How do you use your Ring Doorbell? (Coffee Shop talk, not necessarily ISY)

[carealtor]

Finally got my ebay Ring Elite doorbell installed and up and running.  I also got this bad boy and it is hooked up to the Ring Elite.

What do you have set up to happen when someone rings your Ring doorbell?

I work from home and sit in my big chair with my Windows 10 laptop most of the day.  What I envision happening is, in addition to the lovely Westminster Chimes, that a small window might pop up on my laptop with a video from the Ring Elite.  The closest I've come is a Win10 notification briefly appearing, and if I'm quick enough and click on it, the Ring app will (slowly) open.  Not really what I envisioned.

So, what do you have set up to happen when someone rings your Ring doorbell?

Edited April 18, 2021 by carealtor

[Bumbershoot]

15 hours ago, carealtor said:

So, what do you have set up to happen when someone rings your Ring doorbell?

Two things: 1) I have my Sonos system announce that there's, "Someone at the front door."  I generally can't hear the doorbell ring, so this works in whatever room I'm in (Sonos is in most rooms).  There are a couple of Sonos nodeservers, along with the Sonos Jishi API (which you can run either on the Polisy or an RPi) which accomplish this.  One of the nodeservers isn't released yet, but @simplextech is developing it.  2) I have a sentinal light in a common location that uses a LiFX bulb that turns a certain color when the doorbell detects a presence.  This is done through the LiFX nodeserver, and it works very quickly and reliably.

In short, three nodeservers (Ring, Sonos and LiFX) are involved.

[Geddy]

@carealtor, we have had the Ring Pro about 4 years now. We use the Ring Chime Pro to help with the wifi connection and also gives us the indoor sounding of the doorbell rather than having the old mechanical doorbell sound. That's one thing I did like about the Ring Pro that you could continue to use the indoor hardware if you wanted to, but we decided not to keep it ringing when somebody comes to the door. The Ring Chime Pro can also "make noise" when there's motion, but that get really annoying so we have turned that "feature" off.

Since Covid I have been working from home more and have dual monitor setup, but haven't considered a Windows app option. I think there is/was a Windows App, but it's not getting updates. I usually have my phone handy or even my ipad handy (open and propped up for video calls) while I'm working. Those devices now get rich notifications (might be product specific) that will send a snapshot when you get the motion/ring alert. I'm not usually too worried about the motion alerts, but want to know who is ringing the doorbell. 

I tried IFTTT hooks in the past to make the ISY do something with the lights, but the delay of the webhooks were not helpful and the few times there were like 15-20 minute delays between ring and lights flashing I took that off. My family would laugh if there was an Amazon delivery that we already brought in and nearly half hour later the lights would flash. I'd get the usual "oh, guess somebody was here a while back" kind of heckling. 

Since we usually have a phone with us we get notifications of motion/rings on the mobile devices and don't worry about Echo or ISY interaction with the alerts. There's only so much that I want to hear at once so we are good with just having the phones/tablets give us notifications.

 

One thing that gets fun is having doorbells at our parent's house so having the ability to make different alert sounds for different cameras is key...or just turning off other camera notifications if not as key/important. 

 

 

[randyth]

I have the Ring Peephole camera, which is completely wireless and works great for my situation. My wife wanted something to replace our door's old blurry peephole and our wired doorbell is way too low for a camera to replace it (no side-view butt shots, please).

Using a cheap Wi-Fi inching relay that can talk to Alexa, I have the Ring's doorbell button ring my house's actual doorbell. It will also ring when someone merely knocks on the door because (being mounted to the door) the Ring can be set to recognize a knock as a "doorbell" event.

On motion, I have it trigger an Alexa Routine which brings up the live camera view on an Echo Show near the front door. Alexa also subtly announces the motion by saying "OK," which is great and, interestingly, just a side affect of her launching the Ring skill. 

An Alexa Routine also triggers an ISY scene to turn the porch light on for 10 minutes if the motion is detected after sundown and before sunrise. Related to this, I have the ISY tally any motion events the camera detects between the hours of 10pm and 6am. If any motion was detected during these "sleeping" hours, the ISY tells me about it by sending me an Alexa Notification in the morning so I can check the overnight camera logs for ne'er-do-wells, stray dogs, and ghosts (special "Ghost Lens" accessory required).