Picked up a Ring to test last year, it didn't make it through this last winter.  Yes it was cold in MN!

Products that are owned by companies like Google and Amazon (Ring, Nest, Eero etc.) will never go into my clients homes.

Yes, it's only a matter of time but I will fight it by educating my clients as long as they will listen!

You beat me to it :-D

That isn't exactly what they are now providing on a Ring Pro. My Pro Power Kit not only had the 2 wire pigtail but 2 stab connectors. They instructed me to take one leg of the 16v power supply and put it in series with 2 stab connectors (i.e. one stab point feeds in the direction of the Ring and one stab point feeds in the direction of the power supply). Essentially, this is in series of one leg of the power supply. The other leg of the power supply goes undisrupted to the Ring. This was per instructions from their tech support. He explained that it was like a fuse in line between the power supply and the Ring to protect it. He even emailed me a pic of how to connect it

I did this and the pigtail with the 2 spade lugs were unplugged and set aside.
The Ring works fine.

For grins, I plugged back in the pigtail and read with my VOM. The 2 leads of the pigtail don't show any change when the Ring call button is pressed. There is no voltage on the 2 leads either and resistance is appx 4-5 ohms (doesn't change).

If I read one of these pigtail spade leads across the other undisrupted leg of the power supply I read 16v AC with my VOM.

In a typical door chime the front button merely completes the 16v circuit to the attached chime in the house. The Ring needs a constant 16v to function

How are we going to get a trigger out of this? I'm missing something.

Its not that important. I can always get one of their plug in chimes, which are not expensive, But I would like to trigger a door chime module in my Elan system and it would be distributed in the ceiling speakers. I've done this multiple times with clients Elan systems (standard door chime and button push)

The Ring doorbells can close the circuit that is powering them to trigger a mechanical chime or digital chime. You must also enable it in the settings of the doorbell.

You can not use that to do a sense input on elan (yet, Elan is who we will bring Ring Events to next). You can purchase the ELK-930 to get manual trigger events that can be fed into an Elan system for the time being.

OK. I did see that in the setup of the Ring and have now enabled it. I will test it the pigtail that plugs into the Pro Power pack, when I have someone who can press the call button while I'm reading it at the rack with my VOM.

I want to actually have the Pro Power Pak trigger a Niles DBI-1, which will in turn input a signal into the doorbell input of my Elan S86 analog audio matrix. The Niles DBI-1 can be triggered with anything from 3-30v

So if I can't get this to work, how long before you release the Elan Ring driver? Can you PM what dealer cost will be? I assume all the driver will do is allow events to be triggered when a call or motion is detected?

You should really look into the Elk part if you want to do something now. The 24V AC is always going through the DB.

We will be working on Elan later in the year.

I've been using a Ring Pro for about 1.5 years.

Mine was a bit of a nightmare to set up - first, it wouldn't turn on. So through a complete lack of information on the kind of power support it requires to run properly (beyond generic voltages), I decided the doorbell transformer wasn't powerful enough, and replaced it with a high capacity security system transformer. And yet it still wouldn't turn on. At least, not until after being connected to power for 36 hours when it just magically started working. I'd heard random reports of it taking a few hours to turn on... but 36? What kind of electronics works like that??

After 24 hours of not working I had another one sent out, and amazingly that replacement also took about 27 hours to turn on despite being connected to adequate power from minute one.

Wiring with an existing doorbell chime was a bit of a challenge (with multiple door switches to boot), but it DOES work. However the mechanical chime sounds LONG after the tone plays on the Ring itself and all mobile devices or Alexa, so it's a bit pointless.

Anyways, despite those challenges it's actually worked completely fine since then, never crashing or locking up or being unavailable. Lose power, and it comes back on right away (and not 36 hours later). My biggest gripe would be how long it takes to "answer" a ring on the phone (I basically never bother), but it's been invaluable for notifications and motion alerts, Alexa integration, and recordings of activity.

Definitely sounds like some of the original hardware. They have done massive amount of changes and tweaks to the products. The RMA rate on Ring is pretty low these days. I think they realized spending a few extra dollars saves them money.

I saw Rings booth at ISCWest. Love em or hate them they innovate fast. They now have an NVR module coming that will allow you to use standard ONVIF cameras if you want 24/7 recording (if I remember correctly). The funky little drone that flies around if there is an event IS going to come out! They've partnered with Holovision to make a gate keypad that works with Rings contact module/cameras. The borg is taking over.

My Ring Pro died after 3 years. It was in my car port for about a year and a half, shielded from direct sunlight and rain, and then it was in my shop - inside the warehouse - for another year and a half. Never was rained on, no winters, nothing extreme either way, and then it just died. It was still pretty warm, so I tested the transformer and that was still alive (and in spec), but that was all she wrote for the Ring. I never tried to get it replaced, since I'm pretty sure it was out of warranty. I still have it (for some reason).

I had another customer with a floodlight cam that had the image turn all red, which they replaced under warranty.

Not bashing them though. They're good for what they are.

Had a Ring for a couple years, battery version.  Mistake, only do wired.

Thought I’d try a Nest Hello, and I like it better.  Added a couple more cameras and a thermostat, all on one app.

I think the only reason I would recommend Ring, is for the floodlight cam. Personal preference of course.

Have been eyeballing the Ubiquiti door unit, that thing looks like a beast!

Wish Ring had a 4mm cam of some sort, when trying to cover anything at a distance, 2.8 just doesn’t cut it.

Nest has a flood light now, and a pretty nice one. Nest is still a little behind Ring as far as selection.

I have Nest myself, and not sure that I like having to tie it to my Google account, but the products work great. They don't have a wired outdoor camera.

Interesting about the food.


They do and I use one.

The discontinued their plug-in outdoor cameras, and now only have rechargeable battery outdoor cams. I have a couple of outdoor IQ models from a couple of years ago, but they have been discontinued.

Their little plug-in camera is for indoor only.