Face image is more important. We get so few people at the door that it wouldn’t be hard to deduce what happened.
Motion clips
Yes. But not always real strong.
Nope.
We have a Ring, and while many of the complaints regarding its reliability are valid, I get a recording uploaded to the cloud that I can review later (like when I realize someone stole something). Living in a tightly-packed neighborhood, I get so many false hits on motion that that feature is useless for real-time monitoring.
All that said, since we got it, we haven’t had any thieves brave enough to pluck packages from our patio. We had nearly $3000 (retail price) in packages stolen from our doorstep in a single day before that (my wife’s grad school books and a cell phone).
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Another Ring user here. V1. Works OK.
It can take a LONG time to answer, but that said, I’ve answered it before someone who was at the house was able to get to the door more than one time, so it’s not so long that the people have always walked away (which has happened a few times as well). That said, in about a year or so of having it, I can think of probably less than 5 times where someone came to my door that I wanted to actually talk to. 99% of the time it’s just a delivery, which covers the use case Chris is asking about here.
One thing that I think is nice is that it pings my watch, often times before someone even rings or knocks, so that I can head the inevitable barking from the dogs off at the pass… sometimes. That said, now my pavlovian dogs bark at my watch, because they think that someone is at the door…
I have mine wired to the doorbell chime, so it never requires battery charging and I can run it pretty much all the time without worrying about power. My front door is also well angled for it so that it’s not backlit at all. All in all, I do recommend it, but there may be better options.
Something that nobody else has mentioned yet (I dont’ think) is the cost of cloud storage. Your options are to either have live access only, or pay $3/mo or $30/yr for their cloud recording option, which is absolutely worth it. Keeps recordings of every person who approaches your door, whether they push the button or not.
For those of you who have what I’ll call online services, how well does that work when you’re out of town … or out of the country?
I live at the intersection of a one block long street with 4 houses and a one block long cul-de-sac with 5 houses. There is very, very little traffic. I’m hoping that won’t be an issue.
Based on what you are saying a Doorbell camera is for you.
Ring is good there are others I would tell you unless your wanting to spend more don’t stress higher resolution it just does not matter that much especially if you keep a light on at the doorway.
Online services work fine. My biggest question for you is how is your door situated? Can you do a paper drawing of where your doorbell is in conjunction with your door? Is it on a sidewall pointing to the other wall? On the door facing out? Other considerations, what direction does door face? Does the sun hit it?
Door is in a completely surrounded alcove. Doorbell is on the wall perpendicular to the door. The sun doesn’t hit the doorbell.
On the Ring at least (and I am sure others) there are shims that let you change your the angle a bit if the doorbell position/angle is not ideal.
FWIW, I also agree with others that while the realtime aspect of Ring can be problematic at times, overall I still like the product.
Having just went through this, the shims would not do it for us, we ended up relocating ours that was positioned like yours to the right of the door. While a PITA, worked much better.
Another vote for Nest cameras. I really like ours and since we use other Google Nest products in our house, having it all in one app is really convenient. I like that I can open the app and see a view from above my front door at any time (only time it goes down is when our WiFi is down). It gives peace of mind when we’re away from home. I’ve never had a video doorbell, but I guess if it’s only motion activated you can’t do that? (Just assuming on that). We’ve also shared captured footage with community groups when there were car break-ins nearby.
Most of the video doorbells are on motion or press. They notify you differently depending on the circumstance.
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Good to know, thanks!
Other than the security reasons, I also like that I can open the camera feed to see if it’s raining at my house or not 
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On press Ring shows up almost like a phone call, with an answer button.
I am concerned that people stealing things may not press the doorbell. I can see that as a potential shortcoming for my intended use.
With ring motion alerts, it records the motion as well, if you have the option to notify on you will get a notification
Ring also allows you to connect to “live view” (well, mine does, I assume they all do) in addition to button press and/or motion events.
Out of town mostly depends on your service there; otherwise, no different than standing in the house. Out of country I assume is similar, but never have tried that… though as mentioned, with the Ring stuff, the “live interactive” aspects are pretty much SNAFU OOB…
We have a Ring 2. Wife is iFone, I’m on Android.
There are times where she gets alerts (or ring tone) a full minute before mine.
both on same wifi, same provider, etc.
As for catching people walking up to the front door, it’s pretty good at that.
Since the street in front of our house runs N-S, there are times of the day (morning and afternoon) where the glint of sunlight off of a passing car window/windshield will trigger the motion detector. With that,we get a lot of false positives almost every day.
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Me too. Sometimes it is quick, but mostly not. I see a lot of car brake lights as cars drive away.
Excellent WiFi at the door. Tried repeaters and all sorts of things. 200MBit internet.
Another option might be a full fledged security DVR.
Lorex have a fairly decent deal at the moment on an 8 channel 2K camera system for $397 (need to enter the savings code to see the lower price at checkout)
I currently have a cheap Chinese 16 channel 1080p system but their web interface is beyond diabolocal!!! The Lorex system looks a LOT better and is certainly better supported.
They have many different options but for me this one seems great. Just need to pull the trigger.
https://www.lorextechnology.com/hd-security-camera-system/N-2o0h5aZfi0ynlZzg97q1
A full DVR system is certainly more work on installation, but constant, local recording and remote access has its benefits.
Just to clarify most if not all have motion but you want to aim the doorbell towards the path you expect people to come up. I have not measured it but I would guess it’s about 1-2 seconds it takes from motion to record on most systems I have used. 1-2 seconds could be the entire frame if the camera is horizontal to your position you intending to record. Notably it will also ping your phone that someone is walking up to the house if you have a smartphone and the app.
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