Using neighbours WiFi with Ring doorbell (quick reply needed 🙏🙏🙏)

techno79

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I'm in a bit of a pinch so I really hope there is someone kind who can help with this query. I am having renovation work done on my house (currently it is not in a liveable condition) and I am a few miles away. The house does not have internet yet. And there are trades people I do not fully trust who have access to the inside of the house. I want to be able to remotely view and access things so I thought a great solution would be to connect a wireless Ring Doorbell to the front of my house, connect it to my neighbours WiFi (with their permission of course) and I'd then be able to monitor things from my current location.

I believe the Ring Doorbell 4 would be best (due to it's colour pre-roll feature and removable battery).

Any issues or problems that would cause problems with this plan?
 
No reason why not, but you may find the wifi signal is not strong enough, depending upon how far away the next house is.

The thing is, if they are coming and going all day, you may get a lot of pings on your phone - or you will have a lot of footage to review. You might do better with something like this that you can mount for a more general view of the house:

Amazon product ASIN B07WLL3H9B
 
No reason why not, but you may find the wifi signal is not strong enough, depending upon how far away the next house is.

The thing is, if they are coming and going all day, you may get a lot of pings on your phone - or you will have a lot of footage to review. You might do better with something like this that you can mount for a more general view of the house:

Amazon product ASIN B07WLL3H9B

Thanks for this. I ended up getting the Ring Doorbell 4 as there seems to be more videos about it on how it works and how to set it up. It's a semi-detached property so the neighbour's house is right there. I think their WiFi signal is strong enough but if that doesn't work then I'll have to look at mobile broadband with a MiFi device or an old phone with WiFi hotspot.
 
If the WiFi isn't strong enough then maybe have a look at Eufy which has a base unit which you can place somewhere in your house which does get wifi from your neighbour. It then connects via 2.4GHz but not WiFi protocol to the doorbell.
 
Nice one, thanks for the help. Luckily I managed to get fairly reasonable WiFi signal (not excellent). It seems to work well enough. Sometimes when I try to connect to live view, it needs a few attempts. Not sure if this is normal with Ring or if this is down to momentary WiFi drop outs. Either way, it's good enough for purpose :)

Thanks for the help everyone.
 
If the WiFi isn't strong enough then maybe have a look at Eufy which has a base unit which you can place somewhere in your house which does get wifi from your neighbour. It then connects via 2.4GHz but not WiFi protocol to the doorbell.
I had a look at the Eufy anyway and I don't think that would work because doesn't the base unit require power. No point getting CCTV for trades people when all they need to do is switch off the power to the house to disable the device. There's electrical work still going on so the power is often turned off at the consumer unit.

The Ring Doorbell connected to my neighbours WiFi is ideal in this case as it's not dependent on my own house's power supply or internet connection, both of which would be exploitable by the trades people if they wanted to.
 
I had a look at the Eufy anyway and I don't think that would work because doesn't the base unit require power. No point getting CCTV for trades people when all they need to do is switch off the power to the house to disable the device. There's electrical work still going on so the power is often turned off at the consumer unit.

The Ring Doorbell connected to my neighbours WiFi is ideal in this case as it's not dependent on my own house's power supply or internet connection, both of which would be exploitable by the trades people if they wanted to.
Yeah, the base does require power so won't be any good if the power is switched off.
 
Is anyone able to help with super quick follow up recommendation:

The Ring Doorbell 4 has worked perfectly for recording things from the doorbell view.

I need a very similar device that has similar functionality that I can use for a single indoor room within the house.
  • Must: fully battery powered
  • Must: connect via WiFi
  • Must: upload video footage to cloud storage
  • Must: live viewing capable
  • Preferable: decent options to customise the motion sensing in terms of sensitivity, motion zones etc
The Ring Spotlight Camera battery seems like the obvious choice (Amazon product ASIN B077VXQX7P) but I just wanted to double check in case there wasn't a better option that fits my requirements. I also considered the thought of getting a 2nd Ring Doorbell 4 just to use as an indoor camera (which isn't the worst idea).

Any other suggestions before I pull the trigger on the Ring Spotlight Camera?
 
Is anyone able to help with super quick follow up recommendation:

The Ring Doorbell 4 has worked perfectly for recording things from the doorbell view.

I need a very similar device that has similar functionality that I can use for a single indoor room within the house.
  • Must: fully battery powered
  • Must: connect via WiFi
  • Must: upload video footage to cloud storage
  • Must: live viewing capable
  • Preferable: decent options to customise the motion sensing in terms of sensitivity, motion zones etc
The Ring Spotlight Camera battery seems like the obvious choice (Amazon product ASIN B077VXQX7P) but I just wanted to double check in case there wasn't a better option that fits my requirements. I also considered the thought of getting a 2nd Ring Doorbell 4 just to use as an indoor camera (which isn't the worst idea).

Any other suggestions before I pull the trigger on the Ring Spotlight Camera?
The only think I would say about the doorbell is they are designed to be activated a few times a day, if there is a lot of movement then you may find the battery life significantly shortened.

As an alternative, have a look at Blink.
 
Ring spotlight and run it with two batteries inside. Another advantage is that you keep it all in one app, and is perfect for reuse afterwards when it is done on the outside. Then just add the ring alarm to it as well :)
 
Ring spotlight and run it with two batteries inside. Another advantage is that you keep it all in one app, and is perfect for reuse afterwards when it is done on the outside. Then just add the ring alarm to it as well :)
I appreciate that some people don’t like the ecosystem with a subscription model. I really like how it all works very well together with minimum fuss. So easy to operate both in and outside the property. And very good quality video as well.
 
I was in the slightly unique position of needing something that was totally wireless and could record to the cloud. I don't think there were many options but looking back, the Ring is the obvious choice for both the doorbell and the internal camera.

Once the trades people have finished, I'll probably replace the doorbell for a hardwired Ring (maybe the Ring Pro 2). I don't think I need the internal camera so I might sell that on for what I can get for it. I'll eventually have hardwired Hikvision 8MP cameras on the outside of the house.
 

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