I’ve seen several posts and reviews about the Ring Doorbell. What’s the verdict? Is it worth $200? Does in integrate well into HA? What features do I get and loose at this point integrating it into HA?
I have been using it for nearly a year now. Had some technical issues at the start including a dead Ring that could not be resuscitated, they resolved that and their support is quite helpful.
It gives me a safer feeling knowing there are eyes watching my home.
It even recorded someone trying (and failing to) to break in a few months ago in broad daylight. The police was very interested in seeing the clear picture of the perp and provided it to neighbouring cities as well. Haven’t heard back from it, not sure if they ever caught it.
It’s also very convenient for package deliveries and getting rid of people trying to sell you stuff.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with it. For me, personally, it is worth the money but it’s mostly because I like tech like that and it’s part of my “smart home” plans. There are other smart bells, a soms even 50% cheaper but I’m not sure whether they can do the same.
What I dislike however is the fact that you are more or less forced to shell out $30 a year for their video storage “in the cloud”. I rather have that stored to my own private NAS or clouddrives instead. Not just for the money but also for the easier access, backups and privacy reasons.
The integration HA is still pretty young. At this point there are just sensors but no integration yet (besides some beta testing) of real time binary sensors for movement and “dings” but it is being worked on. I believe the plans are to having that part integrated in HA 0.42.
Well my wife came home today and I told her I bought her a ring. She was relieved when she saw it wasn’t a ring for her fingers. She doesn’t really like jewelry. It pays to know your wife before you make a joke like that.
Well I got the doorbell and hooked it up. It’s a V1 and it was really easy to get setup and going. I tied it in with my wink hub and HA saw it no problem. I even have it hooked up with the ADDashboard currently in beta. It took about 10 minutes to put together a quick automation in AppDaemon to turn on the entry hall light whenever the doorbell is pushed and keep it on for about 15 minutes. So far so good. No false alarms. Because it’s under the shade of our front porch, the area outside the porch is completely washed out so it doesn’t see any of the traffic going by or kids playing, which is fine. The clarity once you reach the front porch is really good though. So far, I’m pleased.