[PROJECT] Convert Ring Floodlight Camera to Z-Wave

Why Hubitat Elevation Here's a cool thing I did!
41

Okay have to revive this thread
:zombie: :man_zombie: :woman_zombie:

I JUST got around to doing this (mumble, mumble, never ending projects) and it seems to be working great!!!

Couple of notes:

  • Disabling the Rings red wire only takes out the Rings ability to control the lights. Everything else including motion alerts / motion zones work fine.
  • When installing the HS-FLS100+ G2 make sure you move the motion dial away from the "T" setting otherwise you will be in "Walk Test" mode.. and things will not go well.. not that this ever (just) happened to me of course.. :roll_eyes:

relevant bit from the above link:

OMG. I finally found out what the problem is!

The device has manual dials to set motion sensor time and light sensitivity. If they are on the minimal setting (“T”), the device is put into “Walk Test” mode, in which the light always go on for 5 seconds, irrespective of any other setting. That’s why the Z-wave settings would not work. After moving the dials away from the “T” setting, everything worked as expected!

The manual should really make this clearer. I did find one table there that mentioned something about the different modes… I should have had a closer look before. I just couldn’t imagine it. I had somehow expected that the Z-wave capabilities of this device would be able to override the manual settings, and that’s why I didn’t even touch the dials. This took me forever to get sorted out!

I guess the conclusion is RTFM!!!

posting here for posterity..

edit: the sensor/switch works SO much better than trying to pull in Ring motion events from HA to Node-RED - wasn't getting all the events sometimes. Now also have illuminance and temp as well.. so yayy. Tomorrow plan on hacking my other Ring floodlight cam.

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42

Cool...looking forward to future reliability feedback as time goes on.

I somewhat similarly "hacked" my Ring camera in the driveway by mounting a Hue outdoor motion sensor on the top of the Ring floodlight cam sensor/camera housing, and use motion sensing from the Hue sensor to control the camera's lights via the community Ring integration and motion lighting automations (which I have imported to the new RL app).

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43

I'm currently using the Home Assistant Ring integration - works well although the motion stuff doesn't get picked up all the time but that may be due to the Ring API not reporting it until the motion stops or it just gets laggy from time to time, not sure.

Being able to bypass the Ring Floodlight motion sensor which is different from the Ring Camera motion sensor and integrate directly into HE makes this so much nicer - probably what you experienced with the Hue stuff I'm guessing.

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44

Yes, exactly. The big black hue outdoor sensor does look a little strange sitting on top of the white Ring sensor/camera body, but I can live with that. :wink:

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45

Even in white, not the most attractive thing... but definitely imposing.

_PXL_20220617_113737517 (Small)
_PXL_20220617_113737517 (Small)480×640 37.2 KB

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46

Feel like I'm being watched by a robot... :wink:

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47

That

short circuit eyes GIF

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48

Wonder if this would work with my solar flood lights in the back yard? Hummm

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As long as the power is consistent - you don't want to have those sensors dropping off the mesh all the time. Not sure what the power draw is.

50

Good Point. I hadn't even thought about that.

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