Ring cameras and doorbells are great… when they have a strong Wi-Fi signal strength, that is. When they have a weak signal, you may experience a range of issues from missing recordings to poor quality video.
Thankfully the Ring app makes it easy to see whether a weak Wi-Fi signal is at fault due to the RSSI measurement on the “device health” page. This video explores what a good RSSI value is, and how to fix bad RSSI values.
0:00 Intro
0:32 What is RSSI
1:18 Fix 1 – change to 2.4 Ghz Wi-Fi
2:28 Fix 2 – solve Wi-Fi interference
3:47 Fix 3 – use Ring Chime Pro
4:04 Fix 4 – buy a Wi-Fi mesh system
4:58 Wrapping up
Links
Ring help pages:
- The Ring status page: https://status.ring.com/
- A Ring article on improving signal strength: https://support.ring.com/hc/en-gb/articles/217271526-Improving-Wireless-Signal-Strength
Products:
- The Ring Chime Pro: https://ring.com/products/chime-pro-gen2
- A Google WiFi mesh router: https://www.amazon.com/Google-Wifi-System-Router-Replacement/dp/B08GG9CMLR/ref=sr_1_4_mod_primary_new?dchild=1&tag=tdperry-20&keywords=mesh+wifi
Sound credits:
- The ‘pop up’ sound: https://freesound.org/people/BeezleFM/sounds/512135/
- The ‘victory’ sound: https://freesound.org/people/LittleRobotSoundFactory/sounds/270404/
Video Transcript
Hello, I’m Tristan from Smart Home Point. If your Ring camera or doorbell is suffering from poor quality video, having connection issues or generally being a bit rubbish, this could be due to a poor WiFi signal strength. Of course, it could also be due to a general Ring issue (in which it’s worth checking the Ring status page). Equally, if your phone has a weak WiFi signal itself, you will have difficulty viewing live view and historical recordings via the Ring app.
But if you have ruled out those two issues, your Ring device itself might have a poor signal strength. You can verify this within the Ring app by clicking into your device, and going to “device health”. The RSSI value is quite important here – it stands for Received Signal Strength Indicator, and any values below -60 could indicate an issue. Of course, below -60 means a value between -60 and -100 – a value closer to 0 is actually good.
Confused? Yeah, RSSI is weird. Basically values closer to 0 are good, and values closer to -100 are bad. These values will change a bit throughout the day, but they shouldn’t fluctuate too much. So it’s always worth checking the RSSI value after installing or moving a Ring device.
Anywhoo, with all that said, if your Ring device has a poor connection, there’s a few things to check to hopefully improve the situation. Firstly, understanding why your Ring device has a bad connection is important, of course.
The position of the moon is causing a psychic attack against your Ring doorbell!
Thankfully guesswork isn’t usually required. If your Ring device is connecting over 5 GHz WiFi, try changing this to 2.4 GHz. This is because 5 GHz WiFi – whilst faster – has a shorter range, especially when there are walls and other physical objects in the way. As a result, simply changing to 2.4 GHz WiFi can improve your Ring camera’s connection. In terms of how to do this, it varies based on your router. Sometimes you need to connect to a different WiFi network, whereas sometimes you can specify which WiFi band your Ring device should use within your router’s admin panel. If all else fails, try turning 5 GHz WiFi off completely and restarting your Ring device – it should connect to 2.4 GHz WiFi, and you can then check the RSSI value again.
However if you’re already connected to 2.4 GHz WiFi, the issue might be caused by general WiFi interference. This is likely to be the case if you live in an apartment or an area with lots of WiFi routers, and especially if your other WiFi devices (such as your smart TV and smartphones) also have connection issues from time to time.
If this is the case, there’s quite a few possible fixes – almost too many to run through here. The Ring support page lists most of them, but I would suggest firstly logging in to your router’s admin console and trying to change the WiFi channel. If your WiFi is running on a congested channel, this could be the issue, so changing to another channel will fix this. Whilst there are tools that can help show you which channel to choose, it’s often easier to just try ‘trial and error’ – update the channel, restart your Ring device, and check the device health again for an improvement to the RSSI value.
