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Maybe it’s a sign of hard economic times, or just a symptom of the rapid rise in courier packages being delivered to our doors each week but parcel theft seems to be an increasingly common occurrence.
The police issued tips in the run-up to last Christmas on how to avoid “parcel pirates” pinching your delivery and becoming another victim. They included requiring a signature on delivery, or having parcels delivered to your workplace rather than left to sit on your front porch.
But a doorbell camera is also a good deterrent, and a useful general safety gadget for the home, letting you receive alerts when someone approaches your front door and review footage of any incidents that may occur.
There are some shocking, and often hilarious videos on YouTube of doorbell cameras catching the parcel pirates in the act, as well as the odd unprofessional courier treating a customer’s parcel like a football.
I recently installed the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro to see visitors to my apartment and record parcel drop-offs, whether I’m at home or not. A battery-powered version of this model of the camera, featuring 3D motion detection, has only recently become available, saving a lot of hassle compared to the wired model, as it doesn’t require an electrician to install it.
The Video Doorbell Pro comes with a plastic wedge that fits to your door or frame allowing a good wide, 150-degree horizontal and vertical angle on anyone approaching. I didn’t want to drill into my rather ornate wooden front door or the brickwork surrounding it, so opted to Blu-Tack the Ring to a ledge above the door, where the doorbell is still in easy reach.
It’s not ideal; a thief could take off with the camera, but not before featuring in a video that I’d take great delight in uploading to YouTube. What you get with the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro is a head-to-toe, high-definition camera image that gives a great perspective on the world outside your door. It also has a great audio mic, detecting voices as people approach.
It has very effective motion detection, too, so it can alert you when a person is arriving. It can even detect packages with reasonable precision, messaging you in real-time when one is being delivered. There’s two-way audio built into it, to enable a chat with the person ringing the doorbell. If you are away, you can enable a setting that allows them to leave a message for you.
There’s colour night vision to illuminate the world outside your door at night, and the Ring camera offers pre-roll, so it will record some footage before motion triggers the camera, so you have a comprehensive view of an incident.
Range of motion
I’ve had the Ring installed for about three weeks and the battery level is at 52% after plenty of intense testing. Ring suggests you’ll get 6-12 months of use between charges, depending on how many alerts you get and how much time you spend in “live view”, checking what your camera sees. You’ll want at least six months between charges, as it can be a bit fiddly to dismount the Ring to retrieve the battery, which can be recharged via a USB cable.
The doorbell camera is controlled via the Ring app on your phone, which takes some getting used to, but is quick to connect to the camera - as long as it is in reasonable range of your Wi-Fi network.
I was initially bombarded with motion alerts because the camera picked up everyone who walked off the elevators onto my floor. But Ring has a nifty feature that lets you narrow the range of motion detection; it will only alert you if someone comes into that predefined zone. I settled on 4.5 metres and that cut down dramatically on alerts.
The footage Ring captures is pretty good. Zooming in, you can see people’s faces or packages in decent detail. You can also download the footage or share it with other users you authorise via the app. But here’s the only big downside of the Ring - you’ll have to pay for a Protect subscription ($50 a year for the Basic plan or $150 for the Plus plan) to store up to 180 days of recorded video and images.
Basic only offers cloud storage for one device, but Plus can handle multiple Ring security cameras you might place around the home. Tapping on the calendar function in the Ring app allows me to browse through all motion alerts and moments when I entered live view to view my camera feed, but all that will be erased when my one-month free trial of the Basic plan expires.
Overall, the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro is a well-designed and feature-rich device. It’s most suitable for busy households that have lots of people coming and going, parcels being delivered and where you want to see in advance who is coming onto the property. Pairing it with other Ring security cameras makes sense if you have a large property. Small businesses could make good use of the Ring to monitor parcel deliveries and visitors.
Ring plus Echo Hub
My apartment has a front line of defence with swipe card access in the lobby and security cameras on the perimeter. Most residential dwellings don’t. The Ring cam allows you to get an alert to your phone offering a virtual peephole to see who is approaching the front door. But it really comes into its own when paired with a device like Amazon’s Echo Hub.
This 8-inch screen acts as a display for the Ring, so when someone presses the doorbell, the screen will show you who is there. The Echo Hub is a slimmed-down version of the Echo Show, which has much of the same functionality but also packs in a speaker to make it more of an entertainment device.
The Echo Hub is designed to be wall mounted, so it becomes a touch screen for displaying security camera feeds and controlling home automation such as smart lighting, thermostats, smart locks, and even garden sprinklers.
Aesthetically, the Echo Hub is a good-looking device, if a little chunky, sitting 1.5cm deep against your wall. It can act as an entertainment hub, streaming music from its small speaker, and also sending audio to an external speaker.
I have Echo Show devices in my kitchen and office, which display camera feeds from the Ring doorbell camera, as well as a couple of Nest cameras sitting on windowsills. So, the Echo Hub is slightly redundant. But it comes into its own because of its wall mounting, which makes it an obvious control panel for the home, the place to adjust the lighting, for instance, if you don’t want to talk to it via the Alexa voice assistant.
The Echo Hub’s dashboard displays groups of cameras or lights, and any routines you have set up to control your smart devices. The screen has an infrared sensor, so will switch from its default screen, a scrolling collection of favourite photos in my case, to the more practical digital dashboard when you approach it. If you have other Echo devices, the Echo Hub will network with them to display the same content, and for multi-room music streaming with the likes of Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Prime Music.
Within the display is a smart hub compatible with a wide range of wireless networking standards, Zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth, and the recently launched Matter included. That makes it compatible with thousands of smart devices. My Nanoleaf lights, Philips Hue smart bulbs, and Nest cameras are all accessible via the digital dashboard.
You don’t necessarily need an Echo Hub to control your smart devices - if you have an Echo Show device, that will suffice. But with homes increasingly featuring smart automation, an Echo Hub screen is an affordable way to give the family control of smart services from a central location, like in a hallway or the kitchen.
The Echo Hub has very tight integration with the Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro because Amazon owns Ring, having acquired the company in 2018. Google has a Rival in the Nest Hub, which will connect with a wide variety of smart devices too. But Amazon’s early commitment to being the hub for home automation and developing routines to take the hassle out of automation has given it an edge.
The question really is how much you want or need to spend on home automation to warrant a device like the Echo Hub. After all, you can control smart devices via the Alexa app on your smartphone. An Echo Hub screen takes it to the next level, offering the ability for central control in an easy format for the entire family. It doubles nicely as a video intercom for your home giving you peace of mind when the doorbell rings.
Price:
Ring Battery Video Doorbell Pro: $369
Amazon Echo Hub $369
