I’m reposting here what I posted on Reddit earlier today, since someone pointed me to the Ring Community forum.
I’m trying to move away from the Nest Ecosystem, but man, Ring is making it tough without some basic quality of life features.
I’m really unhappy with changes Google/Nest have made lately with their API and recording indicators. I have 4 cameras (2 indoor, 2 outdoor), all with Nest Aware. I’ve never actually properly installed the outdoor cameras, because I really don’t like the idea of drilling through a wall to securely plug it in, or running wiring along my house to plug a security camera into an easily accessible outdoor outlet.
I love that Ring has a floodlight camera. I replaced my existing floodlight last night with the Ring Floodlight. Getting a hardwired external camera, and smart lighting which I can control remotely is a huge win.
I was concerned with Ring not providing continuous recording like Nest does, especially when they claimed that it was going to become available and then all records of that claim being scrubbed from the Internet. The motion recordings do seem like they’re catching things very well, however. So I’m pretty happy with that.
That said, I’m having a real hard time with the user experience Ring provides.
Notifications. Make it so we can tell at a glance of the phone if something requires more attention. Currently we get the most generic notification in the world, and have to open up the app, wait for it to load the video, and then scrub through to find out if anything important happened. It’s bad to the point where I’ve had it set up for literally less than an entire day and I’m already simply ignoring notifications.
- Give more description than “There is a motion”. Everything is a motion. Is it a person? Car? Animal?
- Tell me which zone was the motion in!
- Give me a preview of what the camera caught, at the very least a still image to review without having to open up the app, wait for it to load the video, and scrub through to see wtf happened.
Website. It’s basically an afterthought.
- I can’t change any settings.
- I can’t create or modify or view zones.
- I can’t control the lights.
- I can’t share footage.
- The history list is as generic and unhelpful as the Notifications, and would be improved with the same changes.
- Give me the event history timeline like the phone offers for quickly scrubbing through all recordings from the day.