I was excited to add a Ring Doorbell Pro to my home to accompany my existing home security surveillance system. The installation was straightforward and easily accomplished in less than 15 minutes.
Problem!
A few days after the installation I check my surveillance system to notice motion detection activity on my security cameras that faced the general direction of my front door. On closer inspection, it appeared there was a light turning off for 2 seconds every 10 minutes. On closer inspection it turned out the IR light on the Ring doorbell would periodically turn off and almost immediately back on. This “flashing/blinking” was resulting in a motion detection event, not for the Ring but for the main system. Here’s an animated GIF of what it looks like:
I had to contact Ring technical support several times for them to understand what the issue actually was and if there was a fix for it. I was initially told that this was not normal behavior and that a factory reset would solve the problem. Nope. Two more support tickets to find out if this is normal behavior for the device. The IR light turns off once in a while to see if it’s light enough outside to leave the IR light off.
Solution!
My solution was to cover the bottom portion of the Ring Doorbell with black electrical tape. See below.
The next night I checked and confirmed that the infrared light was no longer seen flashing or triggering my cameras.
Chris Parker
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This issue has been bugging me for more than a year, and I had the same experience with support. They kept telling me to reset, and reload firmware. I will try this, but my only questions is… what are we covering up? If it’s the IR blaster, does that mean the camera no longer has night vision?
Also.. big fan of WhatIsMyIPAddress.com. I’ve used it more times than I can count over my IT career and even used it to build dynamic DNS scripts for some home systems in the past. Very cool.
Yes, I covered up the IR LED, but because there is another security camera with its own IR emitter the Ring doorbell did not lose its night vision.
Always nice to hear from someone who’s used WhatIsMyIPAddress.com before!
Hi Chris,
I came up with the electrical tape idea too for a separate reason. I have a porch light on, and the IR leds caused the faces to become so white during night vision that I could not see. Worked like a charm. PROBLEM! My door bell was constantly HOT! Eventually it began reporting power problems. The heat was concentrated near the electrical tape. My thought is that the IR system is always on, and eventually developed too much heat and damaged some components including the capacitor. Have you experience any of these problems since you electrical tape modification?
Bo
Bo,
While I haven’t had issues with the Ring Doorbell alerting me to power issues, I have noticed that it runs quite warm and subsequently trimmed down the electrical tape to as little as needed.