Light Schedule on Pause

The location permissions are all set correct in the phone and app. And when the lights are coming on they are coming on at the correct time. The recorded videos are at the correct time as well so I don’t think the time zones are the issue.

The customer service folks told me to check the time zone as well. The time and time zone is correct on my phone, so the time zone is not an issue.

Again, lights came on as scheduled yesterday at 7:30 pm and then went off again about 2 hours later. Had to turn the lights back on via the app, which again showed the message “light schedule on pause. Will resume the following day. Got up at 1:00 am in the morning and the lights were off again! And again, I had to turn on the lights via the app and received the same message about the light schedule being on pause.

I have been beyond patient with this issue. I kept my old fashioned regular floodlight when I had this Ring security camera installed a couple of years ago, and I think I am going to just have it reinstalled. It is dusk-to-dawn and gave me absolutely no trouble for over 15 years. I would rather have consistent light in my driveway and peace of mind than to keep dealing with a product and a company that keeps giving customers the run around about their product malfunctioning.

We’re sorry about this and truly do appreciate your patience. The team is looking into it and working on a fix. We will update this thread with more information once available.

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I was also checked about the timezone by support and it was fine. As others have said, the light turns on at the correct time, which wouldn’t happen if the timezone was incorrect. I, too, have noticed that sometimes, after manually turning on the light because it shut off despite the Light Schedule, that the light doesn’t always turn off as per Light Schedule and must then be manually turned off. So it’s really not a light schedule - it’s more of a light randomizer. I am also considering putting the solution I had previously, a Philips Hue smart bulb, because it never had an issue with scheduling the lights on or off.

Similar here as well. Sometimes when I notice it’s off and I turn it on in the middle of the night it never goes off as scheduled or rather usually doesn’t go off at the scheduled off time. It’s like it just completely disregards the schedule on the day it acts up. If you manually turn it on during a scheduled on one would think it would then go off at the scheduled off time but it doesn’t. But it seems to at least be working over the last few days - since I’ve been complaining about it. We shall see if it stays working correctly.

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Still getting the runaround from Ring. Today is the 50th anniversary of the United States landing a man on the moon and Ring can’t fix a scheduling issue on its floodlight cameras. SMDH.

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Yeah, returned home last night around 9pm to a dark house when it was scheduled to turn on at 8pm. I tried a shorter schedule but that didn’t matter. This is really out of the user’s control and completely and solely on Ring.

I used to recommend Ring to friends but I’ve now told them to hold off because of this issue.

Take your time, Ring, it’s just hurting your future sales. It’s only money, right?

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I can assure you the team is looking into this and we will be in touch with more information soon. We greatly appreciate your patience with this matter.

Yes, at first l noticed it around 1, 2 or 3 am., and I was told my internet provider was probably doing updates at this time. Now, it seems to be happening at any time.

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I may be way off here but from casual observation (I will try and confirm this when I have the time) I have noticed that sometimes when there has been a motion event that the lights will go off after a minute or so. I haven’t confirmed this but I have noticed they seem to be off after a motion event. I even think sometimes it’s motion that doesn’t even trigger an alert in the area that turns off the light a minute or so later. I have no settings turned on that would affect the light if motion is detected as I want the light to run on a schedule and not as motion activated light - I checked the settings for motion activated light and it’s off. Which is where I think the problem is coming from. Somehow when it detects motion it runs through the motion activation algorithm and deactivates the light after a minute even thought the lights have been on for hours before this motion event and are not set as motion activated. It just seems like motion is triggering the lights motion timer to start even when one doesn’t have that feature on.

I almost thought this problem had been magically fixed for the last week or so as they had been running correctly for a time. Then I get a motion alert when the lights are supposed to be on I check a minute or two later and they are off and I know they were on earlier in the evening.

I hope Ring is making progress on this problem. It’s really annoying and preventing me from a full scale deployment of these around my property.

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Wow, great observations @Socrates99 ! We appreciate not only everyone’s patience, but your ongoing resourcefulness in finding symptoms and behaviors that might assist in a solution. The team is definitely working on it, and we should have more information soon!

I don’t think motion is related to my issue because I will get motion notifications when there are cats or opossums in my driveway and the lights are still on. My lights continue to go off at random times. Like today and yesterday, the lights came on as scheduled, and then 30 -45 minutes later they went off again- no rhyme or reason. I keep being told “our team is working on it!” As we go into August, it will be 3 months. This is getting beyond ridiculous.

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Well as I said it was just a close association of the two that made me think it was linked and I am going to test my theory as soon as I have the time. My lights don’t go off immediately either after motion is detected but it sure seems like most of the time the lights have gone off it’s after I’ve either had a answered motion alert, viewed an alert from motion or just noticed there had been a motion alert that I’ve noticed them off later and I haven’t determined definitively if these events are linked - they may not be. I know that there is a amount of time that the lights would stay on once motion is detected if the light were setup as motion activated. Also I believe they use two separate systems to activate the lights - one for the video and one for the lights. The motion sensor for the lights covers a considerably larger area than the one that triggers the camera so you may not get a motion alert and or video when the light sensor detects motion so you may not have even realized there was motion detected by the lights motion sensor unless your lights had gone off after the motion event at some point (assuming that’s the cause) as there is no alert or log available to us of motion that the lights motion sensor detected. I know neither of us are using motion activated lighting but it sure seems like it isn’t being shut down completely when you choose to use the schedule.

