There have been a growing number of break-ins in our quiet town, coinciding with the growing number of homeless. We held off for quite awhile, but finally put in a Ring doorbell. We’re still figuring out all the bells and whistles.
Got any tips for managing it?
Also, if you have one, got any good anecdotes?
We really like ours. So much so that today I installed their garage light and camera combo over our garage, so now our cars are covered as well as the front door, and we can see the only approach to out back yard.
it will take you about a week to tweek it to find the optimum sensitivity to minimize false alarms but still get alerts when people come to your door.
As for anecdotes, I was bored in the airport in Rochester New York and the ring went off. My wife was coming into the house (in colorado Springs) wearing a bright orange (like prison orange) sweatshirt so I texted her asking if she could change shirts because I could see all the way in Rochester and was afraid she might blind my pilot.
(This isn’t really what you’re looking for in this thread, but, well, it’s an anecdote)
Here’s the world’s best use of a Ring Doorbell:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MadeMeSmile/comments/ayx422/a_kid_called_his_dad_through_a_ring_doorbell/
It’s a 2 minute video clip of a 5 year old kid using Ring to call his father at work.
The cutest thing in the history of the internet.
Trust me, you’ll smile.
(It’s best with sound turned on).
My first one was defective- it would continue to drop the connection etc. took forever to get it replaced, now it works like a charm. I use it mainly to see if my Amazon packages have been delivered. From within the house, ‘cause walking to the door and looking is so two-thousand-and-late.
My husband wants to do this too, now. The side door to our garage is concealed from the front street, and he wants to be able to check on it. Our cars are in the garage, so no problem there.
On the “neighbors” part of the Ring app, I see that a nearby neighborhood had a woman going along at about 2:30 a.m. and stealthily trying people’s front door handles. There were about six videos uploaded in a row of her doing this, a minute apart. Kind of a skinny, meth-y looking woman with distinctive tattoos. She was arrested within a few hours of the uploadings. Very handy, those distinctive tattoos plainly visible in the videos!
Yeah, some warnings about the neighbors part of the app. First, constrict the “neighborhood” to be really close to you, otherwise you get a bunch of info that doesn’t affect you. About 2 miles on a side is good. Secondly, people are really assholes in the comments. Some old lady has a couple of strange men come to her door and she asks if anyone knows them. She’ll get replies that tell her to get over herself, they’re probably just salesmen. That might be true, but you don’t have to be a dick about it. The old lady is afraid of strangers.
I see that on nextdoor.com. Someone will upload a cautionary video of a man coming onto her driveway (when no one is home) and looking in her garage window, and various people will tell her that she’s paranoid or judgmental.
I’ll see about constricting the neighborhood zone.
We just figured out that the motion sensor has “zones”, so you can finesse it to ignore certain zones outside your door (like a tree that’s always blowing in the wind).