Three tricks to avoid battery drain with your Ring doorbell – including the exact ‘vampire’ features you should avoid
RING says your doorbell battery should last between six to 12 months on a single charge – but it depends on its activity.
If you’re being forced to charge or swap out your battery sooner than that, then you may be falling into one of three pitfalls.
ELIMINATE WI-FI WOES
Make sure your Ring doorbell has a strong Wi-Fi connection.
According to Ring: “If your Ring Video Doorbell or Security Camera battery is draining too fast, a poor Wi-Fi connection may be the cause.
“A poor connection can cause your doorbell or camera to frequently disconnect and reconnect to your Wi-Fi network, which wastes energy and contributes to battery drainage.”
Battery drainage isn’t the only symptom of sluggish internet access.
Other signs your Wi-Fi isn’t up to scratch are if your doorbell disconnects often, the audio and video quality is reduced, notifications are delayed, its missing Motion Events and has trouble connecting to Live View.
VAMPIRE FEATURES
There are three battery-draining features you should avoid using excessively – if you want your battery to last.
These are Live View, Snapshot Capture and Advanced Motion Detection.
The Ring app can show you whether Snapshot Capture and Advanced Motion Detection are eating up your doorbell’s battery life.
To access Power Settings, open the Ring app:
- Tap the menu (the three horizontal lines) in the top left corner.
- Tap Devices.
- Tap the individual device (doorbell or security camera) you want to check.
- Tap the Power Settings tile.
- You can check your Battery Status: Battery Level percentage and Feature Power Usage.
- Tap the small arrow to the right of the feature name.
- To navigate back to the main screen, tap back (<) on the top left.
- You can check Snapshot Capture, Advanced Motion Detection, or Video Recording Length.
- You can check your Battery Status: Battery Level percentage and Feature Power Usage.
You should also check your Motion Settings in the Ring app to make sure they’re not set in a way that could cause battery drain due to very frequent activation.
- Tap the menu (☰) in the top left corner.
- Tap Devices.
- Select the doorbell or security camera you want to check.
- Tap Motion Settings.
- Tap the Wand icon on the top right.
- Choose an option.
SET MOTION ZONES
When Motion Zones are set properly, they can reduce the amount of alerts you receive, which in turn can help save your Ring device’s battery.
A Motion Zone is the space around the Ring device which it has been told to keep a watchful eye on.
The device notifies users of movement around your home through its in-built motion detector.
The customisable feature allows users to define a specific area they want their Ring device to cover, while ignoring everything outside of that space.
But if the motion detector is too sensitive users can be bombarded by Ring notifications alerting them of nearby activity on their smartphone.
If that area is too wide, it can pick up on too much activity that user doesn’t need to be alerted of, such as people walking on the pavement outside or cars driving past their home.
“If you know your garbage always gets picked up between 7:30am and 7:45am on Tuesdays, you can schedule your motion detection to turn off during that time,” experts at Ring explained.
To put a stop these ‘false positive’ motion alerts, users can make their Motion Zone smaller or change the time frames.
To do this, open the Ring app > tap the three horizontal lines in the top left > Devices > select your device > Motion Settings > Edit Motion Zones > Default Zone and adjust the zone > Done > Save.
Amazon's guide to Ring doorbell positioning
Here's the official advice...
One of the biggest mistakes people make is mounting their Ring Video Doorbell too high in the belief that they need to do this in order to catch people’s faces.
In fact, as illustrated above, viewing faces is not a problem if the Ring Video Doorbell is mounted at the correct height of approximately 1.2 meters above the ground.
The second way your Ring Video Doorbell sees the world is through a network of PIR, or passive infrared, motion sensors. These are heat sensors that detect motion by monitoring heat within the detection area.
Since people are hotter than the surrounding areas, as a person enters the detection area the heat measurements change. The motion sensors register this change as movement and send out an alert.
The motion sensors in your Ring Video Doorbell are designed to detect motion up to 155 degrees horizontally and from 1.5 to 7.5 meters outward from the fixture.
They’re also more sensitive to horizontal movement across the detection area than vertical.
Mount your doorbell too high and you’re more likely to catch the heat of passing cars than the heat of incoming visitors.