How to fix poor wifi connection on ring doorbell

Ring cameras and doorbells are great… when they have a strong Wi-Fi signal strength, that is. When they have a weak signal, you may experience a range of issues from missing recordings to poor quality video.

Thankfully the Ring app makes it easy to see whether a weak Wi-Fi signal is at fault due to the RSSI measurement on the “device health” page. This video explores what a good RSSI value is, and how to fix bad RSSI values.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3E04b948tE&t=96sVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Ring Camera & Doorbell Signal Strength (RSSI) – How To Fix Poor WiFi Connections (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3E04b948tE&t=96s)

0:00 Intro
0:32 What is RSSI
1:18 Fix 1 – change to 2.4 Ghz Wi-Fi
2:28 Fix 2 – solve Wi-Fi interference
3:47 Fix 3 – use Ring Chime Pro
4:04 Fix 4 – buy a Wi-Fi mesh system
4:58 Wrapping up

Table of Contents hide

1) Links

1.1) Ring help pages:

1.2) Products:

1.3) Sound credits:

2) Video Transcript

Links

Ring help pages:

  • The Ring status page: https://status.ring.com/
  • A Ring article on improving signal strength: https://support.ring.com/hc/en-gb/articles/217271526-Improving-Wireless-Signal-Strength

Products:

  • The Ring Chime Pro: https://ring.com/products/chime-pro-gen2
  • A Google WiFi mesh router: https://www.amazon.com/Google-Wifi-System-Router-Replacement/dp/B08GG9CMLR/ref=sr_1_4_mod_primary_new?dchild=1&tag=tdperry-20&keywords=mesh+wifi

Sound credits:

  • The ‘pop up’ sound: https://freesound.org/people/BeezleFM/sounds/512135/
  • The ‘victory’ sound: https://freesound.org/people/LittleRobotSoundFactory/sounds/270404/

Video Transcript

Hello, I’m Tristan from Smart Home Point. If your Ring camera or doorbell is suffering from poor quality video, having connection issues or generally being a bit rubbish, this could be due to a poor WiFi signal strength. Of course, it could also be due to a general Ring issue (in which it’s worth checking the Ring status page). Equally, if your phone has a weak WiFi signal itself, you will have difficulty viewing live view and historical recordings via the Ring app.

But if you have ruled out those two issues, your Ring device itself might have a poor signal strength. You can verify this within the Ring app by clicking into your device, and going to “device health”. The RSSI value is quite important here – it stands for Received Signal Strength Indicator, and any values below -60 could indicate an issue. Of course, below -60 means a value between -60 and -100 – a value closer to 0 is actually good.

Confused? Yeah, RSSI is weird. Basically values closer to 0 are good, and values closer to -100 are bad. These values will change a bit throughout the day, but they shouldn’t fluctuate too much. So it’s always worth checking the RSSI value after installing or moving a Ring device.

Anywhoo, with all that said, if your Ring device has a poor connection, there’s a few things to check to hopefully improve the situation. Firstly, understanding why your Ring device has a bad connection is important, of course.

The position of the moon is causing a psychic attack against your Ring doorbell!

Thankfully guesswork isn’t usually required. If your Ring device is connecting over 5 GHz WiFi, try changing this to 2.4 GHz. This is because 5 GHz WiFi – whilst faster – has a shorter range, especially when there are walls and other physical objects in the way. As a result, simply changing to 2.4 GHz WiFi can improve your Ring camera’s connection. In terms of how to do this, it varies based on your router. Sometimes you need to connect to a different WiFi network, whereas sometimes you can specify which WiFi band your Ring device should use within your router’s admin panel. If all else fails, try turning 5 GHz WiFi off completely and restarting your Ring device – it should connect to 2.4 GHz WiFi, and you can then check the RSSI value again.

However if you’re already connected to 2.4 GHz WiFi, the issue might be caused by general WiFi interference. This is likely to be the case if you live in an apartment or an area with lots of WiFi routers, and especially if your other WiFi devices (such as your smart TV and smartphones) also have connection issues from time to time.

If this is the case, there’s quite a few possible fixes – almost too many to run through here. The Ring support page lists most of them, but I would suggest firstly logging in to your router’s admin console and trying to change the WiFi channel. If your WiFi is running on a congested channel, this could be the issue, so changing to another channel will fix this. Whilst there are tools that can help show you which channel to choose, it’s often easier to just try ‘trial and error’ – update the channel, restart your Ring device, and check the device health again for an improvement to the RSSI value.

In addition to interference, another cause of poor WiFi is range or having lots of physical obstructions in the way. Whilst this affects 5 GHz WiFi more (as I covered earlier), it can also affect 2.4 GHz WiFi too. There’s two main fixes here.

Firstly, Ring sells a Chime Pro which plugs into a wall outlet and connects to your internet router. You can then connect your Ring devices to the Chime Pro. In technical terms, this is a WiFi extender and it helps to increase the range of your home’s WiFi network.

Whilst this is a convenient option, if your home has general WiFi issues, it might be worth investing in a better internet router – especially if you’re using the router that your ISP sent you – the default one. A high quality WiFi mesh router isn’t cheap (costing hundreds of dollars) BUT they often resolve any WiFi issues immediately. The technology is awesome and this could be the way to go. The nice thing with a mesh system is that if you notice your WiFi is a bit poor in one part of your house, you can simply buy another WiFi point and plug it in there. This then hooks into the rest of your network, and automatically boosts WiFi in that part of the house. This can be good to do if you have an outdoor Ring camera with poor WiFi – just plug a WiFi point near this point, and your outdoor camera’s connection should improve a fair bit.

Okay, that just about wraps up today’s video. Resolving WiFi issues could be a whole series of videos, but this video covers the top few causes and how to fix them. If you have more questions though, please let me know in the comments section. I hope you found this video useful. If you did, please click the thumbs up button and don’t forget to subscribe. Thank you!

Why is my Ring Doorbell saying poor Wi

If your Ring Video Doorbell is experiencing poor and delayed video and is occasionally not receiving notifications, your Wi-Fi router channel might be over-crowded. Most Wi-Fi routers are automatically set to switch channels to the least crowded, though some routers require this to be done manually.

How can I improve my Ring Doorbell Wi

Try turning off or unplugging some of your electronics. Some electronic devices such as PCs, TVs, and video game consoles can be wired directly into your router using Ethernet cable. Attaching these devices to a wired connection will free up bandwidth on the wifi. Try moving other electronic devices.