The Ring Video Doorbell has pretty astonishing battery life. It’s measured in months, rather than days or weeks, if you get everything right. So if you’re struggling to make the battery last a decent amount of time between recharges, here’s how to improve the battery life of a Ring Video Doorbell.
How long should a Ring Video Doorbell battery last?
First, let’s nail down how long you should expect the battery to last (assuming you’re running solely from battery power).
The rechargable battery inside my first-generation Ring Video Doorbell lasts around two months – although I don’t have all the features switched on, which I’ll come to shortly.
My tests of the Ring Video Doorbell 2 found that the battery lasted roughly the same amount of time, although it’s worth noting that the second-generation doorbell has better Wi-Fi. That can help save battery life if the Wi-Fi connection to your doorbell is weak (see tips below).
How to improve the battery life of a Ring Video Doorbell
Switch off motion alerts
Admittedly, this might be one of the reasons you bought the bell in the first place, but for me motion alerts are unnecessary. They largely only alert you to people who are going to ring the doorbell anyway – or the postman – who you don’t really care about. I found the alerts were going off so often I soon switched them off, and that made a big difference to battery life. How much? Somewhere in the region of 50% longer.
Make sure the Ring is within reach of a strong Wi-Fi connection
If your router is a fair distance from the front door, chances are the Ring will be desperately clinging to a weak Wi-Fi signal. If it’s always hunting for the Wi-Fi network, that will reduce battery life and may mean you miss people at the door. It also means the video feed will be patchy.
You can see the strength of the doorbell’s Wi-Fi signal from within the Ring app. Click on the specific device at the top of the main screen, click Device Health and its signal strength will be displayed. You want the RSSI figure to be as close to zero as possible.
If you can’t move your router closer to the front door, consider a Wi-Fi extender. Or, better still…
Install a Ring Chime Pro
The Ring Chime Pro is a good investment for any Ring doorbell owner. (It costs £49 from Amazon UK.) Not only is it much louder than the ordinary Ring Chime, but it acts as a Wi-Fi extender that works exclusively with the doorbell.
When I replaced my regular Netgear extender with a Chime Pro, battery life on the Ring itself improved. Partly, I suspect, because the extender regularly dropped the Wi-Fi connection to the doorbell.
Wait! Don’t rush in and buy the first Amazon Echo you see. There are ways to save money, whether you want to buy the Amazon Echo, the Echo Dot or a cheeky Fire TV bundle. Here’s how to find the cheapest Amazon Echo.
Which cheap Amazon Echo to buy?
We’re going to set a price limit of £60. At first glance, this gives you five choices (but read down where we talk about special offers):
This coaster-like object hooks up to an existing speaker you own via Bluetooth or a 3.5mm cable. It’s the cheapest way to add Alexa (Amazon’s digital assistant) to your home or office, although bear in mind you’ll need to have your speaker permanently powered as well as the Echo Input, which comes at an energy cost.
You can save a tenner by buying a refurbished Echo Dot. It’s one generation old, but frankly you don’t miss out on much. We wouldn’t use an Echo Dot to enjoy music, but it’s a proper speaker and a great little device for sprinkling Alexa around a home (for instance, you can broadcast “Dinner time!” to everyone at once). Our co-editor Barry even fitted one in his car.
Note you can buy second-hand Echo Dots (and other Echos) from Ebay and the like, but they tend not to come with a warranty. All refurbished Echos bought from Amazon still include a year’s cover.
The latest Echo Dot offers slightly better sound – although still some way short of the full Echo – and a tweaked design. We wouldn’t rush in and buy it at £49.99, though. Either wait for discounts (as covered later in this article) or buy the Fire TV Stick bundle below.
This is a cracking deal while it lasts. We’re huge fans of the Fire TV Stick, although note this is the 1080p version – if you want 4K TV, buy the Fire TV Stick 4K. It’s a wireless streamer that you plug into one of your TV’s HDMI ports, and it then brings you Netflix, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and all sorts of other on-demand TV services. The interface is lovely and quick too, so it’s an excellent upgrade for sluggish smart TVs.
