The Ring Video Doorbell in all its incarnations proves to be a handy device. It’s a doorbell that doubles as a security camera that also includes Wi-Fi connectivity because it’s made by Amazon.com and works with Alexa. It’s a smart device in and of itself, such that it can connect to other smart devices and provide live footage of what its camera sees. With that said, if your Ring Doorbell is battery-powered, you must be curious about how to check its battery level.
How to check the battery level on the ring doorbell? Long story short, you should have the Ring app installed. It will give you alerts on when your battery is low. Otherwise, you can err on the side of caution and recharge the battery yourself every season to every 6 months.
Checking The Battery Level and Charging Guide
Your Ring app will alert you if and when you need to recharge the battery as needed. If you don’t have the app—and you should definitely get the app—you can charge the doorbell every 3-6 months or even once a year (every Christmas or Valentines’ Day) to err on the side of caution.
- Battery Checks Available via The Ring App: By now, you are aware that the battery charge can be checked through your app. How do you go about that though? You should specifically navigate towards the device health section. First, from the app’s main page or dashboard, you should select the top left icon or menu lines. In the main menu, go tap on the “Devices” option to select it.
This will take you to the Devices page, which is where you’re supposed to select the device whose battery you want to check. Specifically, tap the “Device Health” tile. This will give you a visual of your battery level. It also informs you about diagnostics and Wi-Fi signal strength. You can keep tabs with your battery power and Wi-Fi issues without taking the battery off.
- Powering Up Your Ring Doorbell: Like all devices, the Ring Doorbell requires power. Like ordinary doorbells without Wi-Fi security cameras, the unit can get hooked up and wired unto the power grid. You can also get a model with a rechargeable battery that you’ll have to recharge once or twice every year with normal use. Abnormal or unusual use that drains its battery means you have to charge it more often.
Some models can be equipped with a battery pack with hardwiring to ensure continuous charging of the battery a la a laptop. There are even models that allow you to hook up a solar panel unto it to recharge your battery for you. Your Ring app will still warn you in case the solar power isn’t enough to stave off your battery getting completely drained.
- How Long Does The Battery Last for The Ring Doorbell? The Ring Video Doorbell is able to compete with the competition in regards to its 180-day or 6-month battery. However, the device can actually last extra long than that. With regular usage, the battery could last up to a whole year on a single charge as long as it’s used sparingly. Your operating environment can make it last only 6 months or less.
The motion detection technology of the Ring Doorbell isn’t overly sensitive to activate at the slightest of movement but it will be activated by things like strong winds making branches and shrubs rustle around or strays moving to and fro your front porch. The battery requires 5-10 hours to charge depending on how depleted the battery is. A 2.1 amp charger takes 4-5 hours to charge while a 1-amp charger takes 9-10 hours.
- Regarding What Battery Power Entails: The battery power option allows your Ring Doorbell to work without being connected to an external power source, like hardwired unto your gateway or doorway as well as plugged into an electrical socket. The beauty of a battery is that it can serve as either your main or auxiliary source of doorbell energy.
You will need to regularly charge it if you have many visitors or many unwanted guests in your front porch such as home invaders, would-be burglars, and package thieves. Otherwise, it should hold up fine and only requires recharging once or twice a year. You can even go seasonal with your charging if you wish. Just remember that
- Charging Issues and Troubleshooting Advice: For many Ring Video Doorbells out there, the battery can be hardwired but relies on a battery still. The wiring is there to give a trickle charge to the battery so that it never runs out of power. Removing the battery is only for Ring Doorbells placed somewhere where it cannot be hardwired at all.
However, if your Ring Doorbell is not keeping charge when hardwired, then this is obviously an issue. There might be environmental factors at play. For example, if there are too many motion events that trigger the camera or if the battery is damaged, even the trickle charge is not enough to keep up with the power drainage.
- Dealing with Weather and Optimizing Motion Settings: If your battery is being drained because your pets or strays keep playing in front of it, triggering its camera even though no home invasions or package thievery is happening, you can optimize your motion settings for the sake of ensuring power economy when push comes to shove.
See more: Is Ring Video Doorbell Waterproof?
To customize your motion settings, select the Motion Settings option on the dashboard of your Ring App. Make it less sensitive or turn it off for the meantime until you’re expecting company or packages to minimize power use. As for your Ring Video Doorbell and weather, fix the motion detection settings too in order to keep strong winds or moving shrubbery to endlessly activate it and drain the battery dry.
- Familiarize Yourself with the Ring App: The Ring app doesn’t only check for you the charge of your Ring Doorbell battery. It’s your central hub to control the doorbell by tinkering with its settings. It’s the software version of remote control for your Ring unit, in sort. You should familiarize yourself with its basic features and where to find them.
You can also further conserve energy by adding some shared users so that they don’t drain battery energy every time they get home if they’re family members or visit you and your home if they’re relatives living elsewhere. You can grant them access to the Ring Doorbell via app by adding them as your “Shared User” a la what you can do with a Windows machine.
- Check and Change Your Notification Settings: Use the notification screen to toggle alerts for doorbell rings and motion events on and off. You can access it the same way you’d access the battery charging level of your Ring Doorbell battery. Even wired Ring Doorbells still rely on batteries all for the sake of ensuring they have auxiliary power.
The video quality of the Ring Video Doorbell remains at a consistent HD resolution, so you can’t tinker with it to reduce strain on your battery. What you can do after doing your video quality test for Wi-Fi signal strength and Internet speed is to choose whether you want to archive your recordings via the cloud or opt to only have the live feed or live streaming option available.
- Hardwiring versus Battery Usage: You can hardwire your doorbell in order to not worry about recharging the battery, but it comes at the price of not being able to use your doorbell and its security cam whenever there’s a power outage. Besides which, the battery of a Ring Doorbell is rather long-lasting in regular use.
It lasts about 180 days or about 6 months or up to a year. With that said, you can have the best of both worlds by hardwiring or plugging a Ring Video Doorbell with a battery pack to an electrical socket. This way, the battery never runs out of juice and when there’s a power outage, the battery serves as an auxiliary power source.
- Hardwired Battery—Do You Still Need Charging? If you hardwire your Ring Doorbell, you don’t have to charge your battery manually anymore, right? It depends on your operational environment. Sure, like with your laptop, the battery works fine while hardwired giving you ample operating hours without fully charging your battery since the power grid is giving it juice.
Also, you should use your app in order to make sure your battery is always fully charged. However, you should toggle alerts for motion and doorbell events on and off on your Ring app to conserve energy. It’s because even if your Ring Doorbell is wired, it still relies on the battery and the power drainage from consecutive motions events can drain your battery faster than your hardwiring can charge it within 5-10 hours.
In Summation
If you want to know how to check the battery level of your designated Ring Doorbell, here’s the nitty-gritty. You will get reminders from your Ring app installed on your phone or tablet once the battery starts running low. The Ring app also has a device health indicator that shows how much energy is left on your battery in case it’s the holidays and your parents, in-laws, or relatives are all visiting and draining the energy of both your battery and its camera. With that said, you should turn off the camera if you have expected visitors to save energy.
References:
- “Check battery life/power remaining on app“, Ring.com, Retrieved on June 12, 2020
- “Welcome to Your Ring Video Doorbell 2“, Ring.com, Retrieved on June 12, 2020
Image Source By Palm
