Reply With QuoteI think the ring is excellent but you need mains power to it
A rep came into my shop the other day selling a similar product but the usp was no mains needed.
Andy
Door Bell CCTV. ??
Folks,
Just fishing for anyone with experience of these doorbell CCTV cameras which appear to be all the rage nowadays. Specifically, the one by the firm RING appears to have most publicity when I've seen their adverts in places like MAPLINS etc.
https://ring.com
Does anyone have the RING system fitted already, or a similar equivalent make?
Just wondering about their worth and reliability
Many thanks in advance.
I think the ring is excellent but you need mains power to it
A rep came into my shop the other day selling a similar product but the usp was no mains needed.
Andy
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Don’t think that’s right.Originally Posted by lenlec
https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/ar...ered-Operation
I was led to believe its battery operated, the RING system
HI Chris.. I didn't know that NEST do one (well, it's on the way it seems).. Thanks for that.. I'll give that a look also. I have the HIVE system at my house... Heating, lightbulbs etc... the do an internal CCTV now, but not the doorbell yet.
Last edited by Falcata; 14th January 2018 at 21:36.
I think they do two as I saw them in Currys on display.
The pro is mains wired and not much bigger than a normal doorbell. Looked nice.
The cheaper one is battery operated and that made it far larger. I personally wouldn't buy one of those without seeing it first because of the size.
I’ve got a Ring. It was on special offer at Amazon for about £75 warehouse deal. Worth a punt at that price but I probably wouldn’t have bought it at full price.
It’s the first gen, it can be mains or battery, wired into your existing doorbell wires or you have to take it off the door every so often and recharge it via usb. I’ve had it a few weeks and it’s at 70% so the battery is going to last a fair while. There are settings so you can improve the battery life so I could squeeze a bit more out of it but as it’s a new toy everything is set to max.
The second gen is 1080p and has a removable battery so you can buy an extra and keep one charged to alternate.
One thing to note is, you need a good WiFi connection to it and it’s not easy for the signal to penetrate through walls so although your router may be close it might not be very good. A bad signal will manifest itself as a delay between someone pressing the bell and any notification, and not being able to get video.
IMO, you will need a chime too. The chime pro acts as a WiFi extender so could be useful if you’ve got a poor signal.
It’s a bit of a gimmick, and you do feel a bit of a plum talking to someone through your doorbell, but it has come in useful a couple of times already with deliveries. You can also set it to record motion but that’s an extra £2.50 a month.
I quite like it! But I wouldn’t spend full price on it.
Forgot to add - Ring support is excellent and they will bend over backwards to help if you have a problem!
Thanks for that Matt
Some good advice there mate
Please bear with me for I have had one hell of a day.
Awoke to find a water tank in the loft had sprung a leak and was slowly emptying itself through a ceiling. Little did I know that was just the beginning....
On arrival home this evening I was dumbstruck to find that we had been broken into!! :(
This is a first for me. What a mess. There are certainly some real scumbags out there.
Therefore, I have had the police around this evening, insurance on the phone, smashed windows to board up, broken doors to secure, Wife and young family to reassure etc........
Good news is that, whilst they certainly took enough for it to hurt. They never made it to the really good stuff 😊
Anyway, police were as useful as they could be. Which was not very at all.
They did have one firm recommendation though.
Ring.com
Holy Moses!
Sorry to hear about your break in.. that situation terrifies me and I don't think I'd cope with the anger and the frustration afterwards ...
Which is the motivation behind my security mindedness.
What was it the police did or didn't do that made them useless?
Can I ask how the burglars got in?
Also do you have an alarm?
Thanks again for your post and I'm really sorry for your day mate
Police were called by my wife (I was away at work). She explained that the garage had been broken into, windows were smashed at the back of the house, she had a 2 year old and a baby, and was waiting outside (3 degrees) for fear of someone still being in the house.
They arrived one hour later, had a look round and scuttled off. Forensics unavailable until tomorrow (after the rain). Leaving a number to call to board up the windows (£200+)
She phoned me at the same time, I arrived 5 minutes later, armed myself with a trolley jack handle from the garage,. Which they had bust the door of and relieved us of uninsured ~£10k's worth of high end mountain bikes :(
I then went into the dark house to check it was clear. Must admit got the blood pumping for a few minutes, which was the only mildly enjoyable part of the whole experience.
By the time the police arrived I was mostly finished with boarding up the windows so declined their kind but expensive offer of assistance. I had also been down to the train station on the off chance of catching the reprobates with my bikes leaving town.
Lot to do now tomorrow.
Previous owners had installed an alarm system with panic buttons in the bedrooms. I had ripped it all out as I didn't know how to use it. Left the plastic thingy on the front of the house to give the impression that we still had one.
Feeling a bit of a fool right now.
Have lived life as a rule with the bare minimum of insurance. Pay the massive premiums yearly or take the huge occasional hit. Today I lost that bet.
I have always been a happy go lucky kind of fool. Wanting to think the best of everyone and that there is minimal risk really. Knew my security was poor but always left lights on when out. For whatever reason I didn't today. This massive kick in the balls has made me revaluate everything. I've been lucky in the bigger picture. My home security is about to get massively upgraded.
Any suggestions and recommendations welcome.
Agreed. I stand corrected. I’d go for the ring then
I have a sky bell
A good shout if you have a low voltage supply to your bell already installed
WiFi and simple operation and solid as a rock
Has saved me numerous trips to the sorting offfice, I’ve fobbed off a couple of door to door sales people and also allows me to check that the kids were in when they said they were
My best smart home gadget (I used to work in this area up until November)
Wow, REALLY sorry to hear of your break-in. The bikes and stuff can replace, insured or not, but it takes a wee while to get by the feeling of someone breaking in. Best wishes.