Squeaking under our admittedly arbitrary £60 limit is this refurbished Amazon Echo. It’s the latest generation and sounds great. And as with other certified refurbished Echos sold by Amazon, it’s covered by a full year’s warranty.
But hold on: what about special offers?
Over the years, we’ve become conditioned by Amazon not to buy its speakers at full price. That’s because we know full well that come any special event – Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Black Friday, Blue Tuesday – it will discount the price of several Echo speakers.
As I write this, the next price cut is likely to come in the run-up to Mother’s Day on 31 March. Here are some other notable dates when you can expect slashed prices:
Easter Sunday, 21 April
Father’s Day, 16 June
Summer holidays, starting mid-July
Black Friday, 29 November (in fact, we expect lower prices in the second half of November in the lead up to Black Friday)
Cyber Monday, 2 December
Christmas… so pretty much all of December
Do you have any money-saving advice to give Amazon Echo buyers? Let us know in the comments below.
On the grid: smart meters send readings straight to the utility firm
If you haven’t already got them, your utilities company is probably trying to shove smart meters at you every five minutes. Until you get them in your home, however, you might be a bit unsure about what they actually do, what benefits they bring and what the downsides are too. Here, then, based on my experience with the smart meters provided by Octopus Energy, is what you can expect.
What do smart meters look like?
Smart meters come in two parts. There’s the part that replaces the current electricity and gas meters that you would normally take your meter readings from. My electricity smart meter looks like this:
There’s a similar looking unit connected to the gas supply.
Then there’s the in-home display, which shows you how much gas and electricity you’re using, what your current bill total is and other historical data. The unit I’ve been supplied with by Octopus Energy is a rather old-fashioned, monochrome screen affair, as pictured below. Other providers seem to supply smarter, colour screen devices.
The meters and the in-home display are connected wirelessly through a communications hub. They should all be installed by the utilities company. You don’t have to do anything.
What does the smart meter do?
Just like your previous meter, the smart meter measures how much gas and electricity you’re using. Instead of the rotary display on old-fashioned meters, the data is displayed on a digital display.
But you shouldn’t ever need to look at that meter. Because the meter uses wireless communication to beam meter readings back to the utility company and to your in-home display, which is where you find out how much energy you’re burning through.
The smart meter uses the mobile phone network (an old data standard called GPRS, for the techies in the house) to send the data to the utility firms, so you don’t have to worry about having to connect your smart meter to the Wi-Fi or anything like that.
What does the in-home display do?
This helps you keep abreast of how much energy you’re using. The features of in-home displays will vary from unit to unit, but here’s the type of information you should receive:
A running total of your current gas/electricity bill
Historic usage data over the past day/week/month
Information on your current electricity and gas tariffs
Perhaps the most useful screen on my in-home display is the one that shows how much electricity/gas you’re currently using on a dial ranging from low to high. It also shows you the cost per hour. Using that data, you can get a rough idea of how much it costs to switch on individual appliances. A few seconds after you switch on the appliance, the screen updates with the new running total. The electric radiator in my home office, for example, costs about 18p per hour to operate during office hours (see the section on variable tariffs below). That’s handy to know.
What are the advantages of smart meters?
No more meter readings*. All the data is sent straight to the utility firm, saving you that monthly chore. (*See our section on SMETS1 and SMETS2 meters below, though.)
Variable tariffs. As the meter is now able to send hourly readings to your utility company they can offer variable tariffs, where the cost of electricity fluctuates during the day. Some tariffs reward you for turning on power-hogging appliances such as dishwashers and washing machines at night, for example, when electricity demand is lower. (Again, more on variable tariffs below.)
