While I was waiting for my Ring Indoor Cam to be shipped (a whole 24 hours!), I was Googling around to get some answers to questions I had about it. Whilst some questions were answered, others weren’t – plus I also ended up with more questions!
So now that I have the device, I wanted to shoot this video and cover the 10 most popular questions I kept coming across:
Feel free to jump to a specific answer – the timestamps are:
- What’s the difference between the Indoor Cam and Stick Up Cam? – 0:24
- Does the Ring Indoor Camera rotate? – 1:23
- Does the Ring Indoor Camera record sound? – 2:26
- Does the Ring Indoor Camera have night vision? – 2:52
- Does the Ring Indoor Camera have a siren? – 3:24
- Does the Ring Indoor Camera record all the time? – 4:19
- How can I talk through my indoor ring camera? -5:04
- Does the Ring Indoor Cam work through glass and windows? – 6:01
- Can I use the Ring Indoor Camera outside? – 7:26
- Can my Ring Indoor Camera trigger my Ring alarm? – 8:49
Video Transcript
Hey YouTube, I’m Tristan from Smart Home Point. I recently bought a Ring Indoor Camera and while I was waiting for it to be shipped, I was coming across various questions that I had – and that other people had – about the Ring Indoor Cam, so I wanted to film this video and just talk through the top 10 answers to questions that I was coming across. I’ve put the questions in the description below if you want to jump to a particular question.
First question is what’s the difference between the Ring indoor cam and the Ring stick up cam? And the answer to that is the Ring stick up cam has been out for a few years, it’s gone through a few iterations. It can be used indoors or outdoors, it can be powered by battery, it can be plugged in, it can be powered by solar panel or power over ethernet. But what Ring started to realize is that a lot of people wanted a simple indoor camera that could just be plugged in. Uhm, some people didn’t want all those extra sort of options, so as a result Ring stripped back those extra options and they created the indoor cam. It does everything you’d expect from a Ring indoor camera – or from a Ring camera in general – but it’s cheaper because it’s got less options available to you. It can also – as the name suggests – only be used indoors. It’s not got as much weatherproofing in the actual circuitry, and the actual casing, and as a result is an indoor-only camera. But other than that it does everything you’d expect of a Ring camera.
The next question is does the Ring indoor cam rotate? Well, it kind of depends what is meant by this question, because when you’re installing it the little bracket means you can put it on in a different way. You can mount this as – well – on the table, you can mount it on a wall, or you can even mount it up on the ceiling, if you wanted. Uhm, and as part of mounting on the ceiling, what you’ll realize is that it will be recording upside down, so there’s an option in the app which you can click and rotate the video so it’s as though it was recorded the other way up. So in that sense the video does rotate, but that is one time option. What you can’t do is do what some professional security cameras do, and actually while you’re watching it you can’t – sort of – have the Ring camera rotate and follow somebody around. Uhm, so that’s the… that’s the simple answer to this question, is you can rotate – there’s a single option during installation – but you can’t actually rotate whilst watching the camera live.
The third question is does the Ring indoor cam record sound? And the answer to that is: yes, it does. By default it will stream and record sound, but but you can turn this off in the app. You can go into video settings and turn… there’s an option to actually turn off audio recording. This is especially important for an indoor camera because not everyone will actually want it to actually be picking up sound.
The fourth question I came across is does the Ring indoor camera have night vision? And the answer to that is yes, the actual camera lens – or the sensor – has an infrared sensor built in, so it can actually – when the lighting condition drops down – this can automatically switch to black and white recording. So that – you know – in essence it’s got night vision mode, and then when the lighting condition improves it’ll automatically switch out of that, back to the full color, full HD mode of recording.
Question five: does the Ring indoor camera have a siren? No, it doesn’t. It’s a tiny device, it’s not like the Ring floodlight or the Ring spotlight (which does have a siren). It’s not designed to have a siren: it’s just a simple indoor camera. It’s one of the cheapest cameras you can get in the Ring range, and as a result the siren is sort of an extra feature that they’ve stripped out because it’s just not needed, and not wanted in a device like this. I did notice when I was looking for the answer to this question that Tech Advisor – quite a popular review site – said four times that this has a siren. They’re completely wrong, they kept going on about it – about how it’s “a 110 decibel siren”, but they’re completely wrong. Uhm, I think they just copy and pasted that bit of content from the floodlight cam review, to be honest, the article they written on that! So the short answer is no, the Ring Indoor Cam does not have a siren.
