Ring Peephole Cam – Smart video doorbell, HD video, 2-way talk, easy installation

Did the Design Engineers Actually USE the Product. 09/07/2020 EDIT: Contrary to the “Reviewer” who doesn’t actually own one…I have experience with the device.Another year of experience has led to my deducting a Star from my Rating (from 3 to 2 stars). Ring has added lots of bells / whistles over the last year…none of them actually help manage the poor design.I am glad that I have two batteries because battery life has steadily declined until I’m replacing the battery about every two to three weeks. Sensitivity remains a serious issue. Typically I have images of UPS / FedEx walking AWAY from my porch…not approaching it. The camera will record when tree branches rustle in the wind, cars pass on the street (75 feet) or when someone traverses the near-field of view, however, walking directly into the camera from the sidewalk rarely triggers the device.Knock feature still doesn’t work.Live View is still buggy and remains slow to initialize (people frequently get tired of waiting for you to answer long before the image comes up on your viewing device).SUMMATION:The Ring Door View Cam is NOT a good fit for single-family dwellings…it just does not perform as marketed.09/29/20019 EDIT: This device and company is getting more and more frustrating every day. For the last week, everytime I have an activation I have to log-in to their website, wade through their sales promos in order to see the most recent activation (occurring on both both my Android phone and my Android tablet). The ability to directly go to Live View is gone! I’ve tried uninstalling and re-installing the most current version of their app…no change. Guess that it is time (again!) to contact their Help line…08/20/2019 EDIT: Ring came out with an upgrade to their motion detection. The new “Advanced” detection allows you to set three zones either on or off. The bad part for many users is that the zones radiate outwards from the camera face: Left, Center and Right. I prefer to know who / when someone is approaching from either side of my front door or when they are standing in front of the door. What I need in “Advanced” motion detection is the ability to set “dead” zones for depth (further out from door so that passing vehicles and pedestrians do not trigger alerts…NOT Left, Right or Center right in front of the camera. The new motion detection also adds additional digital signal processing that substantially delays notification to the point where a package courier, sales person, etc is already leaving / gone by the time you are notified.My Knock Detection has not worked in a couple of weeks…not even with seriously hard raps to the door. Time to check out their Warranty.07/25/2019 EDIT: Pulled the battery at 30 days up-time (charge was at 43%) and replaced it with the spare. I figure that I will change out the battery on the first of each month as part of my normal household maintenance.The most recent information I received from Ring is that the engineers are still working on the motion and knock issues. Motion is dialed down so low that people at the front door do not always activate the sensor…but, large trucks (particularly light-colored trucks) continue to trigger random activations.The Live View feature continues to be randomly buggy and slow when you want to see who is at the front door…sometimes it loads quickly and other times it gives up trying to connect after a couple of minutes.The lag time before you can view an Event continues to take five minutes (or more) before you can retrieve and review the most recent Event from the Ring cloud.07/20/2019 EDIT: Over the last week the device has become increasingly unstable. The app frequently does not connect. When trying to activate Live View, it will send a query to activate the device, proceed through an authentication process which includes sending credentials to authenticate the device with the app (this all takes from 45 seconds to several minutes) with the end result that the device cannot be connected at this time. The wi-fi signal is good, battery is in the 40 – 50% range.The service rep is pleasant to e-mail or talk with…but, she cannot automagically correct or overwrite the technical issues (hardware, firmware and software) this device has.A friend who has numerous wired Ring products (and likes them) is interested in adding this device to his home…my recommendation to him was to wait until V.2 is out (and de-bugged) before investing in the Door View Cam.07/15/2019 EDIT: Twenty-six days up..battery 57% (still in line for my original estimate of <60 days).Interesting note is that the advertising on Amazon's site now includes a disclaimer "The placement of your peephole may prevent you from seeing items left at your door."Gone is the "up to 6 months battery life" ad copy…after calling their Ring Team I was told that it is good for 500+/- activations on a charge.Ring Team member confirmed that Knock sensitivity is something the engineers are working on…my device continues to require a pain-inducing, knuckle-jarring hard knock almost on top of the device to register. The product advertising image of a child knocking way down on the door doesn't work in my particular installation.Ring Team also confirmed that the engineers are working to implement Ring's Advanced Motion Detection into this product…no implementation date given.Ring did switch out my Chime Pro Extender for a simple Chime device…a handy addition to the system that works well.07/08/2019 EDIT: Nineteen days up and down to 69% battery. Still working with the motion sensitivity (this is ridiculous!)…currently the sensitivity is dialed so low that you have to be "up front and center" for detection.Knock detection is glitchy…requires a Custom setting of 9 (out of 10) to register a knock on my door.Fortunately the rest of my home is amenable to a wired camera installation…unfortunately the front door is not.06/24/2019 EDIT: Battery life – it appears that my original estimate of up to 60 days may be optimistic….four days up and the battery is down by 10%…extrapolating this data leads to (roughly) 40 days maximum on a charge. Delivery trucks, cars, joggers, children and dogs all serve to activate the motion detector eating up the battery (as well as any Live View events I initiate). I had to turn the sensitivity down to where people have to be on the porch, at the door to activate the device…I was hoping for a bit more advance notification (apparently, the device does not support setting up separate motion exclusion zones). Presumably, if the device is installed on an apartment door in a busy hallway the battery drain would, most likely, be similar.The photographic quality could be better…images of people at the front door are not as crisp and sharp as the advertising leads you to believe…identifiable…not much more.Original Review:As other reviewers have pointed out…the bottom of the field is approximately 5 feet out from the vertical plane of the door…terrible for monitoring package delivery. However, nice view of the sky and my porch ceiling.The documentation is shoddy. Setting up the Knock feature appears easy…but where is the notification button and how do you customize the Knock notification? Over the past two days I have set it up several times and it has yet to respond with the cute little dialogue box the set-up sequence shows. You have to repeat the entire Knock set-up process just to change the sensitivity settings. Loud vehicles passing by set off the device on the most sensitive setting while the medium setting sometimes fails to respond to a direct knock on the door.Do NOT waste your money on the Ring Chime Pro Extender. The received signal from the Extender was -10db weaker than the original 2.4 signal from my router. Better to purchase a full range AC 750 (or higher) Extender from one of the reputable wi-fi companies (I used an Amped Wireless AC1200 Extender from Costco). Which brings me to one of my biggest gripes…this camera is only 2.4 Ghz, it does not have the 5.0 Ghz provision that most other Ring cameras have. The additional speed and bandwidth of a 5 Ghz connection would definitely cut the lag and buffering time evident in the current system.Glad I purchased a spare battery. It appears that the claimed 6-month battery life is only achievable in a laboratory setting. Thirty to sixty days is looking more realistic for battery life.Be prepared to be inundated with marketing directed at you to purchase their Protect Plus Plan (before your system is even set-up they start pushing their most expensive monitoring plan).Summation: It works…BUT, there is a lot of room for improvement in the device and the app. I do not appreciate being the beta tester for a supposedly finished, market-ready product.