Hey YouTube, it's Tristan from Smart Home Point. Ring cameras and Ring doorbells
are really useful: they help protect your house, they help you see what's going on
as well. However, sometimes it's nice just to turn off the recording of them. After
all, if you're trying to relax after a long day in your backyard and you could
see your - sort of - Ring outdoor camera on you like the Eye of Sauron from Lord of
the Rings, it's not really pleasant and it's not really relaxing. So it'd be nice
just to click a button and turn off the recording feature. Now as it happens
there's a few ways you can do it. The best way, though, is to walk up to your
Ring camera, get an axe and... no joking about this, don't do that,
definitely don't do that! As it happens there's six
really good options you can use to turn off the recording on your Ring cameras
and your Ring doorbells. Let's take a look at them.
Okay so the first option is called 'Modes', it's quite new, it came out in March 2020.
It's really nice feature: you basically have three modes which are disarmed, home and away, and
you can basically - for each of these three modes - configure exactly what
should happen for your Ring cameras and you Ring doorbell. So by default in the
'Home' mode, to give you an example, your indoor Ring cameras just don't record.
They are effectively off, so they don't record motion, they don't record Live
View, they just don't record whatsoever. Uh, with outdoor cameras and Ring doorbell,
these carry on working when you are home or in disarmed mode, but you can
configure this to turn off the motion and also the Live View modes. So if
you're relaxing out your backyard, you could set your Ring outdoor camera to
be in 'Disarmed'. When it's in disarmed mode, you could say they
shouldn't record any motion and also you can stop it from anyone going into Live
View - so if someone else in your household has the app, they won't be able to go
into live view and see what you're doing in the backyard. This is quite a
useful feature, let's have a look at it. Okay we'll get started by launching the
Ring app, and then up in the top left here, we'll go to the settings menu - just
the three lines - and on there you can see there's a new feature that's been added.
And you can see it says 'your camera now works with modes' down in the middle here.
This is quite a nice feature, so what you can do is just click into it and they'll
explain you've got three modes: disarmed, home and away. And - for example - in home mode,
you can see this says that indoor cameras will be off and the same is true
of disarmed mode as well, and then your outdoor cameras will carry on as
normal. You can customize all of this: so we go into that, now you can see the
feature's enabled, and then you can click into this to configure more. So for
example if we go into home, we can then choose what we want to do for each
camera or doorbell within this. So we'll go into that and for our front door we
can configure whether the motion detection
should work, and also whether the live view should work. So you can just toggle these
on and off really easily, and you can do this for every single one of your Ring
devices which is quite nice. Obviously I've only got the one, but we could
do it for all of them. So the feature is enabled. So what you'll see is if you go to your
devices, you can see there's the little icon here on the top left that just says away.
If I click on that to try and change it you can't and that's because you have to
change the setting for your entire house. So you go back to your dashboard, you can
see here you've got the three modes: disarmed, home and away, and it's here that
you'll actually want to change things. So at the moment it says away, so what we'll do
instead is we'll click on home and that's now changed all the settings that
we've previously configured. And so all our Ring devices will now follow that,
as per our previous configuration.
Okay, so in general this feature works quite well. There are some downsides
though, because you can't just say disable recording full stop.
You can disable motion recording, you can disable Live View, but if you're
particularly paranoid - or you might argue smart - you might think that Ring could
actually still record you because after all, you haven't turned off recording -
certainly not at the physical level, all you've done is flip a couple of software
switches to turn off motion recording. So if you're particularly concerned about
this then there are other options available to you.