You’re better informed. With the old-fashioned meters stuck in a cupboard that you only visit once a month, at best, you don’t really monitor your energy consumption. With the in-home display, you get a much more accessible view of your energy usage, how much bills will actually cost, and historic energy consumption.
What are the disadvantages of smart meters?
There’s no masking your real usage. On the old meter system, if you didn’t submit a meter reading the firm would normally revert to estimated bills. If your actual consumption far exceeded the estimate, or if you (ahem) low-balled a meter reading, you could get away with a smaller bill in the short-term. With smart meters, there’s nowhere to hide. The machine’s not going to lie for you.
How long will it last? Nobody ever worried about how long old-fashioned meters would last. They were just meters. But smart meters have different standards, which means moving to a new utility firm might render your meter redundant (see below) and that in-home display will also need upgrading from time to time. Who will bear the cost of that? That will almost certainly be you, either directly or in the hidden form of increased bills.
What’s the difference between SMETS1 and SMETS2 meters and which should I get?
SMETS1 are the first-generation meters that have been rolling out for the past few years. SMETS2 are the newer variety, which are only just starting to be rolled out now in 2019. Indeed, the smart meters I had installed only a couple of months ago were still SMETS1.
What does this matter? Well, at present SMETS1 meters cannot be transferred from supplier to supplier, which means if you leave your current utility firm you must revert to taking meter readers from the smart reader itself. They won’t be sent automatically. This is not the least bit smart.
SMETS2 meters, on the other hand, send all their data to a central body called the Data Communications Company (DCC), which then passes that on to your utility firm. That means if you switch suppliers, the DCC merely needs to reroute your data to the new firm.
The good news is they’re hoping that a firmware upgrade to SMETS1 meters might allow them to also send their data to the DCC, making them transferable too. Fingers crossed.
How do variable tariffs work?
Companies such as my provider, Octopus, can use smart meters to offer variable or ‘agile’ tariffs.
As you can see in the graph shown below, the cost of electricity varies depending on the time of day, and even from day to day. The idea is to encourage you to use more electricity during the off-peak hours, when demand on the grid is at its lowest.
If you’ve got kitchen appliances with timers that allow you to put the dishwasher on at 2am, when electricity costs 9.47 p/kWh, instead of at 6pm when it’s going to set you back 28.19 p/kWh, then happy days.
On an agile tariff, your electricity bill is broken down in almost mind-numbing detail. My bills from Octopus include a daily breakdown of how much energy we used, presented in graph (shown below) and table form.
It means my monthly bill runs to a faintly ludicrous 65 electronic pages. By the way, Octopus, a PDF is far from the ideal format for presenting such data, even if my inner geek does appreciate the granular info.
I’m experimenting with a variable tariff to see if I can make sufficient change to my family’s power consumption (“don’t turn that bloody thing on yet!” is a common refrain in my house) and make a saving.
Full credit to Octopus – the top of its bills are already telling me how much we could save if we switched to a fixed tariff, but I want to give this experiment a few months longer before I surrender.
Now read this: How do I control Ikea smart lights with Alexa?
Does it sound like there's a beehive in your Echo? Here's what to do
If your Amazon Echo device sits close by, you may have noticed a low, static buzz – particularly at high volumes. We explore the simple steps you can take to stop your Amazon Echo humming.
In short, there’s nothing to worry about. A static, or humming noise, is perfectly normal, but it can still be irritating. Luckily, there are a few fixes you can use to reduce the noise.
How to stop your Amazon Echo humming
Turn the volume down. If the Echo is buzzing while not being used, especially in a bedroom at night, just ask the device to turn the volume down. We find volume level three gives you a good balance between next-to-no buzz and the device still being audible. You can, of course, turn it back up when in use. To adjust the volume, just say: “Alexa, volume three”.
