Night Vision issues

Hi,

I think I have an issue with my night vision on my doorbell,

I’ve attached an image from last night and an image of our front door during dusk as we do have solar lights that come on, these have only recently been put up and we were getting pitch black even before then,

I have had the door bell for maybe 6 months now and I’ve always thought nothing of the pitch black images thinking maybe its just how it is, but with the new lights I though it would improve it.

we do have streetlights that turn off at midnight, the snapshot from last night is after they turned off, but our solar light would have remained on throughout the night,

as you can see from the snapshot, at night its pitch black like no night vision at all, in the snapshot you can see a bit of light in the top corner from street lights on the main street but the rest is pitch black.

any help would be appreciated, and i’ll answer any questions I can.

Thank you for the image example and detailed break down of your concern, @Cris-ness! This image is certainly pitch black at night, which is unusual for our devices as they all feature night vision options. Is this a Video Doorbell Pro? If so, please check it’s device health in the Ring app to ensure the power level is sufficient. Night vision can be known to draw more power for operation. This same concept applies to a battery powered device, if your Doorbell battery is critically low.

As long as resources are looking sufficient for operation, please check your night vision settings next. From your Ring app dashboard, open the Menu, select Devices, select your Doorbell, and then select Device Settings. You will then see an option for Video Settings in your Device Settings, which will allow you to enable or disable color night vision. This is a great feature to test through trial and error, combined with different lighting scenarios, to see what will best help your lens adjustment at night.

If this concern persists, can you also please send an image example of this Doorbell’s view during the day? This will help us check for any environmental or physical factors. :slight_smile:

Thank you for replying,
Sadly it is not a pro, I have attached an image of the product box,

It is battery and we recently charged it so it has a decent amount of power currently.

I have also attached a snapshot from the day as you requested hope this helps,

Looking at the physical doorbell tonight I can see that it has tiny red lights either side of the camera, so I’m not sure if it is a case of it not working, or I just don’t have the right light conditions for it to work properly??? I’m no expert though so I’m not sure either way

Thanks again for your reply, hope this new message helps towards a solution,

Hey @Cris-ness. Chiming in for Marley! You are exactly right with the tiny red lights you are seeing on the Doorbell itself. Whenever these red lights are on, this means the the IR lights are on and thus trying to produce a night vision image quality for you. It’s possible that the lighting in the front of your house is washing out the quality and not allowing the night vision to work properly though. This is because the light doesn’t seem to be very bright, and it’s right above the Doorbell on the same wall, no adding much benefit to the lighting of the Doorbell’s vision.

When you have the lights on your front porch on, do you still see the red lights on the Doorbell? If you do, then the night vision should quality should still be a bit better than what you’ve seen in the pitch black photo, but this may also be due to the fact that your front porch does not have a lot of outdoor lighting. Since you were seeing this concern even before you added the lighting, it’s possible you may need to add more lighting to the area in front of your house instead of right where the Doorbell is, as the lights in the front don’t seem to illuminate the front yard well enough to work with the night vision. Are you able to install lighting, like step lights or path lights, in front of your yard to see if this helps?

For example, on my Peephole Cam (battery operated), I have lighting that is far enough away from the Doorbell and on the ceiling, in the line of sight for the Doorbell. This light is also very bright and and lights up the whole balcony and part of the stairs, as you can see below:

Although, things that do not have a lot of outdoor lighting, like at the bottom of the stairs, are hard to see since there are no lights immediately around it. Let me know if adding in more lights to the front yard seems to help, or you could even try taking the Doorbell to a darker environment, such as a closet with absolutely no light, and seeing if the Night Vision activates. It seems like the concern you were having being is that there was too much ambient light around the Doorbell without enough lighting in the front yard, and therefore testing the Night Vision in a pitch black area will also let you know if the night vision is truly working or not.

Let me know how that works out and if you still have this concern and would like to follow up with our support team, 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. 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.

Sorry for the late reply,

but yes i have tried in in a dark room and i think it is just sa lack of light, i am looking at getting an infrared flood light, or finding a better way to control the current flood lights we have(connecting them to wifi or something) but when the flood light is on you can see the night vision working alot better, i guess its just me thinking night vision wouldnt need some sort of light to see but i guess its more an enhancer of light in the dark then creating light out of nothing,

thank you for helping me with this, and glad its not a faulty device and more just the pitch black street i live on,

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