The second option is simply to disable motion recording. So this solution
actually predates modes. It's... modes in general is a bit better... but if you don't
have the modes feature or if you want slightly more fine-grained control such as
you want to flip motion detection on and off, even when you are home, then this
solution works quite well. Let's take a look. Okay, so if we go into a specific
device and click on settings we end up in this screen and you can see you got a
few options. Uh so firstly, let's play around and see what each one does. So
let's go to motion snooze - that could be interesting. So I'll click on that and we
just get a warning saying because I've turned notifications off I can't use
this feature. Let's flip them on, and now if we go back
to motion snooze what you'll see is you can snooze motion for anything from 30
minutes to 4 hours, however it says it'll still record video: it just won't notify
you. So this feature isn't what we want because... yeah, you know, we actually want to
turn off recording completely. Let's ignore that feature. I'll put that back
off. The one we're actually interested in is this 'record motion' toggle - second
toggle box - below the 'Ring Notifications'. So if we were to turn that off,
they'll give me a warning just saying it's controlled by modes - but that's fine,
I'll ignore that for now and still disable it, and obviously by disabling motion
recording if I'm - you know - I know this isn't my front door, if this was an
outdoor camera then it won't pick me up every time I move around. So we'll stop
recording which is quite a nice feature, but what I'll also do is just put that back
on and just have a look at any other options that might help us as well. So
now that's back on, I'll go to motion settings down here, there's something
called 'Motion Schedule', so that could be interesting. You've also... you can also
turn down the motion sensitivity so that maybe you'll be recorded less if you're
in your backyard... but for now we'll have a look at this
motion schedule.
Okay so what this allows us to do is say times where motion is disabled. It's
not quite what we want or what you think it might be, so we'll look at that in a
second. What this will do is you can enter a name...
'relaxing in backyard' - I can't spell - one second - okay, and we'll say that on every
evening on the weekend from 8:00 p.m. until let's say 10:00 p.m., we'll be relaxing
in the backyard. If I click on save for that motion schedule then the ideal... what
would be nice is if it didn't record any motion at this time of day,
based on this motion schedule. However unfortunately all it actually
does, if you look at the small text, is it turns off motion notifications, so
while this works well if you don't wanna be spammed at a set time each day (if
there's a lot of motion on your road or your backyard) then it can work well not
to get those notifications, but you will still be recorded or your visitors will so,
this isn't the best feature.
Okay so that solution works fairly well, certainly if you're in your backyard
and you turned off all motion recording. For many people that's enough to simply
make them think they can relax without the Eye of Sauron on them, because after
all you are the only one hopefully that's going to be moving around in your
backyard, so if motion detection is off then recording shouldn't be taking place.
But as I said if, yeah, if you're particularly paranoid or simply
concerned about how Ring work and how Ring record you, then there are
other options you can use in addition to this. Let's take a look.
Okay this third option is simple enough: simply cut the power to your Ring device.
This works well if you've got a Ring plug-in camera or hardwired doorbell,
because you can simply have a switch on the wall, or we can go to your electrical
panel and flip the switch off there and all power to your device will stop, and
obviously that will stop recording. Now, this won't work if you have a Ring
battery model such as a Ring stick-up cam battery or Ring doorbell 1 and 2
that's not hardwired, but it'll work well with an actual plug-in or hardwired
model. There are two main ways you can achieve this: you can add a wall switch
which controls the power for a single device, or you can make sure your
circuits in your electrical panel are all wired up so you can flip the switch and
turn off a lot of your Ring devices without affecting the rest of your
household. Let's take a look. Okay, so in your house's electrical panel - also
called the consumer unit - you've got... you've got your different switches for your
different electrical circuits. So for example, I've got my 'Bell' and that goes
over to my Ring Doorbell Pro which I shown how to set this up in a
previous video. What this means is that in my electrical panel, if I was to turn
off the power then that Ring device won't record. Equally if you've got
something running off your ground floor lighting or ground floor sockets, or even
if you got Ring devices in your garage, then by flipping them off
obviously the power to these will... it'll stop recording as well. This is a
bit of a heavy weight solution though so what you could do instead is install a
switch on your wall. So that's my door to my backyard, and I've actually got a
switch here, that controls access to an outdoor light. Uhm, but obviously it could be a Ring
camera or Ring floodlight instead. So the cables just go up there, and then go to the
light in my backyard. So when I flip this off, the power will just be
completely off and if it was a Ring device it would stop recording.
Okay this option works quite well if you already have a well labled electrical
panel, or if you already have switches by your back door that control your outdoor
lights - as in my case. If this doesn't apply to you, I'd probably
with skip over this option because it's a bit overkill to actually rewire in your
house just you can stop recording on your Ring device.
