Does Ring Really Suck This Much?

[dcaton]

I have two Ring Pro doorbells on two different houses. First doorbell is 4 years old, one on newer house is almost 3 yrs old. I have never, ever been able to establish a connection to either doorbell before whoever pushed the button gave up and walked away. Same for motion alerts. We can rarely connect before whatever caused the alert has already gone. Sometimes it takes a really long time for the motion video to appear in the app.

How is it that Ring can suck so bad? Wifi works perfectly at both locations, is not overloaded, etc. Wife and I both have high-end phones (Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G). No issues whatsoever with network, bandwidth, etc.

Final straw last week when a CO detector falsed and the fire dept showed up at house #1 which is unoccupied. Tried to talk to the fire fighters and tell them it was a false alarm but they couldn't hear me. We're turning this house into a vacation rental property and it's imperative that we have a video doorbell that actually works in case a guest has a problem and can't get in.

I can't believe I'm the only one with problems with Ring. Looking for recommendations to replace. The only thing I like about the Ring doorbells is that they take a snapshot every 30 seconds so you can go back in time and see what's going on even if there weren't any motion or button press events. Alexa integration or integration with Smartthings or Hubitat is a plus, but not essential as long as there's a decent Android app that's reliable. Prefer local hosting to cloud but I'll pay a reasonable subscription if the thing is reliable.

Thanks.

 

[smiticans]

In my opinion, all cloud based cameras suck (Ring, Nest, Arlo etc.) and that is the common view on this forum. The Recommended setup here is a PC running Blue Iris with Dahua 4MP low light cameras. I have a Nest doorbell as a convenience factor (not for security) and I find that it's fairly responsive. I would never rely on it for security or to identify anyone. The picture quality on cameras like Ring, Nest etc is not good enough.

How did you know the CO alarm was a false alarm before the FD responded? Carbon Monoxide is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas.

 

[wittaj]

Wifi is problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to use it through a wifi router. Someone tested this once and after 4 cameras, the wifi was unusable...and at the distance you may be and thru an exterior wall, if you do not have full bars, you will have trouble.

Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes. Now do the same with a wifi camera and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...

 

[dcaton]

In my opinion, all cloud based cameras suck (Ring, Nest, Arlo etc.) and that is the common view on this forum. The Recommended setup here is a PC running Blue Iris with Dahua 4MP low light cameras. I have a Nest doorbell as a convenience factor (not for security) and I find that it's fairly responsive. I would never rely on it for security or to identify anyone. The picture quality on cameras like Ring, Nest etc is not good enough.

I'd prefer not to have a PC at that location, although I'm not totally opposed to it and I do have a spare PC I could use for that purpose.

I'm somewhat familiar with Blue Iris from when I had some old Amcrest cameras, but I haven't used it in many years. Is there a mobile app? Does it handle doorbell button presses and send notifications via the app?

I have no problem with the picture quality on the Ring doorbells. The problem is being unable to establish a quality 2-way voice communication, also being able to see video events in a timely manner in the app.

How did you know the CO alarm was a false alarm before the FD responded? Carbon Monoxide is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas.

First, there are no fuel burning appliances of any kind inside the property, so unless some idiot decides to bring the outdoor grill inside it is highly unlikely it will ever trip. Second, if there was a fire the smoke detectors would have tripped and third, there was a wiring problem with the smoke detectors (wrong eol resistor value) and I suspected the same was true on the CO circuit. Turns out I was correct; the eol resistors were swapped on the smoke and CO circuits, which eventually caused a fault which caused the monitoring company to call the fire dept.

 

[wittaj]

With the paid BI mobile app you can do two way talk.

 

[dcaton]

Wifi is problematic for surveillance cameras ...

Thanks. I understand how all this works, buffering, etc. I generally have no complaints about video quality with these devices.

There's no problem with the wifi (or cable modem) at either location. I have everything possible on wired connections, so my wifi is nowhere near capacity. In the particular instance I was referring to the premises was unoccupied, and the only other wifi enabled device on 24/7 is the Rachio sprinkler controller. I see no reason why an audio channel could not have been established between my phone and the doorbell. Not a one-time occurrence, it's typical.

 

[The Automation Guy]

I have two Ring Pro doorbells on two different houses. First doorbell is 4 years old, one on newer house is almost 3 yrs old. I have never, ever been able to establish a connection to either doorbell before whoever pushed the button gave up and walked away. Same for motion alerts. We can rarely connect before whatever caused the alert has already gone. Sometimes it takes a really long time for the motion video to appear in the app.

How is it that Ring can suck so bad? Wifi works perfectly at both locations, is not overloaded, etc. Wife and I both have high-end phones (Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G). No issues whatsoever with network, bandwidth, etc.

I don't think any cloud based camera system is going to react quickly enough. It's just the nature of the transmission cycle being multi-step. First the camera has to detect motion (or the button press). Then the camera has to send information to the cloud server. The cloud server has to receive that information without data loss. The cloud server has to react to that data. The cloud server has to push information out to a app on a device. That data has to make it to the device without data loss. The device as to get the data to the app. The app has to react to the data and push a notification out to the device (ring tone, etc).

Theoretically all these steps should take a few ms to complete. In the real world however it takes much longer. Think about how long it can take to get emails. Transmission times can easily reach 1-2 minutes and longer. That is far too long for someone to be standing at your door hoping that someone is going to answer.

 

[looney2ns]

Think about it, your conversations has to travel to who knows where to a server (china),, then come back to you here. What could go wrong.

Study this and the links that are included.

 

[dcaton]

I don't think any cloud based camera system is going to react quickly enough. That is far too long for someone to be standing at your door hoping that someone is going to answer.

