Ring doorbell/spotlight camera motion triggers [SOLVED]

mkappeler · October 19, 2025, 3:00am

Hi folks!

Re: using Ring doorbell AND spotlight cameras to trigger events, WORKING, programmed through GUI, NOT yaml.

I spent way too long trying to figure this out, and information provided by others just didn’t work for me. Here’s what I’ve figured out:

Note that the Doorbell and Spotlight have to be configured DIFFERENTLY. The doorbell (my first trigger) uses a “switch” entity. I have a separate routine that manually turns the doorbell “switch” off once it has been on for 10 seconds allowing it to be switched on again whenever it detects motion the next time. The Spotlights don’t have this problem but they do have to be configured differently, and triggered by an entity->state change, whenever any state or attribute is changed. This catches the “xxxx Last Activity” updates.

While other topics indicate this cannot be set up through the GUI and it has to be configured through YAML by editing configuration.yaml, this IS NOT true (at least 99%–will explain shortly). I programmed this to work through the GUI, and it triggers other smart lights (TP-Link KASA) to come on for 2.5 mins, then turns the lights off.

The “mode: restart” command makes it so that, if motion is detected again before the 2.5 mins are up, it restarts the timer and does not toggle my lights until the new time is reached.

The weird numbers for the first device/entity is my doorbell, the others are spotlight cams.

The conditional for back room door light is a separate smart switch that I can manually turn on. It gives me an easy way to disable the motion sensing routine for a time. I have another routine that turns off this switch at 1am, effectively allowing the motion sensing routines to resume functioning normally.

Hope this helps someone else. Cheers!

Thanks!

–Mark

See my YAML config after the other pics:

Note that I was able to enter the spotlight cam triggers through the GUI, but did have to switch to YAML to add the not_from qualifiers. White this is not absolutely necessary, not adding it will result in cameras triggering a false motion event, for instance, if they lose wi-fi:

(edit: sorry, they are not letting me post more than one picture here)

alias: Motion triggered lights
description: “”
triggers:

type: turned_on
device_id: a4e026c3d774f570884084b107919f8b
entity_id: 3ffff0b8274831c567f45f72d094832c
domain: switch
trigger: device
trigger: state
entity_id:
- event.breezeway_motion
  not_from:
- unknown
- unavailable
trigger: state
entity_id:
- event.back_deck_motion
  not_from:
- unknown
- unavailable
trigger: state
entity_id:
- event.driveway_motion
  not_from:
- unknown
- unavailable
trigger: state
entity_id:
- event.front_door_motion
  not_from:
- unknown
- unavailable
trigger: state
entity_id:
- event.garage_rear_upstairs_motion
  not_from:
- unknown
- unavailable
trigger: state
entity_id:
- event.garage_front_motion
  not_from:
- unknown
- unavailable
trigger: state
entity_id:
- event.front_porch_motion
  not_from:
- unknown
- unavailable
  conditions:
condition: and
conditions:
- condition: device
  type: is_off
  device_id: 4c1c9aacff2463a9f86f8b3e1a9f3946
  entity_id: e551e2f1dc780200291b9101e8dc1797
  domain: switch
- condition: or
  conditions:
  - condition: sun
    before: sunrise
  - condition: sun
    after: sunset
    actions:
type: turn_on
device_id: 3f5e4c251779dafe27df5b7f5f977ad7
entity_id: 236c5c6a38b38e609d774504370d78bc
domain: switch
type: turn_on
device_id: bde58244f3bfbdbf78ba37ce55e5d681
entity_id: 246cf9786962c2b10a3e6518616d9107
domain: switch
type: turn_on
device_id: f05fa1d176a6aaba258bcd554a7bbed3
entity_id: 0cabce147876c3f758be4ee6d6f98abc
domain: switch
type: turn_on
device_id: 604012bcae44ee5f581e0d1a66ffd928
entity_id: b035f367b3b707576ec033b5c8b74878
domain: switch
type: turn_off
device_id: a4e026c3d774f570884084b107919f8b
entity_id: 3ffff0b8274831c567f45f72d094832c
domain: switch
delay:
hours: 0
minutes: 2
seconds: 30
milliseconds: 0
type: turn_off
device_id: 3f5e4c251779dafe27df5b7f5f977ad7
entity_id: 236c5c6a38b38e609d774504370d78bc
domain: switch
type: turn_off
device_id: bde58244f3bfbdbf78ba37ce55e5d681
entity_id: 246cf9786962c2b10a3e6518616d9107
domain: switch
type: turn_off
device_id: f05fa1d176a6aaba258bcd554a7bbed3
entity_id: 0cabce147876c3f758be4ee6d6f98abc
domain: switch
type: turn_off
device_id: 604012bcae44ee5f581e0d1a66ffd928
entity_id: b035f367b3b707576ec033b5c8b74878
domain: switch
mode: restart

Ltek · October 23, 2025, 1:25pm

@mkappeler the past few days I’ve been looking at how to get snapshots from the Ring Doorbell. I have not yet found a way to force a new snapshot, like we can with all other cameras just fine (Tapo, etc)

Do you know of a way to force a snapshot?

reference thread (last post from me)… Camera - Send & Save snapshot to mobile device when motion is detected with Conditions. Now with Custom Triggers! - #292 by Ltek

mkappeler · October 31, 2025, 1:13pm

Sorry, haven’t explored this yet. It’s on the list… Lol

I think I read you can trigger it to record video–but that it was problematic. People were trying to force it to record 24hrs/day and that just doesn’t work. It only reports motion events when it is not recording, or something like that, so recording all the time breaks a bunch of other stuff.

You may have better luck with snapshots. Cheers!

Mark

Ltek · November 4, 2025, 4:10pm

I was saying that snapshots do not work… that is the problem. (I’m not trying to record 24x7)

I have Tapo cameras and those work fine.

It seem that HA is not capturing a snapshot from the Ring Doorbell. Maybe it is a bug in HA, not sure but since you were working on the Ring stuff, was hoping you had a way to get it working.