In addition to interference, another cause of poor WiFi is range or having lots of physical obstructions in the way. Whilst this affects 5 GHz WiFi more (as I covered earlier), it can also affect 2.4 GHz WiFi too. There’s two main fixes here.
Firstly, Ring sells a Chime Pro which plugs into a wall outlet and connects to your internet router. You can then connect your Ring devices to the Chime Pro. In technical terms, this is a WiFi extender and it helps to increase the range of your home’s WiFi network.
Whilst this is a convenient option, if your home has general WiFi issues, it might be worth investing in a better internet router – especially if you’re using the router that your ISP sent you – the default one. A high quality WiFi mesh router isn’t cheap (costing hundreds of dollars) BUT they often resolve any WiFi issues immediately. The technology is awesome and this could be the way to go. The nice thing with a mesh system is that if you notice your WiFi is a bit poor in one part of your house, you can simply buy another WiFi point and plug it in there. This then hooks into the rest of your network, and automatically boosts WiFi in that part of the house. This can be good to do if you have an outdoor Ring camera with poor WiFi – just plug a WiFi point near this point, and your outdoor camera’s connection should improve a fair bit.
Okay, that just about wraps up today’s video. Resolving WiFi issues could be a whole series of videos, but this video covers the top few causes and how to fix them. If you have more questions though, please let me know in the comments section. I hope you found this video useful. If you did, please click the thumbs up button and don’t forget to subscribe. Thank you!
Thank you!
No problem, glad you found the video helpful 🙂
Hi Tristan, great video but I’m still suffering from poor signal. I’ve got a virgin hub 3 and a tp link m5 which is in my front room roughly 4 metres away from my ring doorbell 4. I done a speed test next to my doorbell outside and I’m getting 350 but on the ring app it’s saying poor signal and the Rssi 72. I put the doorbell a foot away from the m5 and got a reading of 50. There’s other networks I can see on the ring app that are stronger than mine. Very frustrating after spending out on a doorbell to then be told I would need a mesh so it can be closer and still doesn’t work.
Sorry to hear that Chris. To be honest, this sounds more like an issue with Ring than your Virgin Hub router or TP Link Mesh system – sometimes Ring cameras/doorbells do complain about weak signals, when every other device on the network is fine.
If your other WiFi devices work fine (you could try standing by your Ring Doorbell and streaming 4K video on YouTube, on your phone, for example), then it might be worth attempting to speak to Ring Customer Services again and see if they have any more suggestions.
Tried all this previously, still had issues. Changed to a different camera brand at the same location of my Ring Camera 3 and the signal is much better. Even have the Ring Chime Pro, almost out the door and still issues. Ring needs to send out better updates for the devices sold by them.
P.S. Thank you for the Post.
Thanks for sharing your experience, that’s frustrating. Yes Ring’s Wi-Fi radio chips can sometimes be unreliable – I have heard that they are particularly weak/poor on specific models (not sure if that includes the Ring Doorbell 3 or not though). It is interesting that another brand works fine in the same location though – that does point to an issue with Ring’s products or firmware, as you suggest.
The Ring Doorbell 3 has a design issue on antennas. I tried everything. 2.4 ghz with dedicated AP, no interference, bought a Directive 10dbi antenna.
The Ring device is 10 meters away from the AP and got -80 rssi! I’ve got others devices such as a portal door, DIY with 2$ esp8266 device with PCB antenna, 25 meters away from the same AP – and it gets -52 rssi !
There is no solution except remove the internal Ring antenna and buy external dual band antenna (5$ on Ali). You can swap them easily as the genuine antenna is connected to the UFL port.
Hi Laurent, sorry to hear of your experience, but that’s a really useful bit of information. Yes, it definitely does seem like certain Ring models just have bad Wi-Fi hardware/design. It’s great to know that buying a new antenna and swapping them out will work well – I’ll have to explore that option sometime.