IP be assigned to the base station?

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I purchased the Ring Alarm system after a 3 year battle with iSmartAlarm, whose system started out strong but then slowly degraded.

Ring is FABULOUS. So fabulous, that my parents also switched over to Ring.

I’ve had the system for 2 or 3 months now, and everything about it is great and easy to use, except that I too keep getting that same issue, where the alarm routinely goes on cellular backup, then back online, then cellular backup, then back online.

The first time it happened several months ago, I actually found some obscure post that talked about how when the firmware updates, you have to completely reset the base station, and that is what is causing the issue. I’m willing to believe this, because my NetGear Router has a similar issue. If you wish to upgrade the firmware, you have to first backup your configuration, upgrade the firmware, and then deploy the backup back to the router. If you don’t, it gets weird, sporadic dropouts.

The first time this happened, I did a hard reset on the ring base station, expecting to then have to go around the house and reinstall all the sensors… a situation which is really unacceptable. But the reset didn’t wipe everything. Instead, it simply seemed to fix the problem.

Don’t take my word for it though. You run the risk of having to set absolutely everything up again, if you try this. So be prepared.

That fix lasted for about 6 weeks, and then lo and behold, earlier this week, the cellular backup problem reared its ugly head again! I wish I’d been smart enough to know what firmware was rolled out on it, so I could now check if that has auto-updated, and thus caused this problem for sure, because at this point, it’s only a theory.

Perhaps Ring Support could confirm whether or not this is the case, and how we can EASILY fix the issue after firmware updates, if that is the culprit. I really don’t want to have to totally reset everything every 6 weeks due to a bug that causes fimrware updates to cause network dropouts!

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I too am experiencing this issue and it is very frustrating. I do t have the luxury of running Ethernet to the base station. Based on this thread I think the best option is returning the system and going with something more reliable. Let’s vote with our wallets!

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Add me to this problem too. I tried to re connect through the app no go. I been stuck on Cellular for about a week now.

This is clearly a problem that needs to be addressed so many complaints

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Attention Ring: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE escalate this issue, and to be clear there are at least THREE different problems here:

  1. The Ring Base drops WiFi sometimes for apparently no reason.

  2. Once disconnected, the Ring Base can take many HOURS to re-connect to WiFi, which makes absolutely no sense (I’ve been a software & hardware engineer for 40 years, and this is just ridiculous).

  3. Sometimes, the Ring Base will NEVER EVER re-connect to WiFi unless it is reset, at which point it does so immediately with no problems.

It is critical that your company understand that just because problem #2 eventually corrects itself, this does NOT make it a low priority problem!! Features of the Ring Base are CRIPPLED when on cellular backup. This problem is absolutely destroying the image of your product for your customers, and probably at least 1,000 times more are experiencing this problem than have reported it!

It is even more critical that you understand that problem #3 is very, very REAL and also widespread. Most likely your engineers are writing it off as just problem #2 and impatient users just aren’t waiting long enough for it to resolve itself. It is in fact an entirely different problem whereby the software in the Ring Base becomes corrupted in such a way that it will NEVER EVER re-connect to WiFi without a reset!

Please make it a priority to resolve this problem before it becomes necessary for those of us with the required skills to hack your device, decompile the code, and embarrass your company by publicly outing its terrible flaws… of which I’m sure there are many more than just the above.

It’s just ridiculous how long this problem has existed with apparently nothing being done about it. Your company obviously has a very serious problem either with management’s prioritization of bugs or a lack of qualified engineers to identify and fix the problem.

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Marley_Ring, I appreciate your taking time to try to answer this question, but agree with others that Ring’s response on this is unacceptable. This is obviously a problem for multiple users, myself included, so asking users to ‘call support’ for a fix is not an optimal way of handling the problem.

At a minimum, we should be provided a set of written instructions on how to perform a soft reset. Ideally, Ring would reach out to customers reporting the problem to try to replicate and obtain diagnostics so that the issue could be properly characterized, diagnosed, and treated. It’s been 11 months since this was first reported.

I too am now having this problem. Just installed my system last Sunday and noticed the alarm system dropping off and on a couple times. Then tonight it has dropped off and not come back on.

This is unacceptable. I will warn others via an Amazon review.

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I have the same issue :warning:, but now I’m far away from home. All devices like wifi camera and other are working good except the Ring Alarm system, it is only in cellular network only.

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Put my new system (installed this past weekend) on the list - started about Weds - mid-day - ‘dropped wifi’

will not reconnect. Router is about 6’ from the Ring - now I cant even get it to connect by “join other network”

Its all going back in the box for a refund if a fix isnt avaiable soon

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Same issue here. My ex got the ring alarm and I help her set it up. Every weekend this thing is on cellular. It is an absolute joke that the response is to reset the unit. WTF. What if you are no where near the unit? That is the dumbest response ever. If I owned this system it would have been back already. You cannot run an effective security system that cannot reconnect to the network connection effectively.

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Same issue here. Please users, if you are experiencing this problem, instead of just reading all these responses, take a minute to log in and post here so that ring understands just how expansive this issue is.

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Same issue here. If the connection to the WiFi drops for any reason, the base station will often not reconnect without going through the network setup again.

It doesn’t happen every time but I reckon it fails at least 50% of the time. All my other devices, over 20 of them, rejoin the WiFi after an outage except for the Ring alarm.

I have tried fixing it to a 2.4GHz, a 5GHz and even a different AP but it makes no difference.

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Sorry to see this concern is persisting for some neighbors. The Alarm Base Station is intended to reconnect to the last known network, once connection is restored. This may not happen right away, as the Base Station will periodically check in for available network connection, but it should happen after several moments. If cellular backup is initiating often, this could be a sign of poor signal or signal interference. As many neighbors in this thread mentioned using wifi, we recommend connecting via ethernet to rule out any wifi variables that might be interfering with the intended experience.

For more in-depth troubleshooting, if needed, please give our support team a call at one of the numbers available here . We’re taking additional steps to protect our team and help reduce the spread of COVID-19, so this has resulted in longer than normal wait times. If you are outside of the US, please read our response to COVID-19 here to see how to contact support.**