Move your Echo device to a (slightly) different location. Electrical interference can play a big part make sure that your Echo isn’t surrounded by other gadgets. However, that doesn’t mean isolating your smart speaker at the end of a long corridor or at the bottom of the garden – instead, you should experiment at intervals of say, 30cm. If that doesn’t make a difference…
Check that the Echo is plugged in properly. Okay, this is ludicrously simple, but you’d be surprised at how many people (including yours truly) have fretted about a humming noise only to find that the cable wasn’t fully inserted into the bottom of the Echo. Still no luck? It’s time for a more radical fix.
Insert the plug into a different socket and, if it’s sharing an extension cable, move it. This may mean you eventually have to relocate your Echo, but it’s worth giving it a go – just in case the fault lies with your home wiring, rather than the device itself. The issue may also be an ancient extension cable.
If none of the steps above stops your Amazon Echo humming, there may be an issue with the hardware. If it’s been under a year since you bought the Echo, it should still be covered by the warranty.
To find out, contact Amazon customer services by heading to amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/contact-us, clicking the Devices tab, selecting the picture of your Echo and then choosing an issue from the dropdown box.
You’ll then be given the option to either chat to someone on the phone (which we’d always recommend) or via a live messaging box.
Final note: if you sought help from Reddit before heading here, you might have seen users recommending you use something called a “ground loop isolator” to get rid of the hum. To be honest, this will make very little difference, as well as costing you a hard-earned tenner, and will be next to useless if it’s a fault with the Echo anyway. Steer clear.
If you’re passing on an Amazon Echo device to a family member or even selling it, you’ll want to wipe the slate clean and unlink your data. Here’s how to remove Alexa devices from your account.
All you’ll need is the Amazon Alexa app on your smartphone or tablet and a spare minute – but bear in the mind that the process varies slightly depending on what device you have.
If you’re deregistering official Amazon hardware (Echo devices), simply read on. If, however, you want to get rid of a different Alexa-enabled speaker skip to the second section.
How to remove official Alexa devices from your account
First, open the Alexa app and tap the menu icon (three horizontal lines) in the top right of the screen.
Once that’s open, select Device Settings.
This will bring up a list of all of your Alexa devices. Choose the one you want to deregister.
On the device page that appears, scroll down to the “Registered To” subheading, which will have your name underneath, and tap “Deregister”.
All that’s left to do is confirm the action and you’re free to gift or sell the Alexa device.
How to remove other Alexa devices from your account
If you’re deregistering a different Alexa device, the process is different – but still a piece of cake.
Tap or click this link and sign into your Amazon account. You will see a list of all of your connected devices. Find the one your want to remove and click the ellipsis button (“…”) to the left of the listing.
In the pop-up box that appears, click the small “Deregister” button and you’re done!
Every Sunday, my eight-year-old and I sit down to practice the spellings she’s been set for homework. And precisely ten minutes into the exercise, she’s fed up with dealing with dad and his pernickety insistence that words are spelt correctly.
So, we’ve started using Amazon Alexa to make the spellings homework less painful.
Teach spelling with Alexa
Collins Jnr will normally get ten or so words that she has to learn. The school insists she writes them each out three times in her workbook, and then I test her on them with the book closed. Inevitably, she will get a few wrong.
Instead of making her write out the incorrect words over and again, I get her to practice with Alexa, which she thinks is great fun.
You can ask Alexa to spell any word – just say: “Alexa, how do you spell ferocious”, for example.
The great thing is she reads out the letters pretty slowly, so Collins Jnr can shout out each letter before Alexa reads it out, letting her test herself against the computer.
She will repeat it four or five times until she’s got the spelling licked and then come downstairs for another test with me.
We’ve only been doing this a few weeks, but it’s already getting results. It makes the spellings homework seem like less of a chore and her ability to remember the tricky words is improving.
Ringing the changes: Netatmo is entering the video doorbell market
There are A LOT of smart doorbell systems being launched here at CES 2019, but one of the most impressive I’ve seen so far is the Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell. But how does it compare to the devices on offer from market leader Ring? Here’s the skinny.