The next question is does the Ring indoor camera record all the time? Does it record 24/7? And the answer is: no, it doesn’t. It’s like any other Ring device, it doesn’t record 24/7. There’s no option for that. Ring did promise that they would introduce that feature back in 2018, but it hasn’t seen the light of day. Uhm, all Ring devices – including the indoor cam – are designed to be motion activated, so when they detect motion it will then start recording. Equally if you go into the live view option on the app, it will then record that as well. This assumes that you’ve got the Ring Protect Plan, but in general the Ring Indoor Cam does not record all the time.
My seventh question is: some people are asking how they can use the two-way talk feature of this Ring indoor camera. In other words, how can they talk through this. Now, there’s a few ways you can do this if you have an Echo Show you can say to it “show me my Ring indoor camera”, or whatever you’ve named it, and after a few seconds the feed will pop up and you can actually talk through your Echo Show, and your voice will come out of this device. The other way you can talk through this is in the Alexa [Ring!] app, if you go into the live view mode for this particular camera, then at that point there’s a little icon that says ‘mic on’ or off. Make sure it’s on, and then you can talk into your phone like you would with a phone call, and your voice will come through this. It’s really nice if you – sort of – want to drop in on a loved one. Equally it’s quite useful as a baby monitor – or an impromptu baby monitor – where you can potentially sooth your baby or your toddler, and speak to them.
My eighth question is: does the Ring indoor cam work through glass and windows? The question to this is yes, but it’s slightly more complicated than that. Right, so in the daytime because this is a plugged in device, the this camera uses pixel detection to actually see if motion occurs. In other words, it’s filming everything that’s happening and if there’s a pixel-based change then it will start recording. So that’s great, but at night time – or when the lighting conditions drop down – this will switch to night vision mode, and in that mode it can’t use pixel based detection, so instead it falls back to a PIR sensor. There’s this on the camera, at the bottom here. It switches to that sensor, and that’s actually looking for thermal imaging and thermal changes, so obviously if somebody is outside in your backyard (for example), and this is inside – behind a window – they’re walking along, their thermal imaging – the thermal change – won’t be detected by the PIR sensor in this indoor cam. And at that point this Ring indoor camera won’t work through glass or through a window, but other than that, yes this does because this plug-in device – in daytime, in good lighting addition – it uses pixel detection to determine if there is a motion based change (and to start recording). So in general, in the daytime, yes this does work through glass and through windows.
My last but one question is: does the Ring indoor cam work outside? Oh… that is definitely the question! No, uhm, I joke but some people are asking this question. It sounds a silly question because the clue is in the name – it’s an indoor cam – so you would think “no, it can’t be used outdoors” and then… that’s true if the device is going to be rained upon. This doesn’t have the correct weatherproofing to actually work outdoors. It will explode! It probably won’t explode, but it’ll stop working. Uhm, this compares to the stick up cam which is waterproofed and can be used outdoors same as the floodlight or the spotlight cam, so you shouldn’t use this in an area where it can get wet – or exposed – to sort of severe frost conditions or snow, for example. But having said that, if you’ve got an undercover porch area or something similar in your backyard, then there’s no reason you can’t use this as long as it doesn’t get wet. At the end of the day many people have an Echo device (which is an indoor device) or a tablet, and they use them in outdoor undercover areas, and they work perfectly fine – even though they are ‘indoor only’ devices. So this is the same: you know, as long as this won’t get wet or exposed to severe weather conditions, you could use this outdoors despite the fact that it’s called an “indoor cam”.
Right, the final question I’m going to look at is can my Ring indoor camera trigger my Ring alarm system? Uhm, some people ask this question because if this detects motion, they want it to then trigger off the Ring alarm system (so the siren in the Ring alarm can go off), but unfortunately that’s not possible. None of the Ring cameras can trigger the Ring alarm system. Uhm, it’s just not a feature that’s available. You can obviously – if you detect motion on this – you could potentially go into the Ring alarm system on your app and trigger the alarm there, or do a test siren, and that might ward off burglars. Equally, if you’ve seen someone on this – a burglar for example – you could use the two-way talk feature that I spoke about earlier to try and ward off the burglar, but you can’t simply use this as a feed into your Ring alarm system. As a final point, it’s worth knowing that the Ring alarm system – when it triggers – will actually set all of your Ring cameras, including your indoor cam, to start recording in the event that your Ring alarm system thinks there’s a break-in. The idea being that it – this – might then detect the actual burglar, either doing what they’re doing, or escaping your property, and you might be able to get a view with them in. But certainly, this can’t trigger your Ring alarm system.
Right, that wraps up today’s video: thank you for watching it! I hope you found it useful because as I said in my introduction, when I bought my Ring indoor camera, I was googling for answers to questions and the answers… I was coming up with more questions, you know. I’ve seen more people ask questions, so I thought it’d be useful to shoot this video and just answer the top 10 questions that I came across. If you have any more questions though, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll answer them as soon as I can. Equally if you like this video, 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!