After a next door neighbor had a break in at home, we were concerned with the lack of any security at our house.
Reading numerous online reviews (unfortunately choice hasn’t reviewed outdoor security cameras as yet) I spent $1000 buying the Ring Outdoor Cameras and spent the weekend installing them.
Well not impressed, after having numerous problems with video lag and quality (to the point nothing useable was being recorded) I turned to the www. It appears buried in the FAQs that Ring Cameras recommend a minimum of 2MBPS upload speeds for them to work properly.
Well that rules them out for anyone not (successfully) connected to a good NBN plan, as typical ADSL2+ speeds are 0.5MB. That rules them out as being appropriate for many/most households for the moment.
Is this a case of “not fit for purpose” in AUS? Should this be made clearer up front - a product that requires an internet connection that most houses cannot obtain to work is surely an issue!!??
No there is only a “paid” cloud upload option. The reason I bought these cameras was to get notifications when away from home (as well as the spotlight that activates as motion is detected and recorded). No local storage is available.
Hence the upload (not download!) is vital. “Live view” of the cameras on demand is almost useless due to lag.
I would suggest that it is unfortunately a case of ‘caveat emptor’. Always check the specifications, and ensure that they are compatible with your set up before you buy.
The cameras are not faulty, they just have specific requirements. Not knowing what you bought, I had a look at the flood light camera Ring Floodlight Cam. it says under the heading Wi-Fi: “Requires a minimum upload speed of 1Mbps, but 2Mbps is recommended for optimal performance.”
In the help section Ring upload internet speeds it says “As a general rule, most Ring devices function best when upload and download speeds are around 2 Mbps or greater. If your speeds are much slower than that, you might try moving your router closer to your Ring device or (if necessary) calling your internet service provider to discuss getting faster internet speeds.”
In theory, the lowest of the NBN speeds should provide the minimum 1Mbps upload speed. [ NBN Speed tiers . Basic Speed: Maximum 12/1Mbps . Standard Speed: Maximum 25/5Mbps . Standard Plus Speed: Maximum 50/20Mbps . Premium Speed: Maximum 100/40Mbps]
If it doesn’t work maybe move your router closer to the Ring camera, or even try installing a Wi-Fi repeater near the camera to improve the signal strength between the camera and the router.
The problem here is that we are NOT on NBN and despite being in inner west Sydney NBN is showing that we are not in line for connection until 2019.
Based on the “fine print” I doubt strongly that any adsl(2+) customer could achieve anywhere near 1mb upload let alone 2mb upload.
It is only with NBN it is likely to be possible!
Hence the comment regarding fit for purpose. I respectfully disagree that caveat emptor applies here, if I picked this product off the shelf at a retailer I would not know that it would not work without a good NBN connection!
How many other IOT devices are out there that will not be “fit for purpose”on non- NBN Connections?
If you ordered them on line or specifically asked for that camera from a store, then it’s still unfortunately a case of ‘caveat emptor’.
If you went to a store and said ‘I have a 500kb max upload on ADSL and need a security camera to suit’, then you have a case for them to refund in my opinion, due to it not being fit for purpose.
I have a dissenting opinion. The world of modern tech is so complex I have difficulty understanding how most ‘mere mortals’ would have a clue as to this problem (or many others!) and even know what to ask about or look for and in many instances what they have. The comment is general about ‘anything computer’ not just this issue.
I believe an average person who has what is sold as ‘broadband’ could reasonably expect a volume product on the open market should work to a functionally useful standard on it, even if not at the top or even a high resolution or frame rate. Everyone does not have nor should need qualifications in network engineering to be able to buy something that ‘at least works’, but in 2018 they apparently do (at least sometimes).
Just returning from the USA yesterday my family in Georgia just got a new internet connection from AT&T. ADSL remains the standard in their mid-sized city. Not a surprise it syncs at 6Mbps down and 0.912Mbps up. The AT&T tech came, he installed, tested, and left. The docs were about the Wifi settings and passwords and the support contact info, not speeds and feeds.
Products without visible warnings that the product will not work to a usable standard on what most people have seems dodgy at best and not fit for purpose for anyone without cable or fibre as a minimum.
Now the bottom line question for that is what do you mean by ‘lag’ and ‘quality’? You should as a minimum expect frames with identifiable objects rather than pixilated blurs, and a consistent frame every few seconds so you might not have smooth motion, but you should have a record of what is ‘going down’ similar to what is often shown on CCTV monitoring from shops.