I could be wrong, it was just a causal observation but I am going to test it as soon as I can. There has to be something that is triggering this behavior because there seems to be no rhyme or reason otherwise for this seemingly random behavior and usually tech (and I don’t want to start a discussion of this and get off track) like this has some error in the programming that’s causing it as there is USUALLY nothing just random that explains a behavior. What I mean is it’s explainable IF the reason can be found… If this were a physical problem with the light like a bad connection or bugs in the fixture (and it could be I just doubt it) I would expect it to not go so long or quickly between occurrences or affect more than one light shortly after install and the fact that these were new when the behavior started leads me to believe it’s something in the programming that is causing the problem and it’s not just a truly random event. Sorry, I digress. I’m just brainstorming here as it’s frustrating to have a light that doesn’t function correctly. You’d think that in this day and age you could set a timer for a light and it would be followed.

When things like this happen it really makes me hate devices that don’t let you get under the hood and try things your self such as rolling back firmware or choosing not to upgrade it when you have it working correctly. Ring just hides so much from the user in its effort to be ■■■■■ proof (for instance I can’t even tell what version of firmware I have, all I get is a statement that it’s up to date but how do I really know if I can’t see the version) and I completely understand why they do this, I just don’t like it.

Sorry for the long post.

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The Motion Sensor might be one scenario that causes the issue but I’ve also seen my light go off without a motion alert happening before it. A few nights ago, I returned to a dark house again (shocker) and I checked and there were no alerts between the scheduled start time and when I came home. But my lights were definitely off.

We’re most likely looking at more than one issue which makes it trickier to troubleshoot. Having said that, this issue has been going on for too long.

To make matters worse, my Ring Floodlight Cam just exhibited a new symptom. I got a motion alert and the video shows my light was off (it’s after the Light Schedule so that’s not the issue) but the light doesn’t even turn on until 50 seconds after the motion is detected. Here’s the video:

https://ring.com/share/6721236055713905700

<sarcasm>Progress?</sarcasm>

@Socrates99

Re: long post

I hear ya. It sounds like you’re technical and might even be a software developer. I’m not one myself but was in operations for a big software company so I know about troubleshooting software on a global scale.

I’ll get technical and people can ignore it:

I even asked to get signed up to Ring’s API because if part of the API is the ability to turn the light on and off, I was just going to schedule it outside of the Ring app and see if that isn’t a workaround. Worst case, if the issue still happened, then we’d know the scheduling part of the software isn’t the issue. I haven’t gotten a reply because I believe it was really more for other companies who want to partner with Ring instead of an individual like myself.

Another idea I had is if Ring could lend us a battery-powered Ring Doorbell. I’m under the assumption that the Ring Floodlight going on and off will trigger an alert in the Ring Doorbell and we wouldn’t have to guess if the light had gone on or off. We’d have the exact timestamp and might lead to better troubleshooting. Although this is something the Ring devs/ops people should already be doing, I’m willing to do it myself. Heck, I’d even volunteer during the weekend, for free, to help get this fixed. This is how bad it’s gotten for me.

Just checking in that my Ring Light Schedule is still broken. Light was off at 1030pm and it was scheduled to be on at 8pm.

I just wrote another lengthy post about this and it disappeared when I hit post. Accessing the “community” in the Ring app is horrible. You can’t even go back a page.

Anyway my lights are still randomly going off. Very frustrating that it’s still happening. I hope they are getting closer as my wife is close to demanding I replace them with something that works as good as the lights controlled by a $15 photocell did for years and years.

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Hi @Socrates99 currently, the Community is not available in the Ring App. I just tested using Safari on my iPhone and was able to log in and utilize the Community. Not to mention, I was able to go back by using the back button on the button of the browswer. If you’re not logged into the Ring Community, you will not be able to post. If you could clarify, we can definitely have a team member take a look.

The team is aware of the light schedule and working on a fix. We will continue to update the thread with more information as it becomes avaialble. Thank you for your patience.

You can access the community through the app at menu/help/visit support center/get more support drop down menu/ring community - visit us. It doesn’t send you out of the app to safari it lets your read and then type a reply to a post but then when you hit post it won’t let you post. It just disappears.

Wow! Thanks, @Socrates99. You’re correct and thank you for the steps you provided . Seems like it won’t allow you to log in at all. We went ahead and opened up a ticket with the team to get this fixed. We’ll be sure to make a note once we’re up and running. For now, if you’re on mobile, I suggest opening up Safari or Chrome and heading to community.ring.com to participate. Desktop works as well :slight_smile: Appreciate your outreach and patience.