How Many Megapixels Are Ring Cameras

The Ring Floodlight Cam ($249) is ane of the latest additions to the visitor's growing line of dwelling security devices. As with the Netatmo Presence, the Floodlight Cam pulls double-duty as a light source and a home security photographic camera, allowing you to monitor the exterior of your home from a smartphone or PC. Information technology delivers sharp video and clean two-way sound, but requires a subscription to view recorded video and had a few mobile app issues in testing.

Pattern and Plans

The Ring Floodlight Cam comes in white or black and contains two i,500-lumen LED bulbs that have a 3,000K color temperature and are roughly equivalent to 100W incandescent floodlight bulbs. The bulbs were more than acceptable for lighting up my backyard puddle expanse in testing, simply they are not dimmable like the seedling in the Netatmo Presence. Ring claims that the bulbs will last upwardly to ten years, only one time they go you're out of luck as they are not replaceable. In other words, you'll need a whole new fixture. A Band spokesperson confirmed that the visitor will swap out the fixture for gratuitous, but you lot'll yet have to remove it and reinstall the replacement.

The camera is housed in an attached enclosure that measures 4.5 by 2.7 by two.seven inches (HWD). Information technology's a 1080p camera with an 8X digital zoom, a 140-caste field of view, and half-dozen infrared LEDs that provide up to xxx anxiety of night vision. At the bottom of the enclosure is a motion detector with a 270-degree range. The floodlight is equipped with an 802.11b/m/n radio that connects to your habitation network on the ii.4GHz band, and has a congenital-in 110dB siren and a speaker and microphone array that supports two-mode audio. It comes with mounting hardware, a screwdriver, and an installation guide.

Like Products

The Floodlight Cam offers instant alerts and live video streaming, but if you want to view, share, and save consequence-recorded video, you have to subscribe to one of Ring's service plans. The Basic Plan is $3.00 per calendar month or $xxx.00 per twelvemonth and gives you lx days of cloud storage per photographic camera and full admission to all of your videos. For $6.00 per month or $threescore per twelvemonth, the Protect Plan gives y'all everything from the Basic Programme for an unlimited number of cameras, and you get a lifetime warranty (the warranty period is normally ane year).

By way of comparison, Nest Aware subscriptions for the Nest Cam Outdoor go for $x per month/$100 per year for 10 days of continuous video storage, and $30 per month/$300 per year for 30 days of continuous storage. The Netgear Arlo Pro offers free basic service that gives y'all 7 days of cloud recording, and supports up to 5 cameras. Premier service costs $9.99 per month/$99.99 per year and gives you thirty days of cloud recording and back up for up to ten cameras, while Elite service goes for $14.99 per month/$149.99 per twelvemonth and offers sixty days of cloud recording with support for up to fifteen cameras.

App

The Floodlight Cam uses the same Android and iOS mobile app every bit other Ring devices, such as the Video Doorbell, and can exist accessed and managed from a PC using the web console as well. In the app, choose the Floodlight Cam from the listing of installed Ring devices to access its dashboard screen. Here you'll find a switch to plough the low-cal on and off, and another to enable and disable motion alerts. There'southward as well a button to activate the siren and a Alive View button that launches a live video stream.

Forth the bottom of the screen are buttons for Event History, Device Health, Linked Chimes, Motion Settings, Light Settings, and Shared Users. Clicking on an item in Event History plays a clip of the recorded video and gives you the choice of sharing the clip with friends and family or with your unabridged neighborhood past pressing the Ring Neighborhoods button. Band Neighborhoods is a community watchdog feature that lets you lot share recorded events with neighbors who too accept Band devices and have signed upward to participate. The app uses your location (entered during setup) to decide your neighborhood and allows you to add a comment along with your clip.

The Device Health button allows you to view things similar point strength, firmware version, and which network you are connected to, and the Linked Chimes button lets y'all enable motion settings for any Ring Chime devices you may take installed. In Motion Settings you tin adjust sensitivity using the slider, create motion detection zones, and ready schedules for enabling/disabling move alerts. Similarly, Light Settings allows you to create a schedule for turning the lights on and off, and to customize motility zones that volition trigger the lights. You tin invite other users to view video by sending an invite from the Shared Users screen.

