I recently purchased a Ring Floodlight Cam after it went on sale during Amazon Prime Day. I’d been really looking forward to this item, so when I ‘broke’ it by mistake during install – and when I read other people online say their cameras had the same issue – I was really disappointed.
Thankfully I went back the following day and was able to fix the issue that I had: namely, that the entire Ring Floodlight Cam had come out of its ball mount and was dangling loose by just an electrical cable!
This can be pushed back in to the socket with a bit of pressure, but it can be scary to do – hence this PSA video which covers how to do this safely:
Video Transcript
Hey YouTube, I’m Tristan from Smart Home Point. So on the weekend I was installing my Ring Floodlight Camera and basically something happened to it when I was installing it that made me think I completely broke it. As you can imagine, this was pretty frustrating ‘cos it’s quite an expensive item, and I didn’t want to play around with it… based on what I’d done, so first thing I done was Google the problem.
I came… and I came across some Amazon reviews that basically said the same thing, and like me they thought they completely broke their Ring Floodlight Camera and they said it’s waste of space, rubbish product et cetera, and I actually ended up filming a YouTube video where I – sort of – felt sorry for myself and ranted a little bit about how it’s a flimsy product.
[Earlier] even though I followed the instructions my Ring Floodlight Camera is pointless… [jumps ahead] and I just felt something break, even though I was really gentle, I just felt something go and then the whole Ring camera was loose, it was drooping down it started suffering from ED – electrical dysfunction, if you will. This is really disappointing because for such an expensive item I was expecting a really high quality product, and frankly the quality just wasn’t there.
Now as it happens, well… there is a bit of a design flaw… if this particular problem happens to you, it’s not broken, you don’t need to go on Amazon and give it a bad review. You don’t need to make a childish YouTube video and rant about the product. All you need to do is fix it, quite simply.
Okay so the problem I had was that when I was actually rotating the Ring Floodlight Camera, the main camera bit, I was rotating it to the right after following the instructions, meaning I’d loosened the screw at the back. I was turning it and the whole unit just came out in my hand, which is obviously a bit concerning! And it’s just literally dangling on a wire… and basically it had come out my hand and I was trying to get it back in the actual ball socket, and it simply wasn’t going back in.
Uhm, you know I’d loosened everything – the screw and the back screw as well – and I just couldn’t get it back in. And as a result that the whole Ring Floodlight Camera was just dangling down, and obviously as you can see on the footage, it was just literally giving me a shot of my patio (my paving slabs). It was a little bit pointless! And I actually ended up researching different Ring… yeah, different floodlight cameras instead, thinking I’ve completely broken this device. But then the following day I came back with a fresh pair of eyes.
I looked at it and it actually turns out it’s quite simple to fix. Now I do think this is a bit of a design flaw because you should be able to rotate a camera left and right without the risk of it coming out into your hand. Uhm, it’s quite an expensive product and really I think there should be this… it should have a more premium mount that should stop this actually happening, so you should be able to rotate it without the risk of it coming out into your hand and thinking you broke it!
Right, now in terms of fixing this, all you’ve actually got to do is loosen up the main socket screw at the back, you need to loosen up the other screw, and then you literally need to push the actual Ring camera… turn it on its side a bit, and then push the actual Ring camera into the ball socket. With a little bit of force… not too much… but a little bit of force, wriggle around, and it will actually end up going back in, and then at that point you can see that it’ll rotate around as normal. And it’s quite easy to do once you’ve done this, just tighten up the screws as normal, and it’s as good as new.
So whilst this issue isn’t really ideal, and I honestly had thought I’d broken it because – you know – the whole spotlight camera came out of my hand and I couldn’t get back in, it is relatively easy to fix. Having said that some people online – on the Ring forums – have said that even with applying pressure and actually trying to force the the ball back into the socket it still won’t go in. Thankfully this wasn’t my experience, but if it’s your experience, that’s really unfortunate. If it is, let me know in the comments below because it would be interesting to know if other people are having issues beyond simply the Ring camera coming out and not going… fitting back into the ball socket.
But I wanted to film this video as a bit of a PSA that if you have the Ring Floodlight Camera and it comes out in your hand, and as a result it’s dangling down and won’t stay upright anymore, if you have this issue don’t worry about it, you should be able to fix it hopefully! I hope you found this video useful. If you did, please click the thumbs up button and don’t forget to subscribe. Thank you!
If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions about this article, please leave a comment below. Please note that all comments go into a moderation queue (to prevent blog spam). Your comment will be manually reviewed and approved by Tristan in less than a week. Thanks!