Troubling experience with Ring Gen 1 alarm

[tony22]

I was away from home for a while, so I activated my Ethernet hard-lined Ring Gen 1 alarm system (consisting of contact sensors, motion detectors, and fire/smoke sensors). While away I’d check it every so often to make sure all was good. About a month after I left I checked a Ring pop up to discover a “Ring Offline” alert. I have other connectivity in my house, so I had no indication from anywhere else that there was any issue, intermittent or otherwise, with my network. Neither did I get any evidence of a power glitch when the alarm went offline. I went to the app and could do nothing to recover.

I finally got home to discover the alarm countdown did not occur when I entered the house, nor did the alarm go off. The base station still showed a red circle, but I could not disable it from the keypad. I called Ring and my problem was quickly elevated to a Level 2 support guy. Long story short - Ring had no clue as to why my base station locked up (it was running the latest FW), and the only way to get myself out of this condition was to remove the battery after disconnecting it from AC power. Once I did that the base station came back to life (still armed - a nice feature), and I was then able to deactivate it. I asked Ring Level 2 guy if the base station might have any local logging that might explain what happened. He checked it remotely and said there was nothing to be found.

So, this gives me much less confidence in using a Ring alarm for anything more than a daily/nightly or maybe long weekend alarm system. This seemingly unexplainable occurrence of lockup under long term use to me makes it not dependable. YMMV.

 

[Shockwave199]

Weird. Alarm systems of every type can be finicky beasts. Maybe just a one off? Hope all is well. How long have you had the system in line? I have a gen 2 and really like it but I have not put it to that particular test you describe.

 

[tony22]

I’ve had it since last year. Up until now it’s been used for at most maybe a week / 10 days at a time - the vast majority of times much less.

What bothers me is there appears to be no “failsafe” reboot behavior or something like that in the base station, so that it would have a way to detect when it goes offline and attempt to recover.

 

[fenderman]

I’ve had it since last year. Up until now it’s been used for at most maybe a week / 10 days at a time - the vast majority of times much less.

What bothers me is there appears to be no “failsafe” reboot behavior or something like that in the base station, so that it would have a way to detect when it goes offline and attempt to recover.

Ive run two of these systems since release. Never had that issue.

 

[tony22]

Ive run two of these systems since release. Never had that issue.

@fenderman, what’s the longest continuous period of time you’ve run either of these?

 

[fenderman]

@fenderman, what’s the longest continuous period of time you’ve run either of these?

They are both armed and disarmed daily and continuously running. Did you have your system unplugged before using it?

 

[tony22]

They are both armed and disarmed daily and continuously running. Did you have your system unplugged before using it?

Mine has been plugged in since I installed it. What you described is the way I had been using it - similarly with no issues - up until this last occurrence, where it was Armed 24/7 for over a month. It was during this utilization when it locked up and showed Offline.

 

[Shockwave199]

So what was the fix? Did just unplugging it and plugging it back in work? Did you further have to do that with removing the battery as well? Are you running it now with the battery installed? How long have you had your gen 1 system?

 

[Shockwave199]

I have read over at the ring forum that a router doing an auto update could cause an issue while the base station is armed. Have you looked into that possibility? Checked the router logs at all?

 

[tony22]

So what was the fix? Did just unplugging it and plugging it back in work? Did you further have to do that with removing the battery as well? Are you running it now with the battery installed? How long have you had your gen 1 system?

I had to both unplug it and remove the battery. When I put the battery back in I was able to disarm it. The system has been installed and in use since March of 2019.

I have read over at the ring forum that a router doing an auto update could cause an issue while the base station is armed. Have you looked into that possibility? Checked the router logs at all?

Interesting. Unfortunately my router logs don’t go back far enough to see if such a thing happened at the time the base station went offline.

 

[CCTVCam]

Mine has been plugged in since I installed it. What you described is the way I had been using it - similarly with no issues - up until this last occurrence, where it was Armed 24/7 for over a month. It was during this utilization when it locked up and showed Offline.

That's a long period to be continuously armed. Have you considered a power interruption?

 

[fenderman]

That's a long period to be continuously armed. Have you considered a power interruption?

It has a backup battery inside.