Disable night vision on Ring Pro video doorbell

Agreedā€¦ Iā€™ve hit ā€˜em up on Twitter as well. They refuse to give a straight up answer as why they wonā€™t offer it

Hi neighbors. As stated, we have past this information along to the appropriate team, with complete emphasis, that this is a want from the Community. The team agrees this is an interesting request and I am hopping on a call with them tomorrow to discuss. More information to come, so stay tuned.

I would also like to take this opportunity, that if you share a ā€˜wantā€™ it is better off placing it in the Feature Request Board and ā€˜kudoā€™ingā€™ the post. The more kudoā€™s a post has, the more we can gauge the desire of this across the board vs neighbors continuing to voice their opinion in a single thread. Also, it does no good to take your frustrations out on the Community team members. We have your best interest at heart and please know we are working behind the scense to send over top requests to the team on a daily basis. We will continue to be the voice of the neighbor, but in return we apprecaite your respect and patience with us. Weā€™ve outlined this as well in the Community Guidelines and will take necessary actions for neighbors who violate the guidelines. Thank you.

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Jennifer,

Thanks a million for your feedback, looking forward to the outcome of your call.

In the meantime can everyone who has posted to this forum please give a thumbs up to the following Feature Request post:
https://community.ring.com/t5/Feature-Request-Board/Option-to-turn-off-Night-Vision-on-Ring-Cameras/idi-p/27142

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Thanks MattMan,

I upvoted the request, everyone who has posted on here should as well!!

https://community.ring.com/t5/Feature-Request-Board/Option-to-turn-off-Night-Vision-on-Ring-Cameras/ā€¦

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I voted too!

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Thank you @MattMan + neighbors for upvoting the post! Great way to track our neighbors requests :slight_smile:

The call with the team went over very well. I STRESSED that this is a top request within the Community and our neighbors. The team will continue to investigate the scope of work for this. As of right now, I do not have any futher information, but will continue to update you here, when I do. Please note, that this may not happen overnight, but I will continue to work with the team to prioritize disabling night vision on doorbells and continue to be the voice of the neighbor internally. I hope this helps. Thanks!

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Thanks for the feedback @Jennifer_Ring, we look forward to further positive feedback that this feature will get implemented.

regards

Matt

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Thank you for being an advocate of our poor investment Appreciate this very much

Jennifer, How did your call go Thursday? What came out if it? Anything significant? Any action items come out of it regarding this issue?

Iā€™m amazed that itā€™s taking this long for what appears to be a simple binary switch. Do we know when the next major release will be ready?? Do you have a beta program?

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I totally agree; the night vision colorization is a useless feature! It colorizes some light sources like lamp posts and windows, but doesnā€™t help to see any objects because it is in IR-mode.

How hard can it be for Ring to add a switch disabling the IR-mode, that is completely useless (or better: a hindrance) in a well-lit street? And, to my opinion, IR is fairly useless in general because the IR LEDā€™s are too weak to enlighten anything beyond three feet distance.

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Can anyone tell me if itā€™s possible for a physical reason why Ring cannot add the ability to turn off night vision, even with a firmware upgrade? For example, could they have put it on a separate chip that cannot be controlled by a firmware upgrade?

Iā€™m trying to figure out why Ring has not corrected this yet. We are not asking for a feature. Itā€™s not a want, as one of the managers claimed. Itā€™s a BUG FIX! Our Ring doorbells are not operating as advertised. They are defective. Ring shows their doorbell being able to capture useable video at night, and thatā€™s not whatā€™s happening. We know why. We know what would fix it. But for some reason, Ring refuses to address the problem.

Iā€™m getting the very same problem as everyone else here. When night vision turns itself on, whatever is closest to the doorbell looks white (regardless of its true color), and everything else is black with a few dots here and there from houses with their lights on. But as soon as I cover the infrared lights, bingo! I have a decent video again where I can see all the way to the street and beyond.

The night vision is mistakingly using the closest object to set the lighting levels. The close object is set to extreme white (regardless of its true color) and the midtones are set extremely dark. almost black. The result is an image with a glaringly white object and everything else black or nearly black. This is not how night vision is supposed to work.

We want night vision turned off because itā€™s broken. If it worked right, we wouldnā€™t have this problem.

In the last 2 days, Iā€™ve talked with Ringā€™s customer service for several hours, with the last few hours talking with a supervisor. Heā€™s a nice person, but he has no knowledge of how Ring doorbells work. His latest suggestion was to turn the infrared lights to the lowest setting, something he says that he can do, but neither I nor the regular customer service reps could do. The effect? He turned off the color vision ā€“ which we all know is a setting in the Ring app. And, of course, the instant I removed the tape covering the infrared lights, the video went black again. I regained video when I put the tape back on.

I also did the flashlight trick someone else suggested in this thread. When I shined the light at the doorbell, I could hear an audible click as the night vision shut off. But when I removed the light, I got 1-2 seconds of video and then click, the night vision turned itself back on which destroyed my video.

The next step the Ring supervisor said heā€™d do is send me a replacement doorbell. Iā€™ll take it with the very slim hope that the night vision setting is less sensitive on the replacement doorbell and wonā€™t turn itself on at night ā€“ but Iā€™m not holding my breath.

The problem is in the design of these doorbells. It is a design flaw. And I question whether it can be fixed with a firmware upgrade. I suspect not. And I suspect Ring knows this which is why they have not addressed this problem. And if Iā€™m right, it means that Ring has knowingly and intentionally left us hanging with defective devices. How else can they explain not fixing this defect in a year?

https://share.ring.com/ee2b6182-d5f7-460b-96d9-8c9229109aee.mp4

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Time for a clalss action lawsuit against ring eh???