Okay so this fourth option is simple enough. Your Ring camera lens is a
physical thing, and so you need a physical solution. So quite simply you
need to... [holds up axe] uhh just a joke... I'll put this away - again. Don't use an axe! You
need - you could use - a physical solution. So for example, if you've got a
Ring camera that's not mounted too high up, you can simply put something over it. You
could use some brown tape (as long as it's not too sticky because otherwise it
might leave residue on the camera lens), or you could even put something in front of
it like a plank of wood. This doesn't always work, especially if your Ring
outdoor camera's mounted up by your roof line, because otherwise you have to
get a ladder every time you want to do this. But it can work really well if
you're within touching distance of your Ring camera. It works really well with
Ring doorbells.
Okay, the fifth option is to cut the internet access to your Ring devices.
This is quite a nice solution because Ring cameras and Ring doorbells don't
have local storage, so when they record a clip - a video clip - they have to transmit
or upload that data to Ring - the servers - straightaway, otherwise it gets lost
forever. They quite literally won't see the light
of day. Now before you shout at me for telling you to turn off your router,
which would probably lead to your kids and your spouse shouting at you (and be
quite inconvenient anyway), what you can actually do is have your main router in
your living room which all your household connects to. And then you can
buy a second router which acts as a Wi-Fi range extender or Wi-Fi repeater.
What basically happens is this will connect to this router, and then this is
your Ring router, essentially. So this will have its own Wi-Fi network, with
their own Wi-Fi key, and it's own Wi-Fi password and obviously it's own Ethernet
ports if you've got any of the Ring elite models. And basically all the
Ring devices can connect to this, and then when you want to stop your Ring
devices from recording, simply turn the power off with this. You can either do
that by clicking the power switch, or using a smart plug - it doesn't really
matter. The main thing is this acts as a Wi-Fi repeater to your main router, so
kill the power to this and your Ring devices stop recording.
Okay option six is a really nice feature, it's called privacy zones. What this
involves is you going into your Ring app, you go into the camera's field of view
and you can actually draw a black box around a specific area. This is - this
feature is designed so that you can... if you camera is overlooking your
neighbor's property - you can draw a black box in that area, and video will never be
recorded for your neighbor's property. There's gonna be no motion detection in
that area either, but this is really useful feature if you camera overlooks a
neighboring property. But you can also use it if you go out in your backyard:
you can literally draw a black box over the whole area, and then literally there'll be
nothing recorded because it'll just be a black area. Now when you come back in you
can literally delete that privacy zone and your recording will carry on as
normal. Let's have a look at how you do this. Okay so we'll launch the Ring app,
and what I want to do is go into our device - so we'll click on settings, device
settings, and then down on the left here you've got device settings. So we'll go
into that, there's a few options here but 'Privacy Settings' is what we're
interested in (in the middle). So I'll click on that, then you've got this
privacy zones option on the bottom, so go into that and this is a bit like the
advanced motion detection You can draw zones, but this actually blank-blacks
things out completely, so we'll click on add to privacy zone and it just explains
what it does. It also effects motion detection. Right, so you've now got this
little view - based on my phone's orientation - and it basically allows me
to draw. So I'm going to draw a box over the area that I want to completely black
out, so then there'll be no recording in this
area, and no motion detection either. So I've added that now. If I want I can
click the plus icon and I can add more areas as well, but for now I'm happy
with this, so I'll just click on the okay - well the back icon - in the top left here,
and now that's being saved, and it's just - this is just a little warning just saying
it won't actually kick in straight away. Motion actually has to occur for this setting
to kick in, so just click on OK and now we're
back in this screen in the app, you can see now that the actual privacy zone has
appeared in the background, or you can edit it further. Let's look at an
example of this feature. Okay so that's motion detection, you can see
that area's blacked out so our feature works really well as well. Obviously it's
a hassle to have to actually go into the app, draw a black box, go outside and
relax and then when you come back in, delete that black box - or that privacy
zone - but it does work and works really well. Thank you for watching this video:
as you can see there are six really good options available to you to actually
stop recording on your Ring camera or you Ring doorbell
- of which two are new features that Ring have pushed out (which is modes and
privazy zones). They work really well, but if for whatever reason they don't work for you,
there are four other options that I've covered that hopefully will work for you.
I hope you like this video! If you did, please click the thumbs up button, and
don't forget to subscribe. Thank you!