It reacts pretty quickly. When the Ring doorbell senses motion, it fires off an Alexa routine which trips a virtual switch in Hubitat which runs a webcore routine which test various states and then sends an announcement back to selected Alexa devices using EchoSpeaks, and also changes the brightness and color temp of four zigbee bulbs via another rule in Hubitat. A bit convoluted but all that happens fairly instantaneously. despite traversing multiple cloud services.

The only problem seems to be establishing a 2-way audio channel between our phones and the Ring doorbell. I understand the torturous path that signals have to traverse to make this and other things happen, but motion alerts seem to happen without problems or excessive delay and video is not a problem either. I'd think audio should be a piece of cake.

 

[wittaj]

An alert image and video that can be downrezed or transmit at a slower FPS to meet quality of signal is one thing, slowing down 2-way talk not so much, so it sputters in and out if it even establishes a doable connection.

 

[bethzur]

I have two Ring Pros and I have no problems connecting. Your WiFi is likely the issue.

 

[dcaton]

I have two Ring Pros and I have no problems connecting. Your WiFi is likely the issue.

How so? Same thing happens at two different houses. Different cable modems, different wifi routers.

At house #1, Ring app reports signal strength of -49, voltage good, device health report lists no issues. There is minimal load on wifi. A couple of Alexa devices and a sprinkler controller.

House #2, same except for signal strength is -54.

Absolutely no indication of wifi issues at either location. No nearby networks on same channel. Nada. Wifi is the first thing I suspected.

 

[bethzur]

I understand. I'm just posting based on my experience with two Pros. They worked fine with my old Apple Air Port router and my new UniFi access points. They likely don't like mesh routers, I've read, so I don't have mine in mesh mode.

 

[dcaton]

Think about it, your conversations has to travel to who knows where to a server (china),, then come back to you here. What could go wrong.

Study this and the links that are included.

Thanks for the tips document. Don't want stand-alone cameras here though. The old house is becoming a vacation rental (i.e. airbnb) and we have to be sensitive to privacy issues. It's one thing to have a video doorbell, people are used to those, but I don't want to use a discrete camera. If there's one, people may think there are others.

I just want a video doorbell that I can reliably talk to people at the door, especially if they have problems getting into the property.

Surveillance is a secondary function. Not quite as important as being able to speak with someone at the door, but it would be good to have the capability of full 24 hour recording or snapshots every 30 secs like Ring does. I'm not opposed to cloud storage. I can set up a PC, VPN, etc. but I'd prefer to keep things simple if at all possible. I'm not concerned about China hacking into my doorbell, I have all of my iot stuff on an isolated lan. Avoiding yet another subscription-based service would be nice, but not a necessity.

 

[The Automation Guy]

It reacts pretty quickly. When the Ring doorbell senses motion, it fires off an Alexa routine which trips a virtual switch in Hubitat which runs a webcore routine which test various states and then sends an announcement back to selected Alexa devices using EchoSpeaks, and also changes the brightness and color temp of four zigbee bulbs via another rule in Hubitat. A bit convoluted but all that happens fairly instantaneously. despite traversing multiple cloud services.

The only problem seems to be establishing a 2-way audio channel between our phones and the Ring doorbell. I understand the torturous path that signals have to traverse to make this and other things happen, but motion alerts seem to happen without problems or excessive delay and video is not a problem either. I'd think audio should be a piece of cake.

Well I suspect there is a huge difference in the amount of data required to "fire off" a trigger and what is needed to establish a real time two way audio and video stream. Actually the fact that your triggers work pretty quickly just proves that it isn't a problem with your network.

 

[dcaton]

Well I suspect there is a huge difference in the amount of data required to "fire off" a trigger and what is needed to establish a real time two way audio and video stream. Actually the fact that your triggers work pretty quickly just proves that it isn't a problem with your network.

That's the conclusion I came to as well. I don't do it often at house #1 but I can run a zoom meeting with many participants on my laptop over wifi and the audio and video quality is perfectly fine as well. More evidence that it's not a wifi/bandwidth issue.

So if it isn't my network, then what? Unlikely both of my doorbells are defective. That leaves Ring's infrastructure, unless I'm missing something.

 

[wittaj]

I would say at this point it is the Ring infrastructure.

They probably have algorithms that put a priority of video and the limits may be ran very tight that the slightest deviation may kick out the audio so that video continues.

Whereas most zoom type online meetings will usually prioritize audio over video and you can sometimes see a participants video either downrez or stop or disappear but the audio continues

 

[The Automation Guy]

So if it isn't my network, then what? Unlikely both of my doorbells are defective. That leaves Ring's infrastructure, unless I'm missing something.

I think it is the infrastructure. But it's not just Ring. I use a EZViz doorbell and I experimented with their OEM app with doorbell notification and two-way communication and it was very slow too. I don't use it. Not only because it was slow, but because I wanted to cut out any reliance/use of cloud infrastructure (ie the OEM servers that I can't control) completely.

 

[dcaton]

Whereas most zoom type online meetings will usually prioritize audio over video and you can sometimes see a participants video either downrez or stop or disappear but the audio continues

That's a good point. Ring ought to do that as well. If you establish an audio connection, obviously you want to communicate with whoever is standing there and at that point the audio should take priority.

 

[dcaton]

Thanks everyone for their input. I contacted Ring just out of curiosity to see what they had to say. Both my doorbells are way out of warranty but they offered me a 35% discount on their web site. So I ordered the new Ring Pro 2. With discount, it was $162 + free shipping.

Can always send it back, but we're married to the Ring ecosystem already so we decided to give reconciliation a shot before divorce. The existing doorbell is 4 years old so perhaps they've improved things since then. If not, back it will go and I'll resume the search for an alternative.