Anyone use any of the smart locks and ring? I was a backer of lockitron and now they aren’t releasing oil rubbed bronze for a while, I’m sick of waiting for them. The only other locks listed are kisi and lockstate neither of which I’m interested in. Looking mostly at schlage now.
I have a ring, i actually ended up ordering two of them. you have to understand all of these are affected on how close your wifi is to your bell. with modern devices that extend your range and there are soooo many ways of achieving this it will make this wifi enabled device work that much better. so here is my two cents on the ring: The video quality is beautiful. the sound quality is fantastic and the only real issue i have is that it does not have a live view without it being triggered. So no monitor mode just yet. and its really sensitive with infrared motion detection. I have had two instances that where my mailman was covered up really well and it was really really cold, well below 0 and the motion detection didn’t kick in till she was walking away. but how of the few months that has happened, it was 2 times. i love this thing, does it have room for improvement yes, but is it worth the 199 YES!
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Figured I would chime in here as I am the owner of 2 Rings (front and back). I have had them for about 5 months now and they have been working flawlessly. I was a little worried about how they would do being directly exposed to the elements, but so far so good. They both get wet and the front one is beamed pretty heavily by the sun all day. Hasn’t phased them one bit. One thing they could improve on would be the motion alert sensitivity. I have a townhouse and my front and back door are both close to a street. I find it hard to find a good sensitivity setting. If I go to low of a setting, I don’t pick up people walking up until it much later than it should, and if I go too high I receive motion alerts from every car that passes by. I wish there was a good middle that would work for me. Another thing I wish it had is on-demand live video. Unfortunately I have to wait until motion alerts are triggered before I can view out. And a caveat to this is, if you have motion alerts turned off within the app, you wont be able to see any live video unless someone pushes the button. Overall though, i am very pleased with these devices. There have been numerous times I have been able to answer my door from work over 30 miles away. I just tell them I am upstairs and can’t come to the door 
It also helps my wife when she is home alone and in the bath.
Others have mentioned this as well, but I had to install a wireless extender to boost my wifi signal to my bottom level. After I did that, performance has been solid.
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Does anyone have the Skybell 2.0 and does it work with the IFTTT channel?
Hi Andrew,
I’m a disabled widow, living alone and have been considering a device like yours for a while now. I live in the basement of my home, so, rushing upstairs IF I hear a knock is more than I can do.
My biggest obstacle is the cost…do you have/offer any assistance or discounts to folks like me? SSDI does not pay much!
TIA
C…
Got the ring video doorbell few days ago…still pretty buggy to be a final product, or is it just me??
I had a lot of issues with the app at first but then it calmed down very quick and it’s been great ever since.
I got the Ring doorbell. customer support is really great. They go above and beyond trying to help when something seems funky. they are a small group of programmers (about 25-35, and probably more out of country). Their shop is in Santa Monica California - right down the street from me. I’ve stopped in to visit and they are all very eager to take care of any and all problems. They also have an alpha program that offers the alpha testers free cloud recording (for life) for helping debug any real world problems. Since I’ve been helping they’ve been able to offer solutions to issues that I normally would not have thought of, as well push updates (to the app and the doorbell - more for the latter).
I would say the major difference for me between Ring and Kuna:
Ring has Bell and Motion alerts
Kuna only has Motion alerts
I have soooo many harmless people coming and going from my house all day (kids, wife, piano instructors, nanny, cleaner, usps, ups, fedex, etc, etc) that motion alerts would drive me bonkers. I originally had Ring send Motion alerts. It got to be too much. I turned off the alerts, but motion still records (which is good). Now I only get alerts for someone actually looking to come into the house. Normally they are harmless too, but I have had a few questionable sorts too.
Kuna seems it would be good if you don’t have many people visiting you at the house. So any motion in front of your house would be cause for concern. And it seems like a good “always on” alternative for exterior camera that Nest can’t figure out.
It really will boil down to features and compatibility. everything is going to have problems - especially in the early days of IoT. But just think of yourself as a pioneer and if you keep up with the company and the product you might get perks and benefits you never knew existed (I got free Ring cloud recording for life…)
Looks like Kuna heard this complaint. New product announced at CES that retrofits to an existing porch light. Still $200 and I don’t think it controls the actual light anymore, but at least you wouldn’t have to replace additional lights.
I feel like they’re pulling even more of a ‘Ring’ here with their ‘stick-cam’ if not worse since they’re removing even more functionality but still charging the same price…
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It looks like it will definitely be pulling power from the light fixture, so it’s possible it could act as a “switch” for the fixture depending on the wiring. Considering it was a key feature of the original that the light came on with the camera, it’d be disappointing if it wasn’t a feature.
