I ask because I am having trouble getting my Ring doorbell to display video.
The wifi signal - the half-rainbow logo - indicates the strength of the signal from my router to the device (phone, laptop, etc.), correct?
The “bars” on the phone indicate, I think, strength of signal from the cell tower to…my router? My device?
The deal is, the Ring is receiving a strong wifi signal. I don’t think I can check the cell signal with the Ring, but my phone and other devices are only indicating one bar.
Could this be the reason for the lack of video in the Ring app, or would that have nothing to do with it?
How can I improve this signal? I know there are apps that show tower location - can you manually switch towers?
A Ring device (as far as I know) doesn’t connect to a cell tower, only to your WiFi. So that couldn’t be the problem. The only signal strength that matters is your connection to your router.
Not sure how helpful this is to your question but one of my biggest grievances about the Ring doorbell is the poor quality of the network connectivity built into the device. The main reason we bought one was the ability to see and speak with someone at our door using our smartphones via the video/audio capabilities of the Ring device and the app. Sadly, due to Ring connectivity issues it is practically useless.
I can be standing directly beside my Ring doorbell with my iPhone on the same wifi network and do a speed test on my iPhone. The speed test will show at that location I have a very strong wifi download and upload speed. Yet the Ring on the same Wifi network in the same physical distance from the router will report it has a poor network connection and I can’t get connected to the Ring via the app to view video or have a conversation. I even added the Ring Chime doorbell and wifi extender which now sits around 10 feet from the Ring doorbell and no improvement.
Correct. FWIW, that “strength” is being measured at your device, not at the router.
The “bars” on your phone is the strength of the signal that your phone is receiving from the nearest cellular tower.
If you also have your phone connected to a wifi network, you’ll see both the “bars” and the “half-rainbow” for the wifi network/router to which you’re connected.
Yes, I’d bet this is the cause. I don’t know if it’s just Ring - many smart home devices are very cheap now, and you seem to get what you pay for. I have pretty good WiFi and not a large home, but smart switches at the periphery still struggle. I guess there is some logic to it. If you’re going to have dozens of smart devices around your home, it makes more economic sense to get a more powerful router with range extender if necessary, rather than put more expensive WiFi chips in all of the devices.
The weird thing is, the Ring was working fine for the first 2 months or so after I installed it. Then, a couple weeks ago, it suddenly stopped showing the video (although it does capture a still shot whenever motion is detected).
And it still shows a strong wifi signal.
I already use a wifi extender. I’m going to try moving the modem physically closer. It is currently in the basement, I can move it to the living room about 20 feet from the Ring.
If that doesn’t help I’m out of ideas. Can you return these things?
I’d like to point out that the BARS on your phone display have no reality relationship to the actual strength of the received signal. What I mean is that two phones side by side connected to the same tower might display different numbers of bars. There is no standard stating that “two bars” always means signal strength X.
"Cell Phone Bars: What They Really Mean
When it comes down to it, your cell phone bars are not an accurate way to measure your phone’s connectivity. First of all, the bar displays vary from phone to phone. For example, you iPhone could show three bars while your friend’s Galaxy might show four. This doesn’t mean one cell phone has better reception than the other. All it means is that at that place and time, Samsung reads “-65dBm” as four bars, while Apple shows them as three.
Here’s another thing about cell phone bars: You don’t know what they’re actually showing. This icon displays a measurement, but you don’t know if that’s for voice or data. Even if you turn your cellular data off, you won’t know which voice band is being shown. In the end, it doesn’t really matter what the bar display is showing. You’ll either be able to make the call or you won’t. It’s as simple as that. Signal strength is really only important when you need to know how fast you can download and stream."
I don’t have a Ring, but I do have a smart TV. It will sometimes turn on and indicate it isn’t connected to the WiFi (though the signal indicator shows a strong signal). Doing a reset will usually fix this (just ignoring it and waiting for it to reconnect at some point also works).
Have you rebooted or reset your Ring device to see if that fixes it?
The first thing I suspect when I hear something like this is a neighbor has started using a WiFi device on the same frequency, and it is interfering with the Ring. Maybe try changing the wifi channel on your router?
Can Ring use different WiFi bands (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz)? If so you might try switching. 5Ghz is shorter range and more affected by walls and such but tends to be less crowded.
You might consider downloading a WiFi Analyzer for your phone. Plenty out there to choose from and some will show you all the signals and their strength where you are. Remember, just because you have a strong signal does not make it a good signal. Interference is a thing (everyone has WiFi…they are crowded frequencies…like listening to several radio stations at once).
Also, if there are any software updates make sure those are applied.
If you haven’t already (probably have) here is what Ring says (pretty basic but worth a look to be sure):
That’s certainly possible, but seems much less likely to me. There are extremely limited ways that a hardware failure in such a device can cause it to remain fully functional except that its wifi bandwidth is degraded. Normally almost any type of hardware failure will brick the device entirely, or at least render some subsystem (wifi, display, buttons, etc) completely nonfunctional.
I think @Riemann and @Whack-a-Mole are probably right in this case. If the Ring only uses the 2.4Ghz band (which seems to be standard for smart home devices due to its longer range and compatibility with older wi-fi routers) then it can report a strong signal but still have terrible throughput due to interference from neighbors. Basically it’s a loud but garbled signal, like a local AM radio station during a thunderstorm. The only recourse is looking for a different channel (1 through 11) that’s less crowded, moving the router closer, or trying to get all your neighbors to reduce the power of their wi-fi radios so there’s less overlap (good luck with that).
That’s also likely why @MeanJoe could get such good speed from his iPhone while his Ring still performs like crap even with a wi-fi extender. In fact the extender may well add to the total amount of interference. The iPhone connects to the much faster 5Ghz network which can deliver more throughput even with “fewer bars” of signal. It’s fainter but still clear, more like FM radio. Many networks are set up to use both frequencies so you can’t force a device to connect to a particular one, but the devices will theoretically pick the fastest one they can. There’s some issues with this in practice but that’s a discussion for another time. Point is that’s how different devices on the same network can have wildly different speeds.
The main reasons for this is power, size, and the remote location of the device, not the perceived inferior quality of the wireless interface. Laptops, let alone access points, have the ability to fit larger antennas, run more powerful transmitters, and are generally closer to the access point than the smaller, battery-powered Ring that is on the outskirts of the home and often transmitting through a thick wall or metal trim.