TP-Link Deco Mesh WiFi bricking Ring cameras

Is anyone aware of any issues surrounding Ring Cameras bricking when losing connectivity to Mesh WiFi networks, specifically TP-Link Deco products? This happened to me the other day when my neighborhood lost power. Both my Ring 2 and Stick Up Cam (battery version) died. There are a couple of people on reddit that have experienced the same.

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Hi @Famoussd - I moved your post to the correct board.

The team is looking into this. Does this happen if you turn the WiFi Mesh off?

Iā€™m not sure thereā€™s an option to turn the Mesh off but I had a power outage at my house so everything turned off. The other people on reddit said it happened when they unplugged the router to move it to another room.

Hereā€™s the reddit link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ring/comments/ad67az/mesh_network_bricking_devices/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

and anotherā€¦

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ring/comments/a2x6dc/solar_spotlight_cams_bricking_recently_firmware/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

My Ring2 sends out multiple notifications and when I check them there is none, but when Iā€™m in the network I see them. I might have to start an old AP to just handle it since the w2400 Mesh canā€™t support it. I had no issues before the W2400 Mesh network.

I am having the same exact problem. I have already lost two spotlight cams and a doorbell cam. All completely dead.

@JD2092 , thank you for adding your experience here. To confirm are all the devices you listed battery devices and are they connected to a TP-Link Deco Mesh network? If so are they not charging at all?

Correct. The two spotlight cameras were battery only cameras. The doorbell was hard wired and battery. All devices were connected to TP-Link deco mesh network. All batteries were near fully charged after the cameras died and remained near fully charged after the problem occurred.

I have the same problem, I am on my 3rd Doorbell 2. The first one worked on my local routers wifi network for over 6 months and then I added a Deco M5 mesh network to address poor wifi connections throughout my home. It worked with the Doorbell 2 for another 2 months flawlessly (even improving my RSSI score) until the battery died and needed to be recharged.

When I re-inserted the recharged battery the following day there was nothingā€¦the Doorbell 2 was dead. I got a replacement and this lasted 6 days until we experienced a power outage at around 1:15pm and the mesh wifi network went offline, the power was restored approx 1 hour later and the Doorbell 2 recorded motion at 2:30pm. At 4:30pm I received a call from a delivery driver letting me know that he was at the gate and that he was ringing the Doorbell but there were no notifications from it. I pressed the bell but there were no LED lights illuminated on the unit and no notifications from the app or chimes. I recharged and re-inserted the battery but the unit would not reset or power back up.

The 3rd replacement unit is up and running at the moment but giving very poor wifi connection (rssi score 81-86%) to the mesh network and sometimes the Live view will connect but have a black screen. I think I will try and reinstate the old wifi network from my original router just for the Doorbell 2 and see how that works out.

Update:

I went back to my old ISP provided router and created a new 2.4 Ghz wireless network just exclusively for the Video Doorbell 2, the two Chimes I have and the android phone I use to set up the system, I configured the router to only allow these devices access to the new ā€˜Ringā€™ network. I changed my Deco mesh wifi to operate in AP mode and will use that mesh wifi network for all other network access throughout my home.

The Doorbell and Chimes all connected without trouble and were working as expected for around 45 minutes after which I noticed I did not get a motion alert for someone accessing my gates. The app reported that the 2 chimes were offline but the Doorbell was still online. I pressed the doorbell and the notification sounded on the unit but not on my phone or the chimes, after a reboot of the router all devices came back online and are working as normal.

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I disabled fast roaming on my Deco and that seemed to have fixed my problem (fingers crossed).

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Hopefully it has resolved your problem and seeing as the Doorbell is in a fixed location it makes sense to disable seamless roaming. I did the same with mine when I was trying to improve the wireless signal but I think I might have re-enabled it when it had no impact on the rssi.

My Doorbell 2 is mounted to the pillars of my automated gates which are approx 20ā€™ from the Deco M5 and 25ā€™ from my ISP supplied wireless router. The only objects between them are a double glazed window and a slatted timber gate, even when I temporarily moved the deco to the outside window ledge the signal only marginally improved. My smartphone speedtest reported 890mbit down and 90mbit up for the same location at my pillars when connected to the Deco M5 and similar when connected to the ISPā€™s router.

