After finally jumping on the video doorbell bandwagon earlier this year my wife and I have
been considering adding some security cameras to the exterior of our home.
Since we choose to go with the Ring Pro 2 video doorbell we decided to stay in the Ring ecosystem
and purchased this 3 pack of Ring Stick Up Cameras at our local Costco.
I'm guessing the biggest question you have about these cameras is what the video and audio quality
is like? So let's take a look at that first and then we'll go into what all comes in the box,
what the installation process is like and some of the main features these cameras support.
The Stick Up Cameras are 1080p Full HD cameras so the image quality is pretty good.
Would I like it to be even better? Yah, sure I would. As you can see in this clip overlooking
my driveway, overall the image looks really nice. When I'm standing on the sidewalk
about 30 feet away from the face of my garage though there isn't much detail that can be seen
of my face. As I walk closer things do improve but right here I'm standing about 15 feet away
from the garage and you still can't really make out my facial features. It isn't until I'm about
5 feet away from the face of my garage that you can finally get a decent look.
That being said I do recognize that this is just a fact of life when it comes to cameras in general.
Without a telephoto lens or something the further away a subject is from the camera the less detail
you're going to be able to see. This particular camera is mounted about 10 feet off the ground
on the front of my garage and overall offers a good field of view and a nice 1080p image.
The night vision feature on the Stick Up Cam is pretty good in my opinion. Not great,
but good. Each camera has a pair of infrared emitters on them which do a
solid job illuminating things so you can see what's going on in the dark.
Here I am walking around in my driveway with our exterior garage lights turned off and the camera
has no problem at all seeing what's going on. You can make a good thing even better though.
To give you an example I turned our exterior garage lights on to see what
kind of a difference it would make. As you can see having some additional light does help. With our
exterior lights on the image looks noticeably sharper and allows more detail to be seen.
The Stick Up Cams also capture audio... and as you'd expect
the closer someone is to the camera the better the audio quality becomes.
This is a little test of the audio... I'm standing about 30 feet away.
Here I am now standing about 15 feet away; talking about the same loudness
I was when I was 30 feet away... Now let's move a little closer.
And here I'm about 5 feet away from my garage and you should be able to hear me the best
right here. But yah... There we go that's a little example of the audio on the Ring Stick Up Cam.
These cameras have a two way talk feature as well
that allows you to talk to someone that may be passing or stopping by.
Hey!
I'm watching you guys.
Hope you have a nice day.
As for what all came in the box after purchasing our Ring Stick Up Cams... on top are the 3
cameras... beneath those are 3 ceiling mounts with all the screws and stuff you need to mount
them somewhere in or on your home... and in this final little box we have the batteries to power
our cameras, some more mounting hardware, the USB cables for charging the batteries,
this handy little screw driver that has both a security Torx and Philips head bit on it,
you just flip it around like so, and last but not least a masonry drill bit
in case you happen to be installing your cameras into concrete, brick or stucco.
Before you can do anything with your Stick Up Cams,
the first thing you need to do is charge the batteries. So I removed the twisty ties off
all the charging cords and for the first time in a long time I was able to use a little USB
power brick I got several years ago. It didn't say anything about the charging time in the
instructions but using my little power brick thing that has a max output of 5 volts it took
somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 or 8 hours to fully charge all the batteries simultaneously.
One of the neat features of the Ring Stick Up Cam is it's versatility when it comes to mounting it.
You can leave the mount connected as a base to use indoors and place it on a
table or a shelf or something... or you can unscrew this mount from the bottom like so,
remove the silicone plug here on the back and then attach the mount to the back of the camera
allowing you to mount it on a wall. The last option is to use the ceiling mount.
It also attaches to the back of the camera housing but requires the use of a different
screw which is included with the ceiling mount hardware. The screw for the stock mount is a
little longer than this one so it doesn't work quite right with the ceiling mount.
Once the batteries had fully charged I twisted off the bottom cover of the Stick Up Cam,
inserted one of the batteries, the camera powered on and I was greeted with this message.
"Welcome to Ring, follow the instructions in the Ring App to continue"
For this you'll need to have the Ring App installed on your smart phone or tablet
and have already set up your Ring account. Once in the Ring app you'll want to tap on the menu icon
at the top left of the screen... then tap on Set Up a Device... then Security Cameras...
and now we need to scan the QR code on the bottom of our Stick Up Camera.
I then put the bottom cover back onto the camera and continued with the setup.
You select the address where you'll be installing your camera... click Continue and it'll then ask
if you're installing your camera indoors or outdoors... I'm putting mine outside... and
now it wants us to give our camera a name. I like to name my cameras based on the area they cover...
so after naming your camera it wants to know if you have a wired or battery powered camera.
