The proper positioning of your Ring Video Doorbell depends on a number of factors, including the layout of your garden, the distance from the front door to the street, objects within the Video Doorbell's field of view, height of the door and more. This article will describe how your Ring Video Doorbell "sees" the world and the factors that go into good Ring Video Doorbell placement.
Seeing the world two ways
Your Ring Video Doorbell sees the world in two ways. First, the camera on your Video Doorbell has a very wide view of the world as illustrated below:
One of the biggest mistakes people make is mounting their Video Doorbell too high in the mistaken belief that they need to do this in order to catch people's faces. In fact, as illustrated above, viewing faces is not a problem if the Video Doorbell is mounted at the correct height, approximately 1.2m above the ground.
The second way your Video Doorbell sees the world is through a network of PIR or "Passive Infrared" motion sensors. These are heat sensors that detect motion by monitoring heat within the detection area. Since people are hotter than the surrounding areas, as a person enters the detection area, the heat measurements change. The motion sensors register this change as movement and send out a notification. As illustrated in the image below, the motion sensors have a much more focussed field of view than the camera:
The motion sensors in your Ring Video Doorbell are designed to detect motion up to 180 degrees horizontally and from 1m to 10m outward from the fixture. They're also more sensitive to horizontal movement across the detection area than vertical. Mount your Video Doorbell too high and you're more likely to catch the heat of passing cars than the heat of incoming visitors.
Now that you understand how your Ring Video Doorbell sees the world, positioning it properly becomes much easier.
If your Video Doorbell is already installed or you're unable to change the install location, click here to read about how to change the angle using a Wedge Kit.
