RING Doorbell
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photohause
- Posts: 1189
- Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2018 5:11 pm
RING Doorbell
Who has one? Pros/cons? Thanks- your consultants check is in the mail
“You didn’t finish school, did you?
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GunsandHoses
- Posts: 472
- Joined: Sat Jul 21, 2018 10:03 pm
- Location: Pines
Mom has one as well as several people at work and haven't heard anything bad about them. You can set area/zones (length away from or sides of door) to be viewed. Sends it to your cell (I believe it's able to send it to several #'s) and you can talk through your phone to whoever is at your door. Thinking about getting one myself!
I've had one for a couple of years now & like it overall. Get the one that uses power from your existing doorbell instead of the battery powered one. It's more expensive but you have better options for setting up your alarm zones. Mine is the battery powered one because my existing doorbell was mechanical & mounted right on the door. Battery life is amazing though, I have to charge it about every 3 - 4 months. Charging is easy but you have to remove it from it's mount (two captive mini-screws & it comes with the screwdriver), & plug it into a standard USB charger. Cable is included but I can't remember if the charger is. Doesn't matter anyway - any phone charger with a USB out will work.
To set it up you need to connect it to your house wifi so check your signal outside of your front door. Poor signal strength will slow down doorbell ring, video playback & Live View.
Cool things are:
Two way communication.
Had someone ring the bell while we were on the freeway to San Fran & we were able to talk to the telephone installer who was at the wrong house. I don't think he even knew we weren't home.
Live View.
Heard a bump in the night? Call up the live view & see what's going on. It also records every time you do live view so no extra buttons to push etc.
Recording video with sound.
I don't know how many days it saves but it all goes to the cloud & you can access it over your phone/tablet/computer from anywhere. Copy/paste vid or stills to yourself as needed. Also, if someone steals your camera, you've got them on video doing it. Local storage is pretty small.
Cost for the 'service".
I'm not usually a cheep SOB but I like that this only costs me $3 a month.
"Neighborhood" app.
Sign up for this & you get notified by your neighbors if something weird is going on. Yesterday, I got a notification through the app that someone was stealing Amazon deliveries from people's front porch. Good shot of the guys face to give to the cops.
Compatible with Amazon Echo.
Also, if you have the Echo Show, just tell it to "Show the front door" & it will pop up your live view. Also, if you have a smart TV or a Fire Stick you can view it on the big screen.
Hope this helps.
To set it up you need to connect it to your house wifi so check your signal outside of your front door. Poor signal strength will slow down doorbell ring, video playback & Live View.
Cool things are:
Two way communication.
Had someone ring the bell while we were on the freeway to San Fran & we were able to talk to the telephone installer who was at the wrong house. I don't think he even knew we weren't home.
Live View.
Heard a bump in the night? Call up the live view & see what's going on. It also records every time you do live view so no extra buttons to push etc.
Recording video with sound.
I don't know how many days it saves but it all goes to the cloud & you can access it over your phone/tablet/computer from anywhere. Copy/paste vid or stills to yourself as needed. Also, if someone steals your camera, you've got them on video doing it. Local storage is pretty small.
Cost for the 'service".
I'm not usually a cheep SOB but I like that this only costs me $3 a month.
"Neighborhood" app.
Sign up for this & you get notified by your neighbors if something weird is going on. Yesterday, I got a notification through the app that someone was stealing Amazon deliveries from people's front porch. Good shot of the guys face to give to the cops.
Compatible with Amazon Echo.
Also, if you have the Echo Show, just tell it to "Show the front door" & it will pop up your live view. Also, if you have a smart TV or a Fire Stick you can view it on the big screen.
Hope this helps.
"No society ever thrived because it had a large group of parasites living off those who produce." - Dr. Thomas Sowell
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Tenzing_Norgay
- Posts: 1611
- Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:55 pm
- Location: Your mom's house, Trebek!
I install Ring doorbells for clients, but after reading up on the Nest, I may switch:
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/nest-hello ... 26780.html
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/nest-hello ... 26780.html
- I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you... -
Good info
Never heard of Nest
Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
Never heard of Nest
Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
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Tenzing_Norgay
- Posts: 1611
- Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:55 pm
- Location: Your mom's house, Trebek!
Ring = Amazon
Nest = Google
- I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you... -
Kind of a Ford/Chevy thing really. Nest looks pretty good but Ring was a better fit for me because of my existing Fire TV & Echo Show. I'm assuming the phone apps will both work on either iPhone or Android so that's not an issue.
