I rent an apartment, and for that reason was elated when I heard Ring had come out with a camera that mounted onto the peep hole already drilled on the door.
Installation was simple, but in the last couple of days of owning it I notice a few things:
- Motion detection is a hit or miss. Sometimes a car/person passing by the door triggers it, but only about half the time. I’ve changed settings from furthest to closest possible but unfortunately motion detection remains a hit and a miss. I’ve literally stood 1 foot away from it looking at it and I never get a motion sensing alert. However, a car 20 feet away passes by downstairs (I live on the 2nd floor with a street facing door) and catches it easily. Am I not warm blooded enough for it to see me…?
Today while at work I changed the settings more and more and no matter what settings or alert frequency, motion detection was an utter hit or miss. When I arrived home, I passed by my door on purpose…nothing. I waited a minute, passed by again…nothing…walked up to my door and starred at the door bell…nothing. Opened the door and it finally caught motion detection while I was closing the door behind me.
My apartment has a door that is sunk into the wall, meaning between the actuall hallway and my door, there is about 3 squared feet and then the actuall hallway/walkway. No matter what settings i tried, close or far, motion detection was lacking greatly. It doesn’t help that there are no motion zones like the other doorbells, only a very broad circular radius.
- I had began to make my peace with motion detection, I figured it’d still be an awesome doorbell with a camera. Nope. Audio is terrible. When you press the button to ring the door bell, the ring from the actual outside part is very loud, but audio in 2 way audio is terrible, and grainy in quality. It sounds like both parties are very far away.
Notes: When I did testing, I set so that notfications were frequent, not normal. I set motion detection to be as far out as possible and as close as possible. Wifi was at about RSSI -25, which is very good.
I also reset the device and redid the entire setup 3 times. It behaved the same way every single time.
I believe this 1st iteration of the doorbell needs a lot of work, and though some things (like audio) can be fixed with firmware, I just can’t see keeping a 200 dollar glorified doorbell that I can’t even rely on for motion detection or decent audio.