Ring integration setup fails

That sensor in particular was super chatty so it needs to be rethought. Someone will need to submit a PR to bring it back and make sure its not as chatty as it was before. In all honesty though contact Ring support and tell them about your issue and they will probably send you a Chime Pro to fix it. Their support is really good on making sure the product works as expected.

Sadly, I already have a Chime Pro. They sent it to me when I expressed disappointment that the supposed support for wired chimes was impossible to fulfil in the UK, and that at least got my kit working together - I agree that from this perspective, their service has been absolutely brilliant.

But, even with the Chime Pro plugged in to the socket nearest to the Floodlight, the distance is just too great and the WiFi drops out regularly (several times a day). I know that the WiFi strength icon is not really the solution to this problem, but it met my use case. I donā€™t know how else I can improve the signal to that Floodlight cam.

You can setup a 2nd wifi access point closer to the flood light which would extend your wifi range.

I had similar issues with my floodlight. Adding second AP closer to the device solved the issue. I agree with @firstof9 to use a second AP as close as you can to the device.

Do you mean I should fit a second Chime Pro nearer to the Floodlight? Iā€™m not sure I can.

My Floodlight cam is above the garage, looking down at my driveway. The garage is a separate building from my house, and the existing Chime Pro is already in a location within my house that is as close as I can get it to the Floodlight.

Thereā€™s a socket at the back of the garage, but the distance from the Floodlight to that socket is probably similar to the distance from the Floodlight to the existing Chime Pro. Even if that distance is shorter, the combined distance from that socket to the existing Chime Pro would be much further.
I have no other sockets in the vicinity.

The Chime Pro acts like a wireless repeater and it doesnt work that good honestly, range can be weak. A second wireless router plugged into your first one would be best honestly. When I switched from the Chime Pro to a AP in the same room it fixed my issue, you need something that pushes out more range.

Another option, if you have a few to spend on it, you could use power line networking (if the garage and main house use the same breaker box) and plop down a second wifi access point in your garage and use the power line networking to connect to your router in the main house.

Thereā€™s something about the mains power in my house (itā€™s a new build, so I canā€™t think what it could be) that causes all my powerlines to burn up. They run extremely hot for a month or two and then just die in a puff of burning electronics smell. I have gone through dozens of sets.

Iā€™ll be converting the garage into a workshop, hopefully sometime this year. I am planning for a network cable to be run to it, in which case Iā€™ll have a hard line in there for the AP. That would work, but will have to wait for the building work to be completed.

You might not want to run copper then if your power lines are catching fireā€¦ go for fiber (itā€™s cheap now).

Glad to see Ring-sensors are available with the latest release. Wifi strength is not avalilable anymore ?

Correct no wifi sensor.

On the subject of RSSI I believe its just that the ring hardware is very bad/cheap. I have a WiFi AP 2 meters from my Ring 2 doorbell and the RSSI on the doorbell varies from -51dBm to -61dBm which is a wild fluctuation considering both devices are static. If I place my mobile phone next to the doorbell it gets an RSSI of -34dBm for the same network.

Such a big difference compared to the RSSI on my phone implies that the quality of the ring WiFi hardware/internal antenna is very poor in comparison to the phone.

That said, Iā€™ve never any network communication issues with these levels.

Once I installed my 2nd wifi AP I get -41 dBm on my ring itā€™s pretty steady.

You might not want to run copper then if your power lines are catching fireā€¦ go for fiber (itā€™s cheap now).

Not sure whatā€™s youā€™re saying here. Powerline and fibre are completely separate unless there is some change in technology that Iā€™m unaware of?

The Powerlines used to connect to the earth loop in my house. Running hot was alarming but thankfully it was isolated to the Powerlines themselves, or possibly something odd about the earthing in my modern, new-build house. I have no other problems with the electrics in the house (RCDs trigger exactly as expected) and I even have solar panels as well as an EV charger.

Iā€™m planning to run a regular network cable to the garage when I convert it to a workshop so that I can have wifi access in there, and also to shore up the poor Ring network hardware by providing the Floodlight cam with a closer, hardwired AP. I kinda wish that the Floodlight cam had an ethernet socket as then Iā€™d hardwire the camera directly to the switch.

The garage is detached from the main building but itā€™s only just far enough away for the connection to my Floodlight cam to be a little intermittent. Nothing is screaming fibre to me here, and cheap/nice as it might be, I canā€™t see how investing in it can contribute to solving my particular problem?

Sorry Iā€™ll clarify, between your two buildings there could very likely be a grounding difference, this could cause power to travel via your ethernet cables and bad things could happen when that occurs.

If I recall itā€™s called ā€œGround Potentialā€. Iā€™m sure youā€™ve had an electrician already look into this, but just wanted to throw it out there just in case.

If the access point was power over Ethernet. Then ground differences wouldnā€™t be an issue.

Ah, ok I see. I think weā€™re anticipating a new problem here rather than dealing with the existing one but fair point. Iā€™ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

My house is not the size of Wayne manor and the garage shares a common earth via the same consumer unit :wink:
I maintain that the WiFi range is poor because of the hardware in the Ring kit, not because itā€™s THAT far away. If I take a laptop into the garage then it connects fine to my APs in the house.

What Iā€™m planning will be no different to running a 25m ethernet cable into the garage, which Iā€™ve done on occasion in the summer and before it got taken over by junk. This one will just be buried in the garden in some appropriate conduit, separate from the 25mm armoured cable that supplies power, obviously. The option to switch to fibre can be a future upgrade, but right now Iā€™m just trying to stabilise the connection to the Floodlight cam.

Ah that should do it then. Iā€™ve seen separate garages with separate grounds.
:+1:

Iā€™m having trouble keeping up with the rapid pace of change on the Ring doorbell component. I noticed today that it wasnā€™t detecting motion or ding again. Restarted HA, no change. Read that there have been some more problems since I last updated to fix the last problem Dec 19. Copied the latest code to the ring_doorbell directory and restarted again. HA reports error on restart - failure initializing ring. Restart and try again, same thing. Restored old code from Dec 20 and restarted yet again. Now it works again - but for how long?

I end up cursing the entire unreliable field of home automation every time I approach my front door in the dark and the light doesnā€™t go on. This is getting really annoying Ring.

It was fixed in 0.104.3, update your HA. Ring is now under the Integrations menu.