Knock, knock, who's there?

Okay, you know the Ring Doorbell Pro that I mentioned in my last two posts? Well, I finally installed it at the end of March:

Installation was pretty straightforward. There are basically three steps:

1. Install the Ring app and create an account

2. Scan the QR Code on the 'Setup Steps' printed guide

3. Install the Ring doorbell using the instructions in the printed manual or the video in the app

I had a wired doorbell that was installed when the house was built in 1978 and I was able to use existing wiring to provide power to the Ring doorbell. There was a little glitch connecting the doorbell to my Wi-Fi, but I quickly resolved it and soon enough I was getting notifications on my phone about activity at my door. My wife and I tested the audio capabilities, but the conversation was broken and it was difficult to hear each other. We really don't think we will use that feature, so I haven't attempted to troubleshoot the problem. It could be that my wireless network is being pushed over its bandwidth limit by adding another video streaming device.

Immediately after installing the device, I was bombarded by motion notifications. We have a fountain by our sidewalk leading to the door. It is dry season here in southwest Florida, so our fountain attracts many different birds coming for a drink or a quick bath. Those birds were triggering the motion detector, so I used the 'Motion Settings' in the Ring app to tweak 'what' is detected (people, mostly) and 'where' motion is detected (the zone):

After adjusting the settings, my notifications dropped precipitously and now I'm only notified when a person walks up the sidewalk to my doorway, or a stray cat stealthily crosses the motion zone while stalking birds :( I have noticed that headlights of vehicles turning into our driveway at night also trigger a notification, but that is a good thing.

When you create an account and register your doorbell, you get a free 30 day trial period of the Ring Protect Plan. The Plan allows you to store events and recall them for up to 60 days. If you want to keep events longer, you can download them to your PC or phone. After the 30 day trial period, the cost is $30/year per Ring device. After using the feature, I felt the price was reasonable and subscribed. If you have more than three Ring devices, you can pay $100/year for unlimited devices, which also includes 10% off purchases and professional monitoring (with caveats). See Ring's Protect Plan page on their website for details and additional information.

One great feature is that I connected the Echo Show that I wrote about in an earlier post to the doorbell so that it receives notifications. Upon notification, you can simply say 'Alexa, answer the front door' and you can begin conversing with the person at the door to ask their purpose, or to let them know that you are coming to the door. You can also say 'Alexa show the front door' and you can view the live video feed, but not speak to the person if you do not want to be disturbed. In our case, it also provides us with a view of our fountain to check out visiting birds.

As others have written, the Ring Doorbell Pro is well designed. The Ring app is intuitive to use and makes setup and configuration a breeze. Viewing and managing motion/doorbell ring events is straightforward. One additional feature with the Protect Plan is a 'My Neighborhood' feature which lets you share videos of suspicious activity with your 'neighbors'. I haven't fully explored that feature yet, so I really don't know how to set 'My Neighborhood'. Unfortunately, during the trial period, I received several notifications of suspicious vehicles/persons from addresses that are many miles from my house that are really not relevant to my specific neighborhood. Perhaps neighborhood refinement and usefulness of notifications will be a topic I'll discuss in a future blog post.

The Ring doorbell has been rock solid, however, one of my co-workers had a situation where her doorbell lost its Wi-Fi connectivity. She tried all the tricks in the book, like re-setting her router and taking the battery out of her doorbell. Nothing worked. She contacted Ring support and after some time on the phone, they recommended that since the device was still under warranty, that she return it to Best Buy, where she purchased it. She really didn't want to do that and after hanging up, she went into her router settings and changed the security to 'none' and when that didn't work, she reverted to 'WPA2-Personal' and the doorbell connected. The router is perhaps four or more years old and it does not broadcast its SSID, so perhaps there is a protocol problem between Ring and the older 'non-broadcast' router that caused the hiccup.

Overall, she is very satisfied with her doorbell and loves the security and peace of mind that it brings. Ditto for me.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Phil