Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells

http://fortune.com/2016/03/16/ring-raises-61m-funding/

by jsiminoff • 10 years ago

40 53 10 years ago

fortune.com

AlexMuir• 10 years ago

A little under $1 for every home in the US [0], so far.

[0] http://www.statista.com/topics/1618/residential-housing-in-t...

seizethecheese2• 10 years ago

Yeah, and at $199 per house this is a massive market. They say they are at 50,000 units per month, so around $10 million per month in sales, which they say is growing at multi-hundred percent yearly. Doesn't seem obviously foolish.

brk• 10 years ago

It depends on how you look at it. Right now Ring is the primary company in this market, but if they get real traction it would be easy for Google to add a button to a Nestcam and make a Nestbell. There are Chinese companies flooding the security market with low-cost and good quality equipment.

Ring got a $200M valuation. Assuming investors would be happy with a modest 5x valuation, Ring is going to have to sell several million doorbells to make that happen.

hijp• 10 years ago

I like this a lot because of its inconspicuous design. Are there any other security cameras that aren't bulky?

You can get an iphone 6s camera replacement for around $40, it seems like the quality is far superior to the current consumer security cameras on the market - so why are ring and nest the only options?

brbsix3• 10 years ago

I've had the same wish, but AFAIK cell phone cameras use proprietary interfaces and are not very useful on their own. They require a GPU and chipset. You'd have to include nearly the entire phone to make use of an iPhone 6s camera.

Sanddancer2• 10 years ago

Most cell phones actually use off the shelf sensors and interfaces. It's an easy way to allow differentiation -- have the same mainboard, but different screen sizes, cameras, etc for different lines. I can't find info on the 6s exactly, but previous lines used standard Omnivision imaging chips that spoke over the same CSI-2 interface used by everyone else, and found even on boards like the raspberry pi.

daveguy2• 10 years ago

I think a lot of the limitations on video quality are related to streaming /storage capabilities. Ultra HD (8 megapixels) is not particularly feasible to stream or probably compress efficiently in a small cheap package.

DyslexicAtheist• 10 years ago

"Instead of getting a notification that there was motion at the front door and getting a link to the video, the notification might let the homeowner know that the homeowner’s child was at the door, signalling that little Aidan had made it home from school."

lot of products are being sold in the name of protecting your kids because this is a common reasoning appealing to parents. Not sure how comfortable I'd be growing up with parents who use surveillance capabilities like these and never stop stalking me. I guess I might react in 2 different ways: 1) constantly anxious over who is watching 2) ignoring the way I'm watched and growing up as a "properly indoctrinated soldier" who agrees that surveillance is not a problem and privacy is not a right because you shouldn't have anything to hide anyway.

What bothers me most though is that we make our kids believe that big brother will always watch out for us.

brbsix3• 10 years ago

It's a sad fact of life that people only accept tyranny from their government after first having accepted tyranny from their parents as children.

deepnet• 10 years ago

"Give me the child till the age of seven and I will show you the man."

Ignatius of Loyola

increment_i• 10 years ago

There's also another likely natural response:

3) Rebel

sbov• 10 years ago

Theres plenty of ways they might respond. The kid's exact response probably depends on both the parents and the kid.

Beyond that, the amount of surveillance that already exists in a mobile phone probably far outstrips any new tech around the corner.

ohazi• 10 years ago

NYTimes has a story today on a similar thought - boundaries for parents posting things about their kids on social media:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2016/03/08/dont-post-ab...

Nux• 10 years ago

An interesting and not very encouraging video review by Tech Moan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VvTzmp08OE

I'd rather buy the batteryless (non-Ring) one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9CpalDdd04

geomark• 10 years ago

That's a really thorough review he did in that YouTube video. Quite interesting.

sshykes• 10 years ago

What is the deal with a battery powered video doorbell?

Is there really a powerful enough battery to make it work for a useful amount of time?

Are people really willing to charge or replace the batteries as often as is required (likely every few days or a week at the very least, by my back-of-the-envelope calculation)?

thedogeye• 10 years ago

I have one and love it. Battery's been going strong for 5 months now.

djrogers2• 10 years ago

It'll go 3-12 months depending on usage, but if you've got a wired doorbell already and hook it up it uses that for power (the 12-18v that normal lights up a doorbel) and you never need to charge it.

michaelmior2• 10 years ago

It's rechargeable via USB. That said, the one my parents got seems to only last a week or two. After calling Ring, they said it might have something to do with the cold climate. Still not very impressive.

hijinks• 10 years ago

I just bought one. they claim 9-12 months of battery usage. it also replaces your current doorbell with offers power so it can create that way to

steven2012• 10 years ago

The battery makes it useful for people like me. My current doorbell is placed in a location that would render my Ring useless so the battery lets me place it at a better place.

It lasts about 6 months for me which is good enough.

jerf• 10 years ago

If you're at home, does this go up to the cloud and then round-trip to your phone, or does the video stay on your local wifi?

There's a part of me that cynically wants to just guess that it does always go up to the cloud, but it's also silly (read "expensive") to ship video up to the cloud just to potentially ship it right back down to the very same wifi network, so maybe not.