Hi neighbors! We take your feedback very seriously and have shared it with our teams, and continue to share it.

Low light adjustment for any lens is often dependent upon the lighting in the area. Our devices feature night vision adjustment which should help in most environments. For well lit areas, the color night vision feature will help to brighten or add hue to the picture.

As every entry way is unique, we like to provide various solutions for neighbors to obtain what they are looking for. Any obstructions in view of the lens might affect focal point, field of view, and adjustment. For scenarios like these, I recommend looking into our wedge or corner kits on our accessories page, if settings have not helped.

Covering your entry way is a great start at obtaining a true ā€œRing of securityā€, but if you are looking to cover beyond certain obstructions we recommend checking out one of our Security Cams as well! We are always working to add to and improve our neighbor experience, and will be sure to update the Community with anything new we hear from our teams! Smiley Happy

Seriosuly Marley, but that response beggars belief.

ā€œWe like to provide various solutions for neighbours to optain what they are looking forā€

Eh no you donā€™t we just want the ability to turn off the night light !

ā€œI recommend looking into our wedge or corner kits on our accessories pageā€

This is almost hilarious, you want people to spend more money on something that is quite expensive for what it provides which simply does not work.

ā€œwe recommend checking out one of our Security Camsā€

Again why on earth would one consider purchasing another cam when the one we have already does not work as advertised. !

56 People so far have requested this feature:
https://community.ring.com/t5/Feature-Request-Board/Option-to-turn-off-Night-Vision-on-Ring-Cameras/idc-p/27490#M294

Please anyone else posting to this forum thread add your vote to this feature request. Even though as noted before itā€™s really a bug fix not a feature request !

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I found a solution! I increased the amount of light coming from my porch light which is now bright enough to prevent the night vision from turning on.

I installed my Ring Video Doorbell Pro last November and had great night time videos for months. Then the videos became very dark. The red bricks close by looked brilliant white while everything else was black or darn near black. I couldnā€™t see anything.

I contacted Ringā€™s customer support, talked with them for many hours, most of which was with a superviser. I got the standard blurbs we see here which clearly indicated that they had no idea what was happening.

Covering up the infrared lights helped. The red bricks werenā€™t dazzling white anymore and the rest of the video became visible again, but it was still more dull than it had been before.

And thatā€™s when it hit me. If darkness turned the night vision on, then brightness should turn it off.

My porch light uses 3 bulbs. I was using LED bulbs rated at 2700K and 270 lumens. Thatā€™s only 810 lumens all together. I switched them to LED bulbs rated at 5000K and 400 lumens. Thatā€™s now 1200 lumens total which is 150% of what I had before. Plus, 5000K light bulbs appear brighter than 2700K (due to the yellow shade of 2700K). I also cleaned the porch lightā€™s glass fixture.

And bingo! No more night vision! My videos are back to what they were when I first installed the doorbell without the need to cover the infrared lights with tape.

This is such a simple solution and is actually the opposite of what Ring had suggested to me. They tried to tell me to turn my porch light off ā€“ which police departments do not recommend because it is well known that criminals prefer to work in the dark. So not only was Ringā€™s suggestions unhelpful and unsafe, but it was dead wrong. It was, in fact, the very opposite to the solution.

If you want to turn off your night vision, brighten the lighting around the doorbell. Clean fixtures and install brighter light bulbs. Yes, Ring should not make this necessary, but they do, and at least there is a work-around.

I have attached screen grabs of the doorbell videos to show the changes (4 screen grabs combined into two files due to the attachment limit):

  1. Original View + with Night Vision.png
  2. Infrared Covered + Brighter Porch Lights.png
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I purchased and installed my Ring Pro video doorbell last Summer. For many months, I had a clear color image of everything in front my house at night, with or without motion. Sometime since then, Ring changed the algorithm for when the night vision enables. I have not changed my front porch light bulb during any of this time. When the night vision enables, the IR emitters, in addiition to my porch light, washes out and blurs the captured image dramatically reducing the value of this video doorbell. I have been waiting, hoping that Ring would see the mistake they made and resolve it. While I prefer that RIng return to the older algorithm for enabling the night vision, providing an option to diable the night vision is not only a good compromise but a great way to broaden the applications of these video doorbells.

What is suppossed to happen when the company you purchased a perfectly good solution from changes the product through an update making the solution useless?

I have waited patiently for Ring to resolve this issue but seeing that RIng has been ignoring this issue , even with the attention it is garnering in this community, I too believe it is time to look at competing products.

Thanks, I was going to try that and was hoping someone had already tried it!

Itā€™s silly to say it canā€™t be done when you can turn the lights on a spotlight camera, then turn it off and it takes a couple of seconds for the IR to turn on and during that two seconds you have a great usable view that disappears. Just take that intermediate step as an option. Iā€™ll add my vote

@rchildress wrote:
Thanks, I was going to try that and was hoping someone had already tried it!

It works really well with just one snag. Anytime a lizard or insect gets too close, the darn night vision comes back on. To turn it back off, I shine a flashlight into the camera, but who wants to get up in the middle of the night to shine a flashlight into the camera just because an insect flew by?

So Iā€™m going to cover the infrared lights again, hoping the two solutions will work together to stop the night vision from activating once and for all.