Don’t disagree with you views and also ability for one to not fully understand/research new tec products…however, a a community we have moved towards DIY rather than commission the services of an expert in the field to gain appropriate advice, based on ones own circumstances. Possibly this trend has resulted from DIY shows, the population becoming more educated, loss of trust of service technicians, to save money…
As a result, it is likely that one will make decisions that may not be best for oneself/in ones interest. This is the risk of taking on such decisions.
If I don’t fully understand something, even after extensive research, I tend to fall back to paying/asking an expert in the field for advice. This may cost a little more, but gives piece of mind and may actually he cheaper in the long run.
The issue for technical things is you need to understand what you do not understand. If you do not understand it but think you do from superficial knowledge, one is at his own peril, and I think (opinion not necessarily fact) that is more common than not.
Tech is an unknown unknown to so many who believe the high level jargon is enough to sustain them.
Interesting selection of views, however I am a little surprised at the “caveat emptor” opinion given today’s consumer rights driven environment.
Not to belabor this issue, but …
I work in IT, so I suspect I may be more tech savvy than the average person.I bought this online after long research into reviews and specifications.
When the product website states “Ring products are easy to set up, and include all the tools needed for installation” I think the average person would assume this is a product made for DIY, not for professional assessment and installation. Indeed it was very easy to set up, with very simple step by step instructions.
Neither the product technical details section nor the FAQ’s mention anything about minimum internet connection standards. The only way I found out about the “recommended 2MB upload” is via Google, it was noted in a response to a Ring support request.
I was looking forward to “a versatile wire-free HD security camera that lets you see, hear and speak to anyone on your property from your phone, tablet and PC” and “crisp video around the clock”. Suffice to say this has certainly not been my experience.
With NBN reportedly rolled out to 58% of Australian households @ May 18, there is potentially 42% of Australians for which this product is quite possibility not fit for purpose for!
If I had bought the Ring Spotlight Camera you posted a link to then I possibly would have noticed this. However the Ring Spotlight Camera Battery I bought for some reason omitted the specification note regarding the upload speeds…
You are correct. There is no mention of an upload speed requirement on that camera’s page.
Make sure you take screen shots straight away of the information they have up now, just in case it gets changed.
I also had a look at the FAQs, and there’s no mention there of a minimum upload speed that I could see.
Based on the info they currently have displayed for the Ring Spotlight Camera Battery, I think you can you can make a claim under ACL for ‘not fit for purpose’ based on the Live View not working as claimed (on your ADSL) on their website. It’s worth a try!!
You will need to document everything, provide copies of the screen shots, and explain why the Live View was critical to your decision to buy.
More than a few years ago when I was young and naive I was having a dispute with a company and had their web pages up. While we were discussing their failures of promise vs reality they were sanitising their problems on their web pages so no evidence remained.
Moral: Whenever there might be a worry, unless the evidence is in a hardcopy also, always take a screen shot before you do anything!
Looks pretty disgraceful to me. Nobody is going to expect to need 2Mbps upstream bandwidth without being notified of it. I guess when the manufacturer doesn’t bother to tell you the requirements, you just have to get lucky when you read reviews. This review clearly states that the doorbell won’t work with ADSL. Worse, we’re talking about a single camera! Plenty of users would want multiple cameras to cover their home.
Even if you have NBN, do you really want its whole bandwidth being consumed if you have a set of cameras that decide to upload at once? Buyers of these things are victims of this obsession with using the “cloud” even when it’s a terrible idea. You can buy perfectly good PTZ wifi cameras for a fraction of the price of Ring’s products that can upload the video stream to a local (or remote) ftp server or send videos as email to any device. I have a D-Link camera that does that, uploading motion capture 1280x720 video to a machine on my local network. If I’m away and want to view the live feed, D-Link provides 3 different screen resolutions, so users can view a low-res version that is usable for the bandwidth. (It’s not perfect: Some of D-Link’s web controls don’t work properly on modern browsers!)
The over-priced nature of Ring’s products and the monthly subscription fees alone would have preventing me buying any, but allowing companies to just shuffle off all your data into the “cloud” without any control? Why would anyone accept that? “What are the chances they’d do anything unexpected with our data?” you might ask. 100%, unless you think that sending some of it to China is expected!
Add to that the fact that as soon as you have an NBN outage . o O ( but, but … that’ll NEVER happen ) all the wonderful cloud requiring smart home devices will stop working, even (in most cases) if you’re trying to use them from within your home WiFi.
I’ve discovered a few device types (cheap chinese PTZ cameras, Belkin Wemo devices, Broadlink IR blasters, etc) which do actually work within your WiFi even when your internet is down. But it’s not the norm. For the techincally inclined, just run zoneminder on a server at home, and connect some cameras to that.
) all the wonderful cloud requiring smart home devices will stop working, even (in most cases) if you’re trying to use them from within your home WiFi.