Basic features
The Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell captures video at Full HD resolution with a 160-degree wide angle lens. From the demo we saw at CES, the footage is perfectly clear and sharp, although that’s obviously under near-perfect lighting conditions. We’ll have to wait for review units to see how it stands up in bright sunlight and darkness, although the demo videos seemed fine.
In terms of its slim profile design and features, the Netamo Smart Video Doorbell most closely matches the Ring Video Doorbell Pro. That too offers Full HD video quality.
Both systems also offer motion detection which allow you to see intruders or anyone prowling around your front door. Netatmo’s reps claimed its device will only alert you to human activity, so you shouldn’t be disturbed every time a cat walks past, for example.
Power
The Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell must be hard wired – it doesn’t offer battery power. That means it will need to fit in the space occupied by your current doorbell, which even though it’s slim, is no gimme. It wouldn’t fit in the space occupied by my current wired doorbell, for example.
The Ring Video Pro is also hard-wire only, although other devices in the Ring range – such as the Video Doorbell 2 – do offer rechargeable batteries, which give you more flexibility on placement.
Subscription models
One of the downsides of Ring is that you need to pay a $30-a-year subscription to be able to go back and watch videos captured on your doorbell for the past 60 days. Video is stored in the cloud, not on the device, so unless you answer the alert on your smartphone as soon as the doorbell rings, you may never know who was at your door if you don’t pay the subscription fee.
Netatmo is working on a different, cheaper model. It captures video on an 8GB SD card stored inside the doorbell. There’s no ongoing subscription – if you want to see who was at your door when you come out of a meeting, for example, it streams the footage from the doorbell.
The only limit is the capacity of the card. If you find 8GB too restrictive, you can swap the card out for an up to 32GB model. The videos on the card are encrypted, so if someone should crowbar the Netatmo doorbell off your front door, they won’t have easy access to the footage. A snapshot still image of anyone caught on camera is stored on Netatmo’s servers, so you might be able to identify the doorbell thief!
Smart home support
Amazon-owned Ring works with Amazon’s Alexa devices, as you would expect, although you’ll need a video screen device such as the Echo Show to see who’s at the door. There is limited support for Google Assistant with Ring, but you can’t answer calls from Google Home devices, for instance.
At launch, Netatmo will only support Apple’s HomeKit and Siri, which is very much an also-ran in the smart home market, although potentially useful for iPhone owners. Netatmo promises Alexa and Google Assistant support will arrive at a later date.
Price
Netatmo hasn’t got an official price for the Smart Video Doorbell yet, but say it will likely cost between 250-300 Euros when it launches in the Spring.
That puts it in the same price bracket as the Ring Video Doorbell Pro, although there are cheaper devices in the Ring range.
Hide and seek: the Ring Door View Cam sits on your peephole
When I used to live in an apartment block, one of the most irritating things was neighbours letting people in through the buzzer and then having people knocking at your door. Jehova’s Witnesses, utility salesmen, window cleaners – a pox on them all. Ring’s latest video doorbell – launched at CES 2019 – might alleviate some of that aggravation.
The Ring Door View Cam sits over the peephole in your front door. You can still see through the peephole as normal – it’s not replaced with a video screen or some such. However, you get all the benefits of a Ring doorbell, too.
What are those benefits? The ability to see who’s at your door when you’re not at home, or to see who’s knocking by looking at your smartphone from the sofa. Jehova’s Witness? No need to get up. Just send them on their way using the two-way voice system.
You can also trigger alerts if someone is hovering near your front door, which can be useful for spotting intruders or potential burglars that are scouting your property. It can also be handy to see if the Amazon courier who swears he left a package outside your door actually did. (Ironically, Amazon now owns Ring.)
As people aren’t necessarily used to ringing doorbells in apartments, the Ring Door View Cam has a motion/vibration sensor that can detect when people are physically knocking at the door. Clever thinking.