The Doorbell 2 was getting an rssi score of 81 with the Deco and now 63 with the ISPā€™s router. The mesh wifiā€™s signal is excellent everywhere in my home and well out to my driveway, patio and garden whereas the ISPā€™s wireless router has many deadspots in the home and will not extend out into the patio or back garden. We use wifi calling to boost our weak GSM signal (rural area with poor GSM coverage) on my smartphone so extenders are not a real option.

I had 6 months of almost flawless operation from the Doorbell 2(even with multiple power outages during this period) before the introduction of the Deco M5 mesh system, 4 weeks after installing the M5 and possibly after a low battery forced the doorbell to shut down it did not start up again and was bricked. The replacement Doorbell 2 lasted only 6 days and mysteriously bricked itself with 63% charge left on the battery and a power outage caused the mesh network to go offline.

Slightly off topic, the Doorbell 2 is a great piece of kit when it works, I am disappointed with the wifi connectivity and the power options for the unit. In my situation there is no existing bell at the pillar but I would buy a mains voltage transformer from Ring if there were one available for the Doorbell 2, also there is no weather shielding or cover available to protect the unit in really bad snow or wet conditions though my units failed in good clear and dry weather.

The problems with Deco M5 seem to be happening to several users and the problem repeats with multiple replacements, yet there are no advisarys available from Ring or TP-Link 6 months after some posts have appeared. I hope it is resolved by disabling the roaming option on the M5 as you mentioned and hope you will post again if that changes. Meanwhile I will keep my old non-mesh wireless router in service and see how that works out.

We agree @Famoussd , disabling fast roaming/ 802.11r on the Deco Mesh router should be a trusty solution for this concern. @Rubberbandit , @JD2092 , @MashNash , thank you all for your resourcefulness, Iā€™ve accepted this as a solution for now. If unresponsive or timing out symptoms resurface, feel free to update us with any observations.

I just experience the issue a few weeks ago, I contacted ring support but only now noticed this thread.
I have a deco m9 and only my two battery operated cams are bricked (happened at or around the same time). My doorbell and wired spotlight cam are not affected.
I have fast roaming enabled and donā€™t want to disable this. ( Not sure if you can enable this per network but I donā€™t think so).
I will receive two new cams but I donā€™t want them to be bricked as well, anyone knows if this is solved by now?.

Disabling fast roaming has worked for me. I still got two new cameras and a doorbell 2 from ring and installed them. Before activating them I turned off the fast roaming feature. So far it has worked.

Thx for the info, but ring needs to fix this.
I bought a mesh system for fast roaming so I donā€™t intend to disable.
Iā€™m also very surprised that although the info is known support didnā€™t ask which WiFi system or provided me with the workaround when I pointed to this forum.
Additionally itā€™s very very strange that all my wired devices are not affected (ring Pro, another spotlight cam and a chime).

For me this thread is incorrectly marked as solved.

When I spoke with support, the girl all but told me I am $tupid for thinking the mesh system bricked my cameras. I explained my issue and what happened leading up to the bricked camera. She didnā€™t care to hear my thoughts and told me it was ā€œimpossibleā€ for the WiFi to brick the camera. At that point she obviously didnā€™t care to hear what I saw saying so I didnā€™t care to to try and help them solve the problem. Hopefully someone at ring will take interest sometime soon.

Ugh wish I would have found this thread about a week ago. I think I just bricked my two replacement Spotlight Cams. Suprisingly, Ring support didnā€™t even ask about this (just had me charge the batteries repeatedlyā€¦).

Any idea why fast roaming would brick my wireless (battery) cameras but not cause any issue with the wired version of the same camera?

Iā€™m probably going to swap to stick up cam wired. PoE is a game changer.

question is mostly to Ring developers,

==> Can this be fixed with a firmware update or a hardware limitation of door bell? or more importantly does Ring accept it to be an issue?

you canā€™t just say disable fast roaming to be honest!! Logically people got a mesh network to have quick roaming when moving around a large house. If roaming disabled , somehow defeats the original purpose.