Ring Doorbell and Camera support for Homey

Apps
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304

This is the error that is thrown: Recieved: authentication is Failed

These are the actions that lead to it:

  1. Fill in email
  2. Fill in password
  3. Press enter
  4. Receive message to fill in mfa
  5. After 5 seconds the error in the user interface is: Authentication Failed, please check your credentials.

Tested in Firefox 123 on Windows 11. Microsoft Edge 122.something on Windows 11 and Firefox 123 on Android 14

If I proceed within 5 seconds, it asks me try again but no error is logged in the console.

Just tested the official app as well. That one logs in fine but does not have the cards I need.

305

Dear @DaneedeKruyff ,

Many thanks for the work you’ve put in this wonderful app. I have a specific question and it may be a stupid one, I’ve scanned through the long thread of comments / questions above but have not found it.

I use the Homey App to control when I do and do not want to receive motion alerts for 2 cameras and 1 doorbell around the house. What the main purpose of my flow is, is to decide when to have motion alerts and when not.

However, it seems I can only use the Homey app for Ring to enable/disable motion detection, but not selectively only motion alerts. Is that correct ?

The downside of this being that if I disable motion detection, the cameras no longer silently record activity and allow you to look back in time. When opening the Ring app manually, the thumbnails are also gone with a marking that motion detection is disabled.

In the (native) Ring App, I can always keep Motion Detection enabled, but only selectively disable the Alerts about it. That ensures the cameras are still on “stand by” and capture events you can retrospectively review.

Clearly, the desired settings are in the native Ring app, but of course the advanced logic of Homey with business rules around presence / arrival / departure of household members / time of day / etc. is much more sophisticated.

Am I missing something here that would allow this desired setup of:

  • always having motion detection on
  • have your Homey Ring app only toggle the alerts about detected motion ?

Thanks a lot in advance for (any) feedback !

306

@DaneedeKruyff , found this just now after posting the above:

Apparently, “Modes” is not the solution yet for my above problem statement; Ring does not allow “Modes” (which your app supports!) to include settings om notifications. Odd, but true.

That only leaves the question if the APIs you’re using with Ring, could somehow selectively control motion alerts independently from the motion detection (that would be an awesome solution to overcome a limitation on the Ring side…)

307

Hi Johan,

Welcome here. I have looked into adding the option to enable/disable Motion Alerts next to enabling/disabling Motion Detection but I decided not to, for multiple reasons.

First off, it’s quite some work again and I, for myself, see no benefit in it. I’ve spend countless hours in the app when I took over development from Dennie little over a year ago, I’ve rewritten over 50% of the app and added a lot. Since then it has gotten more stable than ever and has gained almost 3000 users. With that I also received more and more unsolicited Diagnostics Reports stating ‘the app doesn’t work’ and not always in the nicest wording. Not really encouraging to keep spending time on this app.

When Homey Pro 2023 was still not generally available Athom finally gave us Community Developers a way to get in close contact with the Athom developers in the form of a private Slack channel, which was a blessing compared in how we could get in contact in earlier stages.

Unfortunately this Slack channel was shut down when Homey Pro 2023 became available to the general public and we again have no decent way of communicating with Athom.

Some time later I received an email from Emile, telling me Athom had developed their own ‘Official’ Ring app and they would publish it to the App Store. I asked Emile if they would open source their app, but that was not gonna happen as they were not sure how Ring would react on it. So, now Athom can say there is ‘Official’ Ring support as another selling point for Homey, only for users to find out the ‘Official’ support is very limited and to be able to use more than just a doorbell they need to install an unofficial app. To me that came across as piggy backing on all the time I’ve spend on developing and maintaining the Ring Doorbell and Camera app. (and quite frankly I’m wondering how much of their code is unique…)

Lastly, I can see by the number of installs of this app and the number of devices that are in use through this app I can calculate roughly that an amount over €4.000.000,- has been spend on Homeys, Doorbells, Cameras and Chimes, calculated on the cheapest prices of each!
And I realise of course it’s not like my app is the reason people buy a Homey or a Ring product, but seeing I have received less than € 400,- in donations I feel there’s something really wrong in how the time invested by Community Developers is appreciated, Something that is also not recognised by Athom!