The Cnet link is very light on details, and Kuna hasn’t written about it on their site yet.
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Ring also released the “Stick Up Cam” - Weather-resistant and wire-free, mount Stick Up Cam anywhere to see, hear, and speak with your visitors.
Here is the Toucan website - http://toucan.solutions/
From their promo video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZx1T8Yx1ck it looks like the wire plugs into a bulb socket adaptor.
I just bought a Kuna and have been happy with it but I’m starting to get a bit afraid of the direction the company is going.
It seems like it would be messy to try to get that wire to be hidden on the Toucan. You think they would have it to where it could just connect to existing wiring instead of plugging into the light socket. It wasnt that hard to install the Kuna light with my existing wiring.
Another issue it seems like their branding is really disjointed. They have Kuna, Maximus which is the same as Kuna but sold at the Home Depot, now they have Toucan (on a separate and weird domain name) which is “Powered By Kuna”. Why wouldn’t they just have 2 products, Kuna with Light Fixture, and Kuna for your own Light fixture all in Kuna branding.
Thanks! It makes no sense to have a completely different domain for that product, but it is good to see that it will include the socket for light control.
I think the socket will connect wirelessly to the camera portion, which will wire in directly to the fixture. I bet they sell the socket separately as well for people with multiple lights. Just like the Kuna Companion. Hopefully the socket has much more reasonable pricing than the expensive companion lights.
There could be many reasons. The Maximus is obviously a private label, which is a pretty common thing, just look at all of the re branded zwave open/closed sensors that are the same at heart.
It could be that someone else is licensing the technology from Kuna for the Toucan.
I think they are just trying to make it as easy as possible. There are a lot of people like my significant other that wouldn’t even think of trying to wire something in, but screwing in a socket adapter is something she would be more comfortable with. I would think it comes with the wire cover shown which would make hiding the wire pretty easy, but if it doesn’t then I would agree on the how to hide it statement.
It’s definitely interesting.
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I’m thinking the Toucan is a separate company / private label using the Kuna software and app. They have a different company name (VuPoint Solutions) and address in Cali.
I’m getting tired of the $200 price point for these cameras, but then I think it could be worse… and I usually buy them anyway 
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So several opinions on this Kuna approach overall…
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The Kuna add-on camera that attaches to existing light fixtures for $200 is completely unacceptable and way overpriced (like @Benji mentioned) since the actual complete camera with light fixture is also $200 which further pushes me away from Kuna. If it was $150 then I’d say ok, that’s reasonable as I’m not getting as much that I would with the complete camera fixture kit.
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They still do not appear to be offering just a standard light fixture without any cameras or fancy hardware/software, just a standard ($40ish) light fixture to compliment your Kuna camera light fixture. Let’s be real here, people either have 1 light fixture at a front and/or back door, or have 2 light fixtures by the front door, or 4 light fixtures at the front (2 front door, 2 garage). Well it makes sense to sync up all lights together if you bought those addon compliment light fixtures, there are far to many options out there for a fraction of the price and, especially in my case, no one is going to spend about $600 to get the full Kuna experience (1 camera kit, 3 addons) so all my light fixtures look identical. Now if they were actually smart, I would be willing to spend say $200 for the main camera then $40 for standard matching light fixtures for about $320 so they all match which is almost half the price. I can even use smart bulbs or buy the $5 sunset/sunrise controls at Home Depot to control the other lights coming on at sunset/sunrise.
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The Toucan approach is nice, but as we all know in advertising as shown in that video, not every light fixture has that frosted glass style (in fact rarely anyone around my neighborhood) and that fixture you gotta hook in also seems a bit larger/longer than those traditional sunrise/sunset plugin fixtures so it’s worth noting how it will look or even fit in some light fixtures which really shouldn’t be an issue but just worth noting.
I was extremely impressed in Kuna at the start, but now just being pushed away but it does seem absolutely perfect with anyone that only has one light fixture!
@RudiP, the Ring stick up cam looks alright but it’s still way overlarge to just stick on the wall! The reason I liked Kuna’s approach is because it was almost concealed in a sense and not this obvious block on the wall which is why I won’t go the approach of a stick up cam also. I also don’t have a porch at the front door so that would look even “worse” to have this obvious block attached to the wall near the front door.
I do understand most of these companies are probably new and getting started but I can’t be the only ones with these opinions so it still seems they are targeting a very small subset of customers at the moment just based on their actions.
I hope more improvements come soon in 2016!
How about being able to auto upload to my businesses own cloud storage?
Hi everyone. People here said that Ring has no night vision mode but they say on the site it has. Can anyonr confirm it for shure? Is it a new camera like 2.0 version?
My ring, which is the latest version, has night vision mode and does a great job recording at night. I do have somewhat decent lighting however.