These are battery powered so we'll tap that and now the app is telling
us to fully charge the battery. I've already charged my batteries so I can tap Continue.
Since I put the battery in before starting all this my camera is already powered up so
at this screen I can tap on Stick Up Cam is On... and then tap on The Light is Flashing Blue because
it is and has been for the past several minutes. Tap on Got It... and then Connect.
Once your phone has connected to the camera it will ask to connect to your wifi network. Tap
on your network and the camera will then connect to your wifi. Once that's done you just follow
the prompts to finish setting your camera up. I skipped through most of this stuff because
I don't plan on using most of the features these prompts are for and I just wanted to
get my camera up and running so I could take it outside and position it where we wanted it.
One of the things I like about these cameras being battery powered and therefore
completely wireless is they allowed us to go to different places around our house
where we thought we'd like to have our cameras and used the live video feed on
my phone to help us position it to get the best view. And then of course there's the
obvious advantage of not having to run power or network cables to the cameras. They really
are about as hassle free as you can get when it comes to installing them.
The downside of them being battery powered is I'm eventually going to have to climb up on a ladder
again, take the cameras down, or at the very least remove the batteries,
charge them up, then put them back in.
Maybe I should buy a spare set of batteries so all I have to do is swap them out?
As for how long a battery will last... according to Ring it lasts about 1000 activations. So let's
say you're recording 10 motion events a day... that means it'll last around 100 days or so.
But of course that all depends on how many activations you have each day. Based on this
1000 activations number though I would estimate it should last somewhere around 2 or 3 months.
As for the physical installation process... I don't know how Ring could make it much simpler.
Once you know where you want to install your camera at, you remove the mounting bracket
by sliding it down and off the mount like so... mark the two holes on either side...
then pilot some holes for the mounting screws to go into. I used a 1/16 inch drill bit for this.
You then use the screws included with the Stick Up Cam to secure the mounting bracket to wall...
then slide the camera mount onto the bracket, install the security screw and all that's
left to do is adjust the camera so it's looking at what you want it to look at.
Jumping back into the app there's a lot of different options here for our cameras.
This video is already getting kind of long so I'm not going to go over
everything here but just highlight a few of the features I think are the most interesting.
First let's go into Live View. Here we have several different buttons we can play with.
There's the speaker icon here that allows us to hear what the camera hears...
and then the microphone button that allows us to talk to people that are near that camera.
The other button on the bottom right here says Siren Off. If you tap that it will then activate
a siren that will play for 30 seconds or until you turn it off... kind of a fun little feature.
One of the most useful settings, in my opinion, is here in Motion settings. Here we can change
the motion sensitivity... turn People Only Mode on and off, but the feature I want to look at is the
Edit Motion Zones here at the top. Here you can select these pick points to highlight the area
you want motion to be detected in. This way you can monitor your front yard without getting an
alert every time a car drives by or when your neighbors are out walking their dog or something.
Linked Devices is one that I'm not currently using but I do think is interesting. This allows you to
have your other cameras turn on and record simultaneously if one camera detects motion
giving you multiple angles whenever a motion event occurs.
Motion Snooze is a useful one if you're going to be doing stuff
outside and don't want to keep getting alerts every time your camera sees you.
You can choose to snooze notifications from 30 minutes up to 4 hours. You can do this
for each camera individually or you can snooze all your cameras simultaneously by tapping the
little moon icon here at the main dashboard and selecting your desired amount of snooze time.
The last thing I want to highlight is Under Device Settings in Video Settings. Here you
can change the length of your recordings... turn the infrared lights for Night Vision on or off
as well as enable Color Night Vision. Color Night vision is a cool little option to have
if you have a fair amount of ambient light. It combines the infrared and visible light to give
you a color video rather than just black and white. This option does deplete your battery
more rapidly though so that's something to take into consideration before you enable it.
Overall I'm quite happy with our purchase of the Ring Stick Up Cameras. I like how easy the Ring
app is to use. It has a lot of options available so you can customize your camera system just the
way you want it. Setting up and installing the Stick Up Cams... I don't know how it could be
any easier. While I'm not looking forward to having to remove and recharge the batteries,
I feel the trade off of not having to run any wires is totally worth it. Also being able to
view the video live to help us find the best place to mount them to our house was super useful and is
something you really can only do with a wireless setup. Yah, I do wish the video quality was better
but at the same time I recognize higher resolution cameras are going to cost more than these and all
things considered the video quality is good and the overall experience is pretty great.