The Floodlight Cam supports If This Then That (IFTTT) applets and the Flash and Samsung SmartThings home automation hubs to work with other smart dwelling devices. You can utilise Alexa voice commands to view video on an Repeat Prove display.

Installation and Performance

Installing the Floodlight Cam isn't difficult, but it requires a bones understanding of electric wiring and you must use an outdoor-rated junction box. If you don't have an existing power source or are uncomfortable handling electrical wiring, accept a professional electrician do the job.

If yous already have one or more Ring devices installed, you can employ the mobile app to add the Floodlight, otherwise you'll accept to download the app and create an business relationship. I opened the Ring app on my telephone and tapped Set up a Device from the menu. I selected Floodlight Cam from the list, chose Lawn as a name, confirmed my location, and followed the instructions for installing and wiring the light. You can apply the step-by-step on-screen instructions or picket a series of videos that show you exactly how to affix the mounting bracket, wire it, and attach the light to information technology. I shut off the billow to the circuit and removed the old fixture, which was installed under a soffit in my backyard. I fastened the mounting plate to the junction box and used the included hook to hold the light in place while I wired it up. Once wired, I attached the low-cal to the mounting bracket using the two modest mounting basics, restored ability to the circuit, and was set to go. The entire process took a niggling more than than 15 minutes.

The camera delivered outstanding live daytime video in my tests, with excellent color quality and precipitous image detail. There was no obvious pin-cushion or barrel baloney, and motion lag was minimal. Move detection worked perfectly, but I had to tweak the sensitivity settings to avoid false triggers from squirrels and other small critters that tend to roam effectually my yard. Black-and-white nighttime vision was sharp out to around 20 anxiety, and two-way audio was loud and clear. The floodlight followed my lighting schedule without consequence, and it worked perfectly with my IFTTT applet to turn on a D-Link Smart Switch when movement was detected. The siren was adequately loud and should have no trouble scaring off unwelcome guests or letting your neighbors know at that place'southward something going on.

All the same, the app was a bit buggy in my testing; I frequently received an Activating Device message followed by a trouble connecting message when trying to launch a alive stream. When I clicked More Info I was returned to the main screen with no explanation. Clicking OK had the same effect. I checked Device Health and was told I had expert bespeak forcefulness, and the cam was installed in close proximity to my router. Closing the app and restarting it unremarkably resolved the issue, but there were times when I had to open and close the app more than than in one case. Additionally, there'south no way to decide how the live stream will be displayed. Sometimes information technology would launch in portrait mode, and sometimes it would launch in landscape mode, and in one case the stream was launched it stayed that way regardless of how I held the phone. I installed the app on my wife's phone, sent her an invite, and experienced the aforementioned exact problems.

Conclusions

With the Ring Floodlight Cam you tin can keep an eye on the outside of your dwelling from anywhere, talk to whomever is out in that location, and scare them off with a fairly loud siren if necessary. At $249 it'southward a relatively expensive floodlight, but connected devices are almost always more expensive than their not-connected counterparts, and this light pulls double-duty as a security camera. Nonetheless, you can't supplant the bulbs once they burn down out, which means you'll have to remove and replace the unabridged fixture.
Paradigm quality was very good in testing, but every and then often I had trouble viewing a live stream, and the mobile app was quirky.

If you lot already own one or more Ring devices, the Floodlight Cam makes sense as it lets you monitor all of them from a unmarried app, only Ring should offering a free deject storage pick similar to what y'all get with the Netgear Arlo Pro. If you find the cloud subscription off-putting, check out the Netatmo Presence. It doesn't offer 2-manner sound but it has onboard storage and tin tell the difference between people, cars, and animals, and allows dimming. There's besides Ring's new line of Spotlight Cams(Opens in a new window), with built-in LED spotlights, that we'll exist testing in the weeks ahead.

The Bottom Line

The Ring Floodlight Cam offers crisp 1080p video, 2-style audio, and works with other smart devices that support IFTTT, but y'all have to pay to view recorded footage and the app can use some piece of work.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/ring-floodlight-cam

Posted by: murphyotibitepar.blogspot.com

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