(Of course I assume the cloud does proxy it if you're not home, because $90 million probably isn't anywhere near enough to actually take on trying to make IPv6 work for consumers reliably enough to make this work. Sad.)

joenathan3• 10 years ago

It goes up to the cloud and then back down to you.

dba7dba2• 10 years ago

All this cloud nonsense... One day someone will come up with an appliance type device that one can keep at home to act as the personal cloud environment. One day...

kungfu1234• 10 years ago

It goes to the cloud, but only to stream the video once it's already been stored.

When the unit senses motion, it starts recording video, then uploads it to your cloud, where you have to wait a short bit before its processed before you can view the video if you didnt answer the ring.

If you answer the ring, the camera is still streaming the video to their cloud which is in turn streamed down to your phone via the app.

joenathan3• 10 years ago

Preordered the Doorbot, the first gen Ring doorbell, it was very buggy and unreliable, I would get maybe 1 of 10 rings on my phone.

The second gen unit has been very reliable, and the video quality is night and day better than first gen. Although there can be a little lag of about 10 seconds or so from when the doorbell is rang till it rings on my phone.

michaelmior2• 10 years ago

My parents got one of these a few months ago. It's been very unreliable to the point where they decided to put back their old doorbell just to make sure they know when someone comes to the door. Been on the phone with tech support multiple times and they haven't really been able to help.

joenathan3• 10 years ago

May be a WiFi issue, you need to make sure you have a solid WiFi network too. In a crowded neighborhood that can be hard to do.

Animats2• 10 years ago

Looks a lot like this $58 item on Alibaba.[1] Is Ring just a reseller with an app?

There are remote controllable door locks. This doesn't interface with them. Nor does it talk to the home security system. The home IoT guys need to get more organized about this.

[1] http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Outdoor-battery-operat...

Sanddancer2• 10 years ago

It doesn't look like it. The model you linked is just a camera, not a camera and doorbell. I also totally agree with you on there needing to be much much much more standardization on IoT stuff. Right now, everyone's separated into their own fiefdoms.

daveguy2• 10 years ago

Yeah, that is just a wifi+3g camera. It takes a lot of engineering and quality control to add a button and a buzzer. I think the fiefdoms will crumble when we get an open-source open-hardware home-cloud device. Yes, I should wash my mouth out with soap for all those buzzwords, but you probably get the idea.

shostack2• 10 years ago

Are there any companies out there making smart doorway camera and such like this that just work off your home wifi network, and can stream directly to your phone or store to local media (or cloud media like Gdrive, Dropbox, etc.) without requiring a subscription?

I really don't want that data hitting some random company's server (setting aside issues with trusting other cloud storage providers), and I just don't feel like adding any more recurring payments to the list. I want one and done.

CaptSpify• 10 years ago

Seems like something you could build with a Raspberry Pi. I too would like a pre-built solution though.

yardie2• 10 years ago

You can already do this with a Synology, QNAP, G-drive, etc. and an IP streaming camera. Most of them have a hybrid cloud service where you get a URL to your NAS and can download files, run services remotely (torrent for example), or stream camera footage.

And its been like this for years. Ring seems a little more polished. But I'd prefer the privacy of keeping that information on premise.

shostack2• 10 years ago

Are there any good tutorials out there on how to hook all of this up? Not super sure of the best thing to Google for this.

ec1096852• 10 years ago

Not doorbell, but nest doesn't charge for streaming from their cameras.

scaramanga2• 10 years ago

In korea, video panels are just wired in to every apartment, even really cheap ones.

It's pretty cool because you can get video feed from the front door (or ground floor elevator door if the building is open and has a front desk). As well as from your front door.

Also it tells you when you have mail, or a package waiting for you, and you can push a button and call the elevator to your floor.

It's got a panic button too.

Oh, and often there's a panel for in the bathroom, as well as behind the inside of your apartment door. So you can buzz people up even while you're taking a crap.

scaramanga2• 10 years ago

charming overview here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGMxw3r5cnw

srcmap• 10 years ago

Can I unlock the door remotely?

If not, it is just a simple security camera system with motion detect capability, right?

Osiris30• 10 years ago

Thats a lot of sales - 50k/month. There are so many competitors here - NetAtmo (1), August, and several others (3). This is isn't like investing in GoPro 5 years ago,... Isn't this more like Cisco investing in Flip camera in 2009 (4) ??

(1) https://www.netatmo.com/en-US/product/presence (2) http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/14/august-unveils-a-homekit-...) (3) http://www.mysmahome.com/FEATURE/5344/7-must-see-smart-video... (4) https://gigaom.com/2011/04/12/stick-a-fork-in-flip-smartphon...

michaelbuckbee• 10 years ago

Looking at their product line and the statements they're making - I'm thinking they are heading towards competing with hOme security services. That move would push them into a much higher margin business and make this make more sense.

mrpippy• 10 years ago

They had a gaping security hole in the product for who knows how long (revealing the configured WiFi SSID+PSK to anyone with physical access to the back of the unit): https://www.pentestpartners.com/blog/steal-your-wi-fi-key-fr...

andrewflnr2• 10 years ago

Hopefully they use the money to fix nonsense like this: https://www.pentestpartners.com/blog/steal-your-wi-fi-key-fr...

An attacker at your door has physical access to your Ring device, which can be leveraged into access to your wifi network (unless they fixed this already).

LogicX• 10 years ago

Your link indicates at the bottom that they already fixed this issue.

andrewflnr2• 10 years ago

Ah, whoops. When I first found the article for a paper I was writing, I was just skimming for details of the attack.

Ring has now raised $100M for video doorbells

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