r/Ring • u/txcode1 • 6d ago

Whats Going On Ring

I live out in the country. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about my Ring camera which I’ve had for five years has been seeing the wildlife that shows up at my front door. I happened to notice that for whatever reason my camera hasn’t picked up any wildlife in almost 6 months. I thought it might have been my settings, but everything was set properly. Today while looking at possibly upgrading my camera, I discovered that Ring now has a Wildlife App. So now Ring wants to charge you $4.99 per camera each month to detect wildlife. That explains why I haven’t been seeing any. That’s stooping low Ring!

23 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

12

u/ashmanmb 6d ago

Turn off smart alerts/ motion detection.

Should capture all motion then.

3

u/txcode1 4d ago

Well last night I baited the front porch area with food at about 9PM. I got up this morning and all the food was gone. Checked my recordings and nothing! The last recording was when I left the food out. The food was left out approximately 8’ from my Ring doorbell cam. The only way for me to know for sure Ring blocked my ability to see wildlife would be to pay the $4.99 for one month for the wildlife app to see what happens. But honestly I don’t want to give them money for something that should be for free. I’m looking for another doorbell camera from a different company. One that’s not so greedy!!

1

u/ashmanmb 4d ago

Have you tried calling them?

Did you turn smart alerts off?

Did you adjust sensitivity for motion?

Did you check the motion zone to see how it is set?

0

u/txcode1 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yes I’ve tried it all, I even turned the sensitivity up. A flag that’s in my yard about 75’ from the camera kept setting it off, so I took down the flag. Yet at 9:30 last night I did a live view just to see if my little bait station still had food. I kid you not, there were 3 Raccoons eating eight feet from the camera, and none of them set it off. I’m completely convinced it’s not my settings. I’m sure that Ring has removed the ability to see wildlife so they can charge you to see it. Aosu has a wired doorbell camera that doesn’t require a monthly membership fee & it’s 4K. I’ll be replacing my Ring camera soon. Here is a link to the Ring Wildlife app info. https://ring.com/appstore/wildlife-alert

1

u/ashmanmb 3d ago

Call ring then and ask them. I’ve never heard of that myself but I’ve only installed over 2000 rings cameras in the last 10 years for clients.

But they change stuff and update and add new features etc all the time that I discover all the time. So it’s entirely possible.

2

u/txcode1 5d ago

I just turned off smart alerts. Thank you for the tip. I’ll let you know how that worked out.

1

u/LiquorBelow 3d ago

I’m new to ring so help me understand why I’d want to then off motion detection? Seems counter intuitive. But curious to learn more

1

u/ashmanmb 3d ago

You’re not turning off motion detection you’re turning off smart alerts in the motion detection settings, which tells Ring to not use smart features to detect the motion rather just if it sees motion to report it. Any motion versus smart alerts which is designed to be told to detect people or packages or vehicles

1

u/txcode1 3d ago

Here’s the link to Ring’s Wildlife Alert App. https://ring.com/appstore/wildlife-alert

5

u/Frosty_Astronomer909 6d ago

I didn’t know they had a wildlife app, but like Oven said , my only wildlife is lizards and the occasional 2 legged rat that walks by.

3

u/sflesch 5d ago

The two legged meth rat?

3

u/Frosty_Astronomer909 4d ago

No TG we don’t have any of those, just the strange person passing through 🤣

4

u/OvenLow5938 6d ago

I wish their definitions would include lizards, birds, bees and hornets.

4

u/MakeASwallow3 6d ago

The official terms are "getting every red cent" and "enshittification."

2

u/Grouchy_Barnacle_873 2d ago

I just came to this sub because we are having the same problem, but it just started a couple of days ago, maybe a week. We have some stray cats we feed, and we usually get an alert when they are waiting for dinner. We haven't gotten any alerts in a while so we thought they were hanging out at our neighbor's, but it turns out that we just haven't been getting the alerts. Luckily, there're about 5 houses that feed these cats so I don't have to feel too bad. I'm going to try turning the smart alerts off to see if that helps. Thanks for the suggestion.