The Ring Door View Cam costs $199 in the US and will launch in the UK later in 2019. Bear in mind, you’ll also need a Ring subscription to be able to view video clips of visitors that you didn’t catch live, which is another £30 a year.
By default, if you ask an Amazon Echo to play music it will choose Amazon Music. But what if you subscribe to Spotify? Or some other music service? Here’s how to change the Amazon Echo default music service.
First, make sure that you’ve downloaded the Alexa app, which is available for both Android and iOS phones, and that your Echo device is fully set up. To test, try asking “Alexa, what’s up?” to get a chatty overview of the news.
How to change the Amazon Echo default music service
Now, open the Alexa app and click on the menu button in the top-left of the screen. (The menu button is the three horizontal lines, also known as the “burger” or “sandwich” icon.)
Tap Settings on the menu that appears and then scroll down to Music, which is underneath the “Alexa Preferences” subheading.
If you’ve already linked your Spotify account via the app, skip the next paragraph. If not, you’ll see a screen like this:
Tap “Link account on Spotify.com” next to the logo and you’ll be asked to enter your Spotify login details and then agree to a few privacy bits (such as allowing Alexa to view your Spotify account data and your activity, which is a given anyway). If the process has been successful, you’ll see the notification below and should then return to the music settings page.
Now that everything’s linked, select “Choose default music services” and tap the circle next to Spotify, rather than Amazon Music.
Once you’ve hit the big blue Done button, you’re finished! Celebrate by blasting out your four-hour Westlife Spotify playlist…
I’ve had a Ring smart doorbell for a couple of years now and it’s one of the best tech investments I’ve ever made. Working from home in a converted garage office, I can’t hear a regular doorbell. With Ring, I can see when the couriers are at the door and fend off the Jehova’s Witnesses without even getting up. Perfect.
Well, not quite perfect. The Ring doorbell does occasionally stop ringing. After a couple of years of ownership, I’ve come to learn most of its foibles. So here’s what to look for if your Ring doorbell suddenly stops ringing.
Wi-Fi dropout
The number one reason why you stop hearing the Ring doorbell is Wi-Fi dropout. This product was designed for the American market, where paper-thin wooden walls are common. British brick houses are much more likely to block Wi-Fi.
There are two solutions to this problem. Put a Wi-Fi extender between your router and the Ring doorbell, especially if the router is some distance away from the doorbell. Something as simple as this £15 TP-Link model should do the job just fine.
Better still, go for the Ring Chime Pro. Not only do you get a Wi-Fi extender but a wireless chime, so that people in the house who don’t have smartphones can hear the bell.
Flat battery
Ring is normally pretty good when its battery – which can last for months if you turn off motion detection – is running low. You should get smartphone notifications and an email warning you to top it up. However, I have seen the battery die horribly once or twice without warning.
This can be down to a bug. Once, the light around the doorbell remained lit, which drained the battery in no time. A hard reset was required to fix that issue. Another time, the battery warnings failed to trigger.
It’s best to avoid letting the battery completely run dry. Not only do you have no doorbell when it dies, but you may have to go through the tiresome setup procedure again.
Smartphone notifications silenced
If you rely on your smartphone to hear the doorbell and don’t have a chime, your smartphone’s battery-saving features can get in the way. Phones are sometimes too clever, putting background apps to sleep to spare battery life. This can stop you receiving Ring alerts.
To cure this problem, go to your phone’s Settings menu, look for the Device Maintenance/Battery options and make sure Ring is added to the list of apps that phone isn’t allowed to put to sleep.
The Chimes need a reboot
Occasionally, Ring Chimes can just lose their connection. If you go into the Ring app, you can click on your various Ring devices and check on Device Health. This should reveal if the device is connected. The light on the Chime itself will also flash blue if it’s dropped the connection. Flicking the power off and on again is normally enough to restore the connection.
While you’re in the Ring app check the tone settings. Once, for reasons unknown, my Chime Pro had set itself to a very low volume. Just check it’s up to full blast.
