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!