Ring Doorbell Tech Possibly Stolen from Skybell

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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When it comes to digital doorbells, Ring products have dominated the marketplace, no questions about it. Skybell Technologies have filed a lawsuit against Ring that claims it stole a bunch of its tech and then simply did a better job at marketing and advertising to corner the market. Seems that Sharktank is involved as well.

Skybell Technologies, an Irvine smart doorbell startup, has filed a lawsuit claiming its Santa Monica competitor, Ring, copied its technology and is profiting from advertising and marketing techniques rather than innovative software and hardware.

The lawsuit states that Ring knowingly used technology from three Skybell patents after Skybell’s chief executive, Joe Scalisi, sent an email to Ring founder Jaime Siminoff that included a link to the company’s patent portfolio in the signature.

"After its ‘Shark Tank’ appearance, Ring has continued to pursue the same strategy: attract sales by advertising and marketing, without necessarily providing any technical innovation," Skybell said in the lawsuit. "Indeed, although Ring may claim to be a leader in video doorbell technology, the numbers tell a different story."
 
2 big problems with Ring. 1. it's already been hacked. 2. they did nothing to secure it afterward that I know of.
 
what technology? Attach a webcam to a doorbell and presto, you have a ring. This isn't innovation but a gradual evolution.

Yes they did beat you on marketing. Who the hell heard of skybell?
 
Gigus Fire said:
what technology? Attach a webcam to a doorbell and presto, you have a ring. This isn't innovation but a gradual evolution.

Yes they did beat you on marketing. Who the hell heard of skybell?
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I'm relatively savvy, but when I got my Ring, there hardly was any competitor who could remotely offer such a turn-key package. Yeah, it's a rather generic fish-eyed webcam with a battery that lasts about 3-4 months on a single charge (or indefinitely it wired), but the value comes from how it pushes notifications to the Ring app (iOS and android) when there's movement or when the doorbell is pressed. You can easily add more devices to the service, and easily add more users to a single account (e.g. so your S.O. can also answer the door / review footage remotely). My biggest complaint is that there's a severe delay with the motion capture to the point that I often only catch the back of people's heads as they walk away. I may have to setup a WiFi repeater closer to the Ring to reduce the wind up time exacerbating this issue.
 
Have Skybell, it works well enough for my needs. No need to pay a monthly fee like Ring. It's nice to glance at the front of my house from work and see what's going on or who came to the door.

I would have never heard of Skybell other than it was posted to a deal site one black Friday and I decided to try it out.
 
Sounds like two separate issues. Excusing marketing underperformance on IP theft. Seems like two problems.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
I'm relatively savvy, but when I got my Ring, there hardly was any competitor who could remotely offer such a turn-key package. Yeah, it's a rather generic fish-eyed webcam with a battery that lasts about 3-4 months on a single charge (or indefinitely it wired), but the value comes from how it pushes notifications to the Ring app (iOS and android) when there's movement or when the doorbell is pressed. You can easily add more devices to the service, and easily add more users to a single account (e.g. so your S.O. can also answer the door / review footage remotely). My biggest complaint is that there's a severe delay with the motion capture to the point that I often only catch the back of people's heads as they walk away. I may have to setup a WiFi repeater closer to the Ring to reduce the wind up time exacerbating this issue.
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Webcams (ip cameras really) have evolved. A lot of them now include motion detect and actions that you can program. Combine that with cloud service (AWS I think ring uses) and push notifications (again nothing new in the mobile app space) and an app on your mobile device and that's all ring is.

You're absolutely right in that they have one of the best turn-key solutions. Of course it comes with a price (ohh you want those recorded videos that we store regardless if you buy the service? cough up 30$ a year), and that it's not very customizable. I can't save those videos locally, nor can i bypass their cloud service.

The problem you're talking about is latency, and i don't think it's 100% a wifi issue. For the motion detection to go off, to send that info to their cloud service, for it to finally send the push notification to your phone and for your phone to connect all takes time. By the time you start viewing, those crucial 5-10 seconds have passed and it's more like a 15-25 second lag and that's way too long to really do what they advertise, which is answer the door when you're not home.

The fact that it still pushes videos through your internet is somewhat shitty even if you're not paying them for their service.
 
Gigus Fire said:
Who the hell heard of skybell?
Click to expand...

The only reason I know if them is because of research for what operates in a fairly cold climate :)
Skybell does -40 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 to 65 degrees Celsius), Ring Pro: -5 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (-20.5 to 49 Celsius)
 
ChrisJohnson00TA said:
I've had 2 versions of Skybell now over nearly 3 years. Love them.
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Love my Skybell also. I've had a front porch pirate (i think) see it and turn around and not take a package.

Another benefit of Skybell is you can tie into your alarm.com system if you want.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
I'm relatively savvy, but when I got my Ring, there hardly was any competitor who could remotely offer such a turn-key package. Yeah, it's a rather generic fish-eyed webcam with a battery that lasts about 3-4 months on a single charge (or indefinitely it wired), but the value comes from how it pushes notifications to the Ring app (iOS and android) when there's movement or when the doorbell is pressed. You can easily add more devices to the service, and easily add more users to a single account (e.g. so your S.O. can also answer the door / review footage remotely). My biggest complaint is that there's a severe delay with the motion capture to the point that I often only catch the back of people's heads as they walk away. I may have to setup a WiFi repeater closer to the Ring to reduce the wind up time exacerbating this issue.
Click to expand...
The delay is partly due to waking the device up, you can toggle a setting to make it not idle as deeply but it impacts battery life. If your home came with a doorbell/doorbell transformer find that transformer and replace it with one like this or similar https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000K2EC7K and wire the ring up to your new transformer. If your home doesn't have a regular doorbell transformer and wiring from it to the original doorbell then it's probably easier to get the version of the Ring that can take a POE connection.
 
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