The Motion Detectors for your Ring Alarm system are a crucial part of the Ring of Security around your home. For homeowners with pets, however, such systems become problematic. False alarms can be obtrusive to you and your neighbourhood, so you definitely don't want your pet triggering your alarm while you're not at home. This article will give you some tips on keeping both your home and your pets safe.
Small pets and the PIR sensitivity control
The Ring Alarm Motion Detectors use passive infrared sensors (PIR) to scan whatever room they're placed in. These detectors use heat to detect motion in the room and when a warm body like a human or animal passes in the area it is monitoring (its field of view) the sensor detects the change. The PIRs used in Ring Alarm, however, are "pet-friendly." That means they have settings which are calibrated to ignore heat sources from animals that are approximately 2 stone or less (at medium setting) and 3.5 stone or less (at low setting).
Ring Motion Detector sensitivity control can be found in the Device Profile menu in the Ring app or web app. Even with these settings, your small- or medium-sized pet may still set off the alarm. It's therefore advisable to try and adjust the sensitivity slider on your Ring Alarm to a point where your animal no longer sets off the alarm.
Note however that this control only adjusts general sensitivity, not pet immunity, and depending on your pet, you may find that there is no setting where it does not set off the alarm.
Larger pets and security gates
If you have a pet that weighs more than 3.5 stone, you have a slightly more difficult challenge ahead of you. At that size, your pet is far more likely to set off an alarm. The easiest way to make sure that your pet doesn't trigger a false alarm is to make sure that your pets can't go in the rooms where the Motion Detectors are while you're not home.
