- Hey, what's going on guys?
It is good to see you here today.
If you saw in my last video,
I just picked up the Ring Doorbell.
Now that I have it installed
and been playing around with it,
I wanted to find out what else I can do with this thing.
How can I use it other than what Ring has designed it for?
So, in this video we're gonna be talking about
5 ways to get more out of your Ring Doorbell.
So stay tuned.
(relaxed electronic music)
Alright, so we're gonna start at number 5
and work our way up to my favorite of the 5 here.
So for number 5, we're gonna be using the website IFTTT,
which stands for If This Then That.
This is a free website that allows you
to tie all of your Smart accounts together
and be able to let them communicate
and automate with their applet.
So, if we take a look at the website here,
we see there are a bunch of different apps
that you can go through, and what we wanna do
is we wanna find ones that are applicable to Ring.
So, we're gonna do a search.
I'm gonna do a search for Ring,
and here are all of the applets that can do Ring.
So we're gonna take a look at these.
In the bottom right corner of each one
it shows what device that works with.
So, some of these work with Hue, some work with LIFX,
Sonos, just a bunch of different things.
So we're gonna scroll through here.
For myself, I wanna use LIFX.
So here's a LIFX one right here:
flash lights when your doorbell rings.
So I have a couple of 'em queued up
So, when somebody pushes the doorbell,
you could have, well, essentially anything happen,
but what I have here is that the porch light
is going to turn on for 5 minutes
when somebody comes and pushes that doorbell.
So, if you take a look here,
we're gonna select Front Door.
I just selected my office lights
since I don't have LIFX at the front door right now.
What we're gonna do is just have it
instantly turn on to a warm, neutral, 100% brightness,
and then for the turn off we're gonna say
also turn off that same light after a 5 minute duration.
Now, another thing that you can do
when the button is pushed,
is that you can have your lights flash.
An example of this one would be if you're in the garage,
if you're in a back shed where you can't hear the doorbell,
and maybe there's gonna be a lot of noise,
something that you need a visual cue,
you may want a flashing light.
So, here's one that is somebody comes
and pushes your doorbell, you can have the lights flash.
And for example, this one is when somebody
pushes the front door, color is going to flash red
at 100% brightness, and it is gonna flash 3 times.
So, that is just a quick, easy way
to get automation with the Ring Doorbell.
Number 4 I have the list,
which is gonna still be in the IFTTT website here
is that the Ring Doorbell also has a motion sensor.
So now you can trigger items to happen off just motion.
So, if you have front porch or front yard lights
that you want now triggered with a motion sensor,
and not necessarily somebody comes up and pushes the button,
you can have that triggered through the motion sensor here.
You can also incorporate the same applet features
as step 5 with flashing lights
and turning on and off lights,
but now have it triggered it through motion.
Alright, number 3 on the list, we have Smart hubs.
Now, for me specifically, I am using the SmartThings Hub,
but what I can do is I can connect
my Ring Doorbell to SmartThings Hub,
and I can set up a full automation
with everything that I have in my house.
So, say for example, I want at sunset,
if somebody comes and pushes the button on the device,
I want the porch lights to turn on,
I want the lights in the garage
and, say, the back shed to flash,
and I want my Arlo camera to start recording.
I can set all of that up through the SmartThings Hub,
and that will be automated each time,
and I can create different automation
with different tweaks each time.
Another automation that I can set up
is that, at sunrise, remove the light portions of it.
At sunrise, if somebody comes and pushes the button,
not only do I wanna get a recording from here,
but I also want my Arlo to start recording too.
But is the visual cues are helpful,
I can also have the lights turn on and off,
or blink in certain areas
if that's ideal for your situation.
Alright, for number 2 on the list
we are going to be taking a walk.
So, let's head out to the TV.
Alright, so this is a really cool set up
if you have an Amazon Fire TV.
For myself, I've got the Fire Cube here.
So, one thing that you can do is that you can say,
"Echo, show the Ring front door."
What it's gonna do is it's gonna turn on
the TV connected to the Ring Doorbell
and display it on the TV here.
So, as you can see, I've got the Ring Doorbell
in the office right now, but it's going to display
what it sees up there, which is a awesome feature,
and you can do that from the Echo Show or the Fire TV.
But cool feature there.
You can be able to see from any TV
that you have a Fire stick connected to.
Alright, so last thing on the list,
my favorite way to get more out of my Ring Doorbell
is connecting it to my Amazon Echo environment.
Let me show you guys what I mean by that.
I got the Echo Dot right here.
When I can do is I can connect
my Ring Doorbell to my Echo Dot,
and anytime the door button is pushed
it will ring to every Echo in the house.
Let me show you guys what I mean.
Okay, so what we're gonna do
is we're gonna load up the app here.
Up in the top left corner,
we're gonna hit on the Menu, go down to Skills.
I'm gonna show you guys my Skills here,
I've got Ring as my top Skills.
So, what you'll do is you'll search for Ring,
go to Ring right there,
you're gonna connect it to your Amazon environment.
Once you do that, in the very bottom corner of the app here,
you're gonna see Devices.
You're gonna click on Devices.
At the very top, we're gonna scroll over to All Devices,
and scroll all the way down
to what I titled mine, which was Ring Front Door.
I click on Ring Front Door.
I've got my options here, so I am going to turn on
to set an announcement when doorbell is pressed,
and I'm also gonna turn on one, just for demo's sake,
to send announcement every time there is motion detected.
So, we got both of those on.
gonna go back, exit out, and we are all set up.
So, let me demo for you guys what this is gonna sound like.
Alright, here we go.
(doorbell chimes)
- [Echo] somebody's at the front door.
- Alright, so that is what you're gonna hear
when somebody pushes the button,
and it's gonna go to every device in the house.
Next up, we also have the motion detection for this.
So, this can also alert you if there is motion
at the front door, which sounds like this.
(soft chime)
- [Echo] motion detected at the front door.
- Alright, if you have a lot of motion,
if you have any kinds of plants
or anything blowing around in the wind,
that can get old pretty quickly,
but that is one of the options, which is nice to have.
So guys, those are the 5 ways
to get more out of your Ring Doorbell.
I hope that some of those helped you guys out.
If so, leave a comment below.
Let me know which ones you're using.
If there's something that I didn't mention, let me know.
I'd love to know what you guys are using it for.
I mean, there's hundreds of different ways,
different scenarios, so leave a comment below.
If this video was helpful for you,
give it a thumbs up, let me know that you liked it,
I do appreciate it.
As always, don't forget to subscribe
for more content like this,
and I will see you guys in the next one.