Whichever one you choose, you know you can't stop there. Next you'll want to control the thermostats remotely & then its the lights in the house. Going remote control is addictive (although I could quit anytime I want to.)
FYI: Nest has it's own thermostat & I've heard it works pretty well. I'm using the Emerson Sensi which works with Alexa.
Decisions, decisions...
"No society ever thrived because it had a large group of parasites living off those who produce." - Dr. Thomas Sowell
I installed three rings.
The first was at my son't place where the prior owner cut all the door bell wires so we installed the battery operated model. He has to recharge the batter every couple of months.
The second was at my home and it had a complicated bell and I could not get the wired model to work with the existing fancy bell so I set it back and went with the Ring spot light and the old door bell button. So if you have some really fancy "Winchester Chime" type bell, it may not work for you.
The third was at a place where the old door bell button was in a concrete wall so there was no way to move the ring. So the picture grabbed a nice snapshot of a person's genitals but not their face. So on fleabay they sell these plastic wedge mounts that lets you adjust the angle of the ring so you can actually see the person if you cannot move the button. The little wedges are not cheap, and they make the ring stand out a lot more but it is solid. I guess you could make the same thing out of wood and paint it if you are so inclined instead. Also on this installation I had to change out the transformer as the old one would not work with the ring. Ring is particular with which transformer you have. The one I had was from the 70's.
Overall, the Rings are ok. The apps work ok on Android and my Windows 10 PC. If you get a alert, but are delayed on using your phone, the last detection takes many minutes to show up on the (paid) history if you miss it on the live feed. Also, sometimes it misses my son exiting the house - like he is invisible. Just him for some reason.
Seems to work well for all the drunks that ring the door bell at midnight here in the hood.
The first was at my son't place where the prior owner cut all the door bell wires so we installed the battery operated model. He has to recharge the batter every couple of months.
The second was at my home and it had a complicated bell and I could not get the wired model to work with the existing fancy bell so I set it back and went with the Ring spot light and the old door bell button. So if you have some really fancy "Winchester Chime" type bell, it may not work for you.
The third was at a place where the old door bell button was in a concrete wall so there was no way to move the ring. So the picture grabbed a nice snapshot of a person's genitals but not their face. So on fleabay they sell these plastic wedge mounts that lets you adjust the angle of the ring so you can actually see the person if you cannot move the button. The little wedges are not cheap, and they make the ring stand out a lot more but it is solid. I guess you could make the same thing out of wood and paint it if you are so inclined instead. Also on this installation I had to change out the transformer as the old one would not work with the ring. Ring is particular with which transformer you have. The one I had was from the 70's.
Overall, the Rings are ok. The apps work ok on Android and my Windows 10 PC. If you get a alert, but are delayed on using your phone, the last detection takes many minutes to show up on the (paid) history if you miss it on the live feed. Also, sometimes it misses my son exiting the house - like he is invisible. Just him for some reason.
Seems to work well for all the drunks that ring the door bell at midnight here in the hood.
Ah that's one thing about our Flame, doesn't play any favorites! Flame hates everybody!
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dammitgriff
- Posts: 928
- Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2018 11:06 am
Your son may have bluetooth or other wireless input/output enabled on his phone, which can interfere with the wireless signal on the device as he walks past.
Headphones can interfere with the FireStick if they run on 2.4MHz.
Headphones can interfere with the FireStick if they run on 2.4MHz.
There are a few choices with Ring doorbells. Ring, Ring 2, Ring Pro, and Ring Elite. The original you have to remove to charge, 2 you can remove the battery pack to charge or swap. The Pro is powered by a traditional doorbell dc transformer and the elite is PoE. My original doorbell was a NuTone intercom system. The problem as a previous poster mentioned was that the Pro’s power adapter wasn’t able to trigger the nutone chime. So I built a relay switch that allows the Pro to work as well as upgraded the transformer. If I had to do it over again, I’d probably go with the elite as i found a company that makes a wall plate that replaces the NuTone speaker plate and provides a standard opening that would make the elite more “stock†rather than the slightly odd shape of the Pro that I mounted on a painted 6†piece of wood to cover the NuTone opening. I also installed the Ring spotlight at my office which also allows you to custom set movement detection zones and sensitivity. Both I bought at Costco which came with a free year subscription.