@Johan.N this is definitely not ment as a rant in your direction, please see this as an open letter to Athom, Emile on how I feel about developing apps for the Homey platform.

1 Like
308

Very interesting to read @DaneedeKruyff and I much appreciate your openness and context. Please do know that I have very much appreciated the efforts you put in this app (and your elaborate response here now), and I can also manage with the native Ring app going forward.

Was not even aware that besides the community version you maintained there is an official Athom version also. Indeed the “Official” vs “Community” dynamic is a bit strange sometimes, also makes it hard to follow where to look for solutions as consumer…

309

Hi !
Please help me! :wink:
I just got my two ring indoor cameras but I can’t get them connected to homey.
I created a ring account (2FA is active) and I authenticated the Homey app on my mobile
So far so good
But when trying to add a camera it is searching for devices and ends up in a timeout after 30 seconds

Seems ther is nowhere a tutorial how to.
Can somebody help and point me step by step to a success?

Thank You

310

Hi Danee, is there a way to receive a notification when someone press the doorbell?
Thank you for your time.
I will donate you something for your work.
Best regards,
Luca

311

Issue resolved
I removed Homey app authentification and authentificated again - then device has been shown

312

Dear @DaneedeKruyff ,
I used the cameras as motion sensors for more than a year and everything worked fine (stick up cam and doorbell) until 17 days ago. Since then no single motion was received in Homey (same for all Ring devices). I tried twice the T/S I found in the discussion (deleting homey from Ring and repair the devices afterwards) no help and I even uninstalled the app completely and reinstalled and I still have the same issue.
Everything is working fine, battery status, activating the motion activity and so on. Just the motion detection is not triggered in Homey. I can find the motion recordings in the Ring app of course.
Do you have any idea what could be the cause for it or how to resolve it?
Thank you in advance!
Kind regards,
Laurent

313

Hi all
somebody also problems with motion on cam
Flow Card not registered (type: condition, id: alarm_motion)
a mistake on my side or an error?
Thanks for answers
regards Daniel

314

I have one Ring doorbell device. The snapshot is saved in the Homey Images directory with the name “homey:app:com.amazon.ring”. What happens when one has multiple Ring doorbells or Ring camaras? Does the name remain the same and the second Ring image only has an other id, or does the second image get a suffix in the image name?

315

That’s not the name, that is the source. The images have a guid as their name, it will just show multiple tiles, one per camera or doorbell.

(Keientrekker?)

316

Is it possible to get the video directly from Ring cameras or doorbells? Using RTSP or any other means?

317

Dear forum users,

I struggle severly with my Ring Video Doorbell which does not generate any alerts in my home.

I have a Homey Flow to send a doorbell sound #4 with 30% volume to four Sonos speakers, and when clicking “Play” while testing the Flow, everything works perfect. But when clicking on the actual door ring button, nothing happens via Homey, I only get a notification in the standalone iPhone Ring app.

How can I make my Ring app in Homey actually make a notification? I have tried removing both the Ring device and the whole Ring app from Homey, to no change. I also use 2FA on my acount. All help is greatly appreciated!

318

If you set the if card to trigger at general alarm that should do the trick.

319

I don’t see that option.

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IMG_03991179×2556 161 KB

320

Here is my flow.

IMG_0400
IMG_04001179×2556 196 KB

321

Which app did you install?
I think you’ve installed Athom’s version, I don’t recognize the flowcards. It should be able to do the trick but Emile told me it’s more limited than my version and the code isn’t open sourced so there’s no one to help you out with that app other than Athom themselves.

322

you can check this post:

323

I’m (already) using Scrypted (docker image on Raspberry Pi) to get HomeKit Secure Video in HomeKit.

How can I use Scrypted (for triggers) in Homey flows as well?

(want to do something similar to Jakob and also noticing that the “official” Homey Ring app doesn’t properly trigger flows)