Ring doorbell - talk me through what I need?

[MyOtherProfile]

Bit overwhelmed with all the choice and not sure what I need.

I'd like to see who is at the door on my phone and be able to speak to them.

I've just read that you can pay £2.50 a month for something or other - do I need that?

Any recommendations? I've also seen a make called Eufy. Any good?

Thanks.

We have Eufy. My DH chose it as there's no monthly fee which apparently there is with Ring.

Thanks. Are you pleased with it? What does yours do?

Following op, I'm the same a bit overwhelmed with the choice!

My partner has a nest one for his parents house. They are very elderly and the house is off the road and secluded. In fact the doorbell at their house has just sounded on my partner's phone and he can see it's the carer arrived. He can also speak to people at the door if the parents are slow in answering.

He also saw last night his mum had fallen outside and was able to phone his dad to go outside and pick her up or she would have been there for hours.

You don't have to pay unless you want to keep the footage for longer than 24 hours I don't think.

Quite easy to set up too.

I've got a blink camera which is a bit different IE is not a doorbell but it comes on when it detects motion so I know when someone's at the door. Can talk to someone through it, even if I'm not in the house so can ask delivery people to leave things in certain places etc.

No monthly fees or subscriptions required

Is there much work involved in wiring these in? Do you do it yourself?

Good question @Forion I have seen that wireless is another option but no idea if that's good.

Following this with interest.
We have an old style burglar alarm that is wired to the police, so when it goes off they come automatically, even if it’s a false alarm (I can’t call them off once they’ve been dispatched which is ridiculous). And then a human still has to travel back to the house to input the code and stop it going off.
But the new kitten set it off so we’re not using it anymore.
The sensors are supposedly set high enough not to detect her but of course she jumps and can knock things over.

I’d love a camera system that would just detect motion and come through to my or my husbands phone, then if there was anything suspicious we could manually call the police. But we would need it round the back and side of the house as well as front door.

Is there a good company that will come and tell you what’s available and install it for you?

We have Eufys. You just stick them on as far as I know and change the batteries every now and again. I would definitely have heard about it if DH had had to do some wiring .

We have 2 or 3 cameras (back garden, use one as a monitor for the kids room etc) and a camera-doorbell. Can look and talk through an app on your phone. No complaints.

The cameras are magnetic so stick to our drainpipes but there must be another non-magnetic option too in case you don't have anything magnetic to stick it to!

The basic Ring doorbell is 4 small screws, with 2 to keep the unit in place that can be removed to recharge, if you are using it wirelessly and want to recharge the battery. Or you wire it in which is a power lead and will need more installing. I never bothered, i just used to recharge it.

You pay to store the video, it won't record anything if you don't pay. I worked in the garden room so needed it for deliveries etc.

We have a Ring. We just got the battery powered one as we didn't want the faff of getting a hard wired one fitted. I'm pretty sure we'd have needed an electrician for that.

We have:

• The Ring doorbell unit
• 2 batteries (so when one goes flat we swap it with the ready charged one - they last about a month before they need charging again and take about half a day to charge up again).
• A chime unit which plugs into an electric socket inside the house. The chime unit rings when the doorbell is pressed as well as both of our phones going off. If we're all in the house there's chimes going off all over. 😂

We do pay £2 or some similar amount for the footage to be stored. I think it's only kept for 24 hours otherwise. It seemed a sensible thing to do at a pretty low cost.

We've been pleased with ours.

Thanks. Do all rings do the same? Or are there features we would regret if we got the basic model?

@Forion

Is there much work involved in wiring these in? Do you do it yourself?

We did it ourselves but my partner is really good at DIY but the instructions are very clear. (For NEST)

I've got a basic Ring and wouldn't be without it now. A friend hardwired it for me, it wasn't a big job at all & it's so much better. Taking the battery out to recharge it was an absolute faff The subscription to keep the videos is only £2.50 a month

I'd definitely recommend it

I've had the highest spec one for a few months and I'm really fond of it now. I've also go the wi-fi extender chime so the dcs can hear the doorbell.
I paid a year in advance to keep my recordings for a month.
Tbh I mostly use it for checking the dcs are in from school, the neighbourhood kids leaving a message about what football they've kicked into my garden and evidence the my bins were out on time despite what the refuse collection team say (this is my bug smug win ).

I paid for a local TV/ariels/home tech company to set it up for me. The nice man just told me what buttons to push on my phone throughout the set-up. It's not hard wired but I don't even have a drill.

We don’t really need the doorbell as such as it’s an old house with the original push bell.
But is there one that will just notify you on your phone of motion then you can have a look?

@User2638483

We don’t really need the doorbell as such as it’s an old house with the original push bell. But is there one that will just notify you on your phone of motion then you can have a look?

You can just get Ring cameras instead of a doorbell, if you don't need the bell part. They work in the same way as it's motion that sets them off.

Ok thank you

So it sounds like a set of ring or eufy motion activated cameras plus paying the small subscription for recording would be a good alternative to a traditional burglar alarm?

I've got the RING. It's fabulous it's the one where you put it through the spy hole and it has a battery. I paid £25 for the year for the RING app. You can see what's going on whilst your away on your phone and you can speak to people through the speaker. Highly recommend.

I wouldn't be without it. I did look at Eufy too they look great too!

This is really helpful thanks.

One more question - I'm guessing you could get a Ring, see how you go and then add the subscription later if you want to?

You don’t have to subscribe - we have the last could of days filming stored on the app which is sufficient for our needs and you can forward the videos to an email