Motion Detector: Mountable in room corners or on flat walls, they can trigger audio or mobile notifications whenever motion is detected, and you can adjust motion sensitivity to avoid unnecessary notifications caused by pets (weighing under approximately 22kg).

There’s also a new Geofence feature. When you arrive home, you can choose which cameras to snooze and how long for (the default is 15 minutes), so you don’t receive notifications about yourself turning up. Note that your cameras still record; you just won’t get swamped with alerts that you probably don’t care about. If you are registering the Alarm at a new location, you’ll also receive a 30-day trial of Ring Protect subscription so you can try out professional monitoring** now. Using any of the buttons starts a countdown. Cleverly, the three numeric buttons to the right of the emergency light up, then extinguish one-by-one, showing that the system is operating and how long you have left until the feature is activated. ConclusionAt the heart of the system is the base station, which is the same as used on the original alarm. This is a Z-Wave hub, communicating with the wireless sensors and components, an internal siren, and the communications hub with the internet. What’s particularly clever about the new system is that it maintains the same base station, so users of the existing alarm system can add the new sensors or sirens into their existing system, without being forced into upgrading everything. It’s nice to see a company do that for once. Design and installation Geofence can also be used as a reminder to set your alarm if you go out and forget. That’s actually better than just setting the alarm: if you have house guests, for example, you don’t want to turn the alarm on when you go out. You can also choose to get a prompt when you get home, telling you to turn the alarm off.

If you've started with a 1st Gen Ring Alarm kit, you can add 2nd Gen devices to your Alarm Base Station. If you buy a new 2nd Gen Alarm Kit, you can add both 1st Gen and 2nd Gen devices to your Alarm Base Station.

Liquid error (sections/product-template line 350): Could not find asset snippets/pdp_bundles.liquid That’s a lot of options and shows that Ring has really thought out all the ways you may want to keep the siren going. My only minor complaint is that it would have been nice if Ring could have built in the solar panel, as with the old Y-Cam Alarm’s siren. If you have the original Ring Alarm, you can buy the sensors individually to expand your home system. In all cases, the app takes you through installing the devices, testing them and making sure that the Z-Wave signal gets through. If you’re having problems with range, then all of the kits ship with plug-in Z-Wave extenders that should help. Features Keypad (2nd Gen) with one-touch emergency buttons. If you have signed up for Professional Monitoring,** you can request police, fire, or medical response by holding one of these buttons for 3 seconds.

At its most basic, the Ring Alarm (2nd Generation) works much like any smart (or dumb, for that matter) alarm system. It has three modes: Away, Home and Disarmed. Away arms all of the sensors; Disarmed has them all disabled; Home has your selection of sensors active. A keypad is nice to have, but I’d love Ring to release a keyfob, as you get with Abode, since this is often the most convenient way to arm or disarm the system. Yes! The new Ring Alarm (2nd Gen) devices are smaller, providing you with more options for mounting and securing them within your home. It’s much neater, and the new size makes it easier to place this model where you want. It’s also less intrusive, if you want to have multiple keypads around your home for arming and disarming in different locations. If you don’t want to have to recharge batteries, you can either permanently power the siren (you can wire it into a transformer or buy the Plug-In Adapter 2nd Generation), or buy the solar panel for the Spotlight Cam.Base Station: The central Hub of the system, it connects to your home internet by Wi-Fi or Ethernet.