One of the best ways to make sure your Smart Solar Lights are on when you want them to be is to use. the powerful Light Schedules feature in your Ring app.
This article will detail how to use Light Schedules.
If you want general information on Ring Smart Lighting, click here.
What are Light Schedules?
Light Schedules are a feature in your Ring App that allows you to have control over the timeframe of your Ring Smart Lighting schedules. With Light Schedules, you can set separate schedules such as morning and night or utilize the built in Dusk to Dawn to have your lights illuminated at a low lumen level at daybreak and sunset.
Note: Schedules can be created at both the individual device and group level.
What Products have the Light Schedules feature?
The following products currently have the Light Schedules feature:
- Smart Solar Steplight
- Smart Solar Pathlight
- Smart Solar Floodlight
- Smart Light Floodlight Wired
- Smart Lighting Transformer
- Smart Lighting PAR38 LED Lightbulb
- Smart Lighting A19 LED Lightbulb
Light Schedules options
The new Light Schedules feature offers you three ways to turn your devices on and off:
- Lights on:
- Turn on at Dusk: This option uses an astronomical clock to determine dusk in your location so every device that is set to turn on at dusk will turn on at the same time regardless of ambient illumination. .
- Turn on at Custom Time: This option allows you to set a specific time when the devices should turn on.
- Turn on Offset from Dusk: This option allows you to choose from four options:
- 1 hour before dusk
- 30 min before dusk
- 30 min after dusk
- 1 hour after dusk
- Lights off:
- Turn lights off at Dawn: This option uses an astronomical clock to determine dawn in your location and shuts off the device at that time.
- Turn off at Custom Time: This allows you to set a specific time when the devices should turn off.
- Turn off after Dusk: This is similar to the offset option mentioned above. It allows you to set your lights to turn off a certain number of hours after dusk:
- 3 hours
- 4 hours
- 6 hours
How Bright are the Lights when They're Turned On Through the Light Scheduler?
When scheduled, all of the Ring Smart Lighting solar products have a single brightness level specifically designed to maximize battery life. On Steplight, Pathlight, and Floodlight, devices, the lights will turn on at a low brightness level during the schedule:
- Floodlight: 80 lumens
- Steplight: 1.2-2.0 lumens
- Pathlight: 1.2-2.0 lumens
For Smart Lighting A19 and PAR38 lightbulbs, you will be able to select a brightness level from 1-10 for their bulb to turn on during the schedule.
What Other Options Can I Choose from when Using Light Schedules?
You have a wide variety of options to choose from when building your custom schedules:
- Duration: Schedules can be set for up to 24 hours. That being said, setting a schedule for greater than 12 hours on any of the solar products will have a large impact on the battery life.
- Days of the Week: You have the option to choose what days of the week the schedule should be applied to. This could be used to set a schedule to, for instance, Monday through Friday during the work week and another schedule over the weekend or to select different schedules on different days.
- Disable Schedule: If at any point you wish to temporarily disable a schedule, such as when you are going on vacation, there is a toggle on the main schedules screen that can be toggled off. When they want to turn it back on, simply toggle it back on.
- Copy Schedule: The Copy Schedule feature comes up after you sets a schedule on one of your devices and allows you to copy the schedule from one device to another.
- Remove Schedule: This control allows you to remove schedules at any point.
- Name Schedule: All schedule names can be customized to avoid any confusion with multiple schedules across devices.
How will Scheduling the Light Affect the Battery Life of the Device?
A schedule of 10 hours will deplete about 2-2.5% of the battery in the Steplight and Pathlight and about 15-20% of the battery in the Floodlight. The solar panels on these products are programmed to recharge the battery by more than those amounts in a day when they are in direct sun. However, if you do not get good sun or experience a string of several days with bad weather, you could experience your light going offline if the battery level drops too low.
Note: This issue can be more prevalent in the winter months, especially in northern climates that are inherently cloudy.
