The Ring Video Doorbell is an excellent home security camera made for monitoring the front of your house. IFTTT for Ring provides a degree of automation that most owners aren’t aware of. IFTTT is a free service that integrates devices and services such as gmail, your phone, Facebook and Pinterest. In some cases, IFTTT integrates devices from one manufacturer with those from another manufacturer. IFTTT is an acronym for “If This Then That”. You can do some very cool stuff with IFTTT for Ring and this article will show you how to do it. IFTTT isn’t owned by Ring and in fact is independent of the devices that are supported.
First thing to do is visit the IFTTT web site and register. Once you get there, you will notice what they call recipes. These are pre-written scripts to facilitate integration. IFTTT for Ring entails use of a Ring specific recipe. It allows integration between a Ring Video Doorbell and other services or devices.
There are also objects called channels. Each officially integrated device has a channel. There’s a Ring channel which you will activate. When you activate the Ring channel, IFTTT will ask you to confirm that you are ok with the controls that you will permit IFTTT to use. Click ok.
Now you can begin to use some Ring specific recipes. You can select the Ring Channel to see all the recipes available.
My favorite IFTTT for Ring recipe integrates a WeMo Light Switch with the Ring Video Doorbell. I have a WeMo Light Switch controlling my porch light. Using the WeMo Light Switch, I can turn my porch light on and off from anywhere in the world. I can also use a service like IFTTT to control the WeMo Light Switch. The photo that accompanies this article is the recipe for integrating the Ring Video Doorbell with a WeMo Light Switch.
Hooking this recipe up is very easy. After you get into the recipe, activate the WeMo Switch and Ring Video Doorbell channels. After you do that, simply select which doorbell and switch you want to integrate. When somebody rings your Ring Video Doorbell, the porch lights that are controlled by the WeMo Light Switch automatically turn on. This is automation at its best! I like to use it when coming home to the house and the lights aren’t home. It’s clearly very useful for other stuff too like scaring away a bad guy at night.
WeMo is useful to me because I have invested in their technology. There is as similar set of recipes for the Hue line of bulbs too. Like the WeMo recipe, this recipe will turn on a Hue bulb when the doorbell is rung. I actually like Hue better than WeMo for this purpose. I got involved with WeMo and made a substantial investment early on which is why I use the WeMo Light Switch instead of a Hue bulb.
Another nice IFTTT integration is the ability to log whenever someone rings your Ring Video Doorbell. A recipe to integrate Google Drive with Ring will log the event to a Google spreadsheet. This is useful for active doorbells to log how often someone is at the front door.
As of this date, there are over thirty IFTTT for Ring recipes available. I only mentioned a few in this article to give you an idea of the automation potential using IFTTT for Ring. There are some very useful recipes for integrating a Ring Video Doorbell with email, texting and other lighting devices. Over time, I would expect some new recipes for integrating events such as home and away.
Read our Ring Video Doorbell Review for all the information you ever wanted to know about the Ring Video Doorbell.