Did the police recommend Ring? They think it would have had some positive impact?
I've heard good things about the Netatmo Presence camera too - wires into a security light at the back, records any people and sends an alert to your phone.
Sorry to hear about your break in.
When the area I live in was targeted, the security experts all advised that the priority should be as follows;
1 - having good quality windows / doors with security locks to discourage an attempt
2 - a decent burglar alarm that would be triggered on any break in
3 - CCTV
They said the problem with CCTV is your modern thug will simply cover their identity and carry on. Not a nice situation.
I can see the benefit of CCTV though to pick up if anyone has been hanging around, hence am still looking at doorbells, etc.
Ground anchor for the replacement bikes and a decent lock and chain.
Security marking and security registration of anything worthwhile.
I am the same on the insurance front, but where I live people leave their doors unlocked and keys in their cars.
Last edited by Templogin; 15th January 2018 at 11:26.
Ring pro here and it’s brilliant
I have the RING (battery version) and it really doesn't work very well due to our terrible broadband speeds. The video-link recordings are around 2 seconds of blurry moving image, followed by the remainder of the recording showing a still image. Not much use if you are rural and have very slow broadband speeds! The image quality is very poor - not sure if that is wifi signal or broadband speed related.
The proximity notifications are still very good though.
Consider an IR camera, somewhere there is no light.
Currently have Arlo cams but moving soon and considering changing. Does anyone have any views who already has Ring Spotlight Cams or Floodlight Cams fitted? Is there any advantage to having battery powered in case of power cut or would wifi be out as well? Also considering their doorbell cam.
With the Arlo system you can disable it when at home to save loads of alerts, is this possible with the Ring systems?
Thanks
Ian
You can set times of day when you dont want motion alerts. You can also disable doorbell rings and motion alerts on the app.
Also - if you haven’t got a chime all the alerts come through your phone so you can just silence it.
Maysie - probably WiFi strength rather than broadband speed. Ring say they only need 1Mb. Can you get a repeater and give it a try? Amazon do them for about £14 and if it doesn’t work you can just send it back.
I see, trouble is we go out different times of day. Sometimes out for an hour sometimes more, and very seldom the same time each day. So for the cameras we probably would only want them on when we're out or at night. Thats the good thing with Arlo, you can tailor different modes to switch some or all or none on at any time via the phone.
Otherwise your email inbox gets full of alerts and your phone too. Would be a pain to have to disable each camera if you had 4 or 5.
We’ve had a ring doorbell (the original one) for close to 2 years and it’s superb works a charm I’ve also put a ring stickup cam at my mums house with a solar panel again works a charm no issues with either, i’m toying with a few more cams for around our house.
Just a quick update (for the thread record) on this.
I have spoken with Ring Customer Service this morning about some concerns as I have experienced with limited battery life of my Ring Bell and the weak wifi strength, the chap I was speaking too could not have been more helpful.
To cut a long story short, they have just offered to send me a 'Ring Chime Pro' free of charge to see if it will help improve by battery life and also improve the current poor wifi signal strength.
Fantastic customer service and a big thumbs up for Ring.
Nice one Maysie..! Good result. Thanks for the update.
On an aside;
I've seen recently some solar charging case you can buy for the standard RING doorbell to keep it charged up
The tech chap from Ring was firmly of the opinion that my weak wifi signal was a large factor with regards my poor battery life, so was happy to send one through to see if it improved things. If it does work, then the battery version is probably fine without a mains supply, but it will need to be taken off the wall/door at regular intervals to charge it up, which can be done within a day. Obviously you don't have a doorbell while it is in the Kitchen charging though!
I've been looking at these but it worries me having something expensive screwed to the front of house waiting to be bashed or nicked.
I have read the Ring literature which said if your doorbell is nicked by a scrote, as long as you have a police incident number, Ring will send you a replacement, gratis.
We have had a Ring doorbell up now for a few weeks.
The police kindly gave us one as they had been given several units from Ring to trial and are passing them on to victims of crime.
My wife has set it to make s synthetic barking noise whenever anyone approaches the property. Which can be a little wearing, but she is very pleased with it and it brings her peace of mind. Which is important.
I am less impressed. As a camera it is great. A doorbell, less so. On a few occasions now people have rung the bell but it has not sounded in the house. From what others have said on here I presume that that is more likely down to my wi-fi, but we don't have trouble with any other devices around the house.
The video footage is of high enough quality that my wife has been keeping tabs on me coming and going whilst she's been away from home the past few days.
She has also taken to delighting in showing friends and family footage of my novel way of dealing with the Jehovah witnesses that popped round recently to educate me out of the goodness of their undamned hearts.....
We want to see, too
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
With regards to the thing being "nicked by a scrote".
You will of course have footage of said scrote in the act since it uploads to a cloud thing. Which from my understanding is too high for them to reach.
We too have a Ring Pro and aren't that enamored with it, as others on this thread have mentioned the WiFi connection is very poor even though the signal strength is shown as good in the app. We might not have the fastest Sky Fibre broadband and, generally speaking, its definitely not the best, however, the Nest Cam that is installed directly above has virtually no trouble whatsoever and works pretty much flawlessly.
In all honesty I'm counting down the days until the Nest Hello video doorbell is launched.
P.S. The button on our Ring Pro has developed 2 parallel vertical splits!
Last edited by MST; 17th February 2018 at 12:46.
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