An interesting and not very encouraging video review by Tech Moan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VvTzmp08OE
I'd rather buy the batteryless (non-Ring) one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9CpalDdd04
Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells
11–20 of 55 posts
Re: Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells
#12What is the deal with a battery powered video doorbell?
Is there really a powerful enough battery to make it work for a useful amount of time?
Are people really willing to charge or replace the batteries as often as is required (likely every few days or a week at the very least, by my back-of-the-envelope calculation)?
Re: Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells
#13"Instead of getting a notification that there was motion at the front door and getting a link to the video, the notification might let the homeowner know that the homeowner’s child was at the door, signalling that little Aidan had made it home from school." lot of products are being sold in the name of protecting your kids because this is a common reasoning appealing to parents. Not sure how comfortable I'd be growin…
Theres plenty of ways they might respond. The kid's exact response probably depends on both the parents and the kid.
Beyond that, the amount of surveillance that already exists in a mobile phone probably far outstrips any new tech around the corner.
Re: Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells
#14"Instead of getting a notification that there was motion at the front door and getting a link to the video, the notification might let the homeowner know that the homeowner’s child was at the door, signalling that little Aidan had made it home from school." lot of products are being sold in the name of protecting your kids because this is a common reasoning appealing to parents. Not sure how comfortable I'd be growin…
NYTimes has a story today on a similar thought - boundaries for parents posting things about their kids on social media:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2016/03/08/dont-post-ab...
Re: Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells
#15If you're at home, does this go up to the cloud and then round-trip to your phone, or does the video stay on your local wifi?
There's a part of me that cynically wants to just guess that it does always go up to the cloud, but it's also silly (read "expensive") to ship video up to the cloud just to potentially ship it right back down to the very same wifi network, so maybe not.
(Of course I assume the cloud does proxy it if you're not home, because $90 million probably isn't anywhere near enough to actually take on trying to make IPv6 work for consumers reliably enough to make this work. Sad.)
Re: Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells
#16What is the deal with a battery powered video doorbell? Is there really a powerful enough battery to make it work for a useful amount of time? Are people really willing to charge or replace the batteries as often as is required (likely every few days or a week at the very least, by my back-of-the-envelope calculation)?
I have one and love it. Battery's been going strong for 5 months now.
Re: Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells
#17If you're at home, does this go up to the cloud and then round-trip to your phone, or does the video stay on your local wifi? There's a part of me that cynically wants to just guess that it does always go up to the cloud, but it's also silly (read "expensive") to ship video up to the cloud just to potentially ship it right back down to the very same wifi network, so maybe not. (Of course I assume the cloud does proxy…
It goes up to the cloud and then back down to you.
Re: Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells
#18Preordered the Doorbot, the first gen Ring doorbell, it was very buggy and unreliable, I would get maybe 1 of 10 rings on my phone.
The second gen unit has been very reliable, and the video quality is night and day better than first gen. Although there can be a little lag of about 10 seconds or so from when the doorbell is rang till it rings on my phone.
Re: Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells
#19What is the deal with a battery powered video doorbell? Is there really a powerful enough battery to make it work for a useful amount of time? Are people really willing to charge or replace the batteries as often as is required (likely every few days or a week at the very least, by my back-of-the-envelope calculation)?
It'll go 3-12 months depending on usage, but if you've got a wired doorbell already and hook it up it uses that for power (the 12-18v that normal lights up a doorbel) and you never need to charge it.
Re: Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, and at $199 per house this is a massive market. They say they are at 50,000 units per month, so around $10 million per month in sales, which they say is growing at multi-hundred percent yearly. Doesn't seem obviously foolish.
It depends on how you look at it. Right now Ring is the primary company in this market, but if they get real traction it would be easy for Google to add a button to a Nestcam and make a Nestbell. There are Chinese companies flooding the security market with low-cost and good quality equipment. Ring got a $200M valuation. Assuming investors would be happy with a modest 5x valuation, Ring is going to have to sell sever…
They also make and sell more than doorbells...