Ring. Ring Pro. Ring Floodlit camera in the UK. What is your experience with it

Hi all you guys out there in the UK.
I’m thinking about getting a ‘Ring’ device.
What I would like to know, as per topic title, is the experience people in the UK are having with the Ring products.
Here are some of the things I can think of that need answering. (There will be more no doubt).

  • Does it integrate with ST OK?
  • Is it a good product?
  • Is it reliable?
  • Battery or mains powered? Which is better in your experience.
  • Battery life?
  • If integrated with ST, what are you using to monitor it? webCoRE etc.

Just trying to gauge the overall experience with the product so if there is anything else you would like to note, please do so.
Perhaps there is another product that is better that you are using.
Any information gratefully received.
PS. I know there are others topics out there about the Ring in the UK, but it’s a pain trying to pull all the information together.
TIA.

Not in the UK but my experiences with the RING Pro should be the same. I would give it a 3 out of 5 stars rating. It has fairly decent video quality, but it tends to freeze quite often. You could attribute this to my WI-FI strength, but my router is less than 20 foot, or 7 meters in your case, from the door. My internet connection is pretty good, but it is a limited upload speed. I have two Arlo Pro cameras that never seem to have this issue.

Another issue I am having right now with Ring is that once it goes into night vision the motion sensor sensitivity is crap. You have to be right in front of it before it senses anything. It wasn’t this way when I first got it. It did just as well at night as it does during the day. Apparently this is a known problem for quite a few people as I have found some threads on reddit and other places discussing this. A firmware update, seems to have caused this. An update is in the works, so they say.

With Ring there is no free option, here in the US. All recordings are stored in the cloud and they have no local storage option that I know of. With Arlo you can store 7 days free. It also has a USB connection on the base station you can use to connect a USB drive and store everything local. .

I paid for a year of storage on Ring which was 39.99 if I remember correctly, but I am not paying again. I am just going to add a Arlo camera. I can still use the Ring doorbell to talk to someone that rings the bell.

Arlo and Ring both can have their motion sensors integrated to smartthings. Arlo has a more robust integration but for me it doesn’t seem to work very well. I just use the Arlo app for viewing video or setup. But smartthings alerts me when there is any motion detected at any of my cameras.

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I have a Ring Pro here in the UK, and my experience has been pretty positive. There are a few potential negatives though.

I have an internal mechanical chime which I wanted to keep (and understood that I could). However in the UK, Ring do not make the power kit (essential for a mechanical chime) available. Instead they seem to bundle a wireless chime and a kit to bypass your mechanical chime. I don’t think they always did this, the reason that they started is because the voltage requirements for chimes in the UK can be a bit of a lottery. Happily, they sent me a power kit when I contacted them and it works well with my chime.

My router is about 1.5m away from the Ring Pro, and I have to say it’s been 100% reliable. I have business grade FTTC broadband with a decent upload/download. Any slowdowns have been due to my mobile connection when out and about, however usually a 4G connection is good enough to have a conversation with someone at my door.

My drive runs directly on to a relatively busy street, and the zoning means I don’t get notifications for passing cars or pedestrians. It works very, very well. It (to my knowledge) has never missed movement on my drive. The reflection of headlights in passing traffic can occasionally (maybe once a month) set off a movement notification.

I’ve paid for the cloud storage, and I will do again.

Edit to add: I have basic integration with ST, and on a push it sends a message to my LaMetric clock which reads ‘there’s somebody at the door… there’s somebody at the door…’ however that’s all I can think of making it useful for.

To be really useful, Ring would have to open itself up a bit more. It would be ever so useful if I could stop the mechanical chime ringing after the kids have gone to bed with a degree of automation (rather than having to go into the settings on the ring app to do it).

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I have Ring, but no way to get power too it so the batter only lasts about 3 weeks.

It integrated very easy with ST, but of limited use as it doesn’t have camera capability - all you can do is motion sense and button push.

I set it to turn lights on 10 seconds after the button is pushed when I am away on holiday, and send me a notification when motion is detected (which the ring app does anyway).

Would be really useful if they can add camera capability so I can view the camera from within ST and finally ditch the ring app completely (except for making changes to WiFi settings if needed.

I’ve had a the ring doorbell, not pro but second generation for 18 months to 2 years ish.

The first unit developed a fault with the microphone but ring replaced it for me. I have it trickle charge from 12v DC. I’ve noticed a couple of things, it can eat the internal battery on motion activiation. Therefore I’ve pulled the motion sensor right in which has improved battery life dramatically. Regarding the trickle charge, if you ever let the unit discharge fully it causes a pull down on the transformer which a) stops charging the battery and b) knackers the transformer. So keep it charged enough that it can at least charge.

I have recently added the floodlight cam at the back of the house. This is a really good bit of kit and I like it alot. Things are much better for having it mains powered. Only thing that annoys me is lack of proper ST integration.

I noted some of the comments around wanting better integration and what else can you do with it? I’ve done and am experimenting with a few things. I don’t subscribe to motion alerts on a schedule but what I have done is, using webCORE asked to get extra notifications for certain conditions. In certain modes or, say, between midnight and 6am any motion gets greater attention and I ask it to say something to me. I have a Sonos system, so if I get backdoor motion between midnight and 6am and I’m in, then I get sonos to tell me via text to speech, hopefully waking me up. Same with a doorbell press at the front at any time. “Someone, is at the door”.

I’m working on similar routines, which will integrate with my Hue lights so when I’m away I can cause a delay and a light to come on, to simulate someone coming downstairs and turning the lights on and having a look around. I may even work on getting sonos to play noise like someone clunking around.

I’m hoping none of the local toerags from my area read this of course…

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