Home Depot and Ring – an Amazon company – have formed a partnership to market new “jobsite security” products for contractors.
This new line of alarm system-type products first appeared in late-October, kicking off with large banners on Home Depot’s website.
A reader – thank you Travis! – wrote in about Home Depot’s Ring banners around the same time I came across them, and I made a note to investigate.
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Later that week, I came across a Ring jobsite security floor display at my local Home Depot store, but there were only tear-off sales sheets and no actual products. Then, as I was walking through the store, a Ring jobsite security advertisement playing through the store’s loudspeakers.
I have been to several Home Depot stores numerous times since then, and I also spent a lot of time on their website last month. To my surprise, there weren’t any further peeps about this venture between Home Depot and Ring.
I’ve been looking into the new Ring jobsite security products, and to be honest, I’m still not clear as to what it’s all about.
Ring makes various smart products for home security and monitoring purposes.
As far as I can tell, the new Ring Pro jobsite security products are basically orange-colored versions of their everyday consumer products.
They say that Ring Jobsite Security is a first-of-its kind security system, but is it? What’s new about this, aside from the contractor-orange color scheme?
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Ah, there’s an orange “Jobsite security powered case,” that seems to be new. But besides that, how is any of this “smart security from the ground up?”
Well, at least the Ring “jobsite security” products don’t look to cost any more than their regular consumer-targeted SKUs.
So, from what I can tell, Home Depot and Ring launched an orange tool box for securing the Ring Alarm Pro base station and compatible battery packs.
This still looks like it could be interesting for contractors, but it doesn’t seem to be as big of a deal as suggested by the banners on Home Depot’s website, the in-store displays, and the in-store announcements. Maybe I’m missing something?
Does this seem like a big development to you?
DaveinMD
I have been looking at this for quite some time to put on job sites. It seems to good to be true when you compare the cost to other construction monitoring services. There does not seem to be any detailed information about install, setup, and reoccurring fee’s, hence the reason I haven’t pulled the trigger. HD has two reviews on their website but they seem to be planted reviews.
DavidinMD
Reviews are now updated from when I last checked.
MM
I wonder if the “Fine print” on this is the same as their residential products? If so, now Ring gets to spy on you at the jobsite not just the home.
Gordon
Even when Ring says they won’t, they still do. Video footage was being sent to the Ukraine for storage and analysis. Employees were watching video and sharing clips of stuff they found funny or interesting.
Supposedly Amazon shut that location down. But what other stuff is happening that we won’t hear about until it’s way too late.
Lee
How many job-sites that need securing also happen to have wi-fi access?
Dave the tool
Was thinking the same thing. No wireless access, no RING!
Jenny
You purchase WiFi from ring and the wireless router in the orange case provides WiFi for the cameras.
Kent E Hanson
Many of our sites now have wifi because of the amount of video conferences or video inspections being done.
JR
I would guess that there is a LTE hotspot inside that case along with the batteries.
However, not enough details at this point for anyone to really comment on the product.
Michael F
If it has an LTE hotspot this won’t be a cheap solution. I work from home full time so I use my Google Fi data plan as an LTE backup for my home network. We had an 8 hour outage a few days back and in those 8 hours we put 5GB ($50) on the LTE plan. As best I can tell, most of that network traffic came from my 3 Nest cams streaming video back to Google. Sure, I could probably stream at a lower rate or in a compressed format, but overall it’s still dollars per day adding up on that LTE plan which will vastly surpass the original cost of the system after the first week. Something to consider.
JR
I think most construction companies are already on a commercial unlimited plan. Adding another device is simply $10 per month. That’s less than one sheet of plywood being stolen from your build site.
Peter Fox
Unlimited plans are very rarely actually unlimited. Streaming multiple camera feeds continuously is almost guaranteed to exceed data cap limits and result in throttling unless 5G service is available at the site.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttled-fire-departments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/
Dominic L
Agreed. Every one of the mobile networks, ends up throttling you. Most people don’t realize how much data it takes as camera resolutions increase. And with payment plans set on Autopay, it is easy to exceed data limits. The 20 GB data limit, is such a low number that is easy to reach. Needs to increase to far more realistic levels of 100GB on up.
JR
That’s not how Ring works. It only sends a few seconds of video to the cloud. You can live stream one camera at a time if you wish, but it does keep prompting you if you want to keep viewing. It was never designed for continuous viewing.
Regardless, if this system has too many faults or cost too much to use, it will fail and disappear.
DavidG
It has a ring pro base station which can connect to a wifi network or use a built in cellular modem. It uses the ring protect pro plan which is $20/month and $3/gb from what I remember.
Michael Eibling
I’m less than enthused with the ring. Had a break in and the guy actually stole my whole ring alarm system. Still waiting for a replacement and that was three months ago.
Koko The Talking Ape
You just need another Ring alarm to guard your first Ring alarm. Problem solved!
David M
Or u could just paint your whole ring system orange and fool the thief into thinking it’s just a cheap old toolbox… oh wait, someone already thought of that idiotic idea. Painting a freakin target on your security system, so now they just have to come in and cover up or steal anything orange… dumb dumb dumb… how are these idiots still in business?
Jorn
At a glance it appears what separates this product from Blink/Ring product intended for the home are:
* It has an optional LTE hotspot service (so that a wifi network isn’t needed).
* It doesn’t require dedicated power / runs off of a battery therefore making it mobile.
DavidG
Its the same base station as the Ring Pro, just painted orange and offered in a tool box.
The Ring Pro base has a built in battery and they also offer additional batteries to extend runtime. You can look on the Ring website and get an idea of the base runtime and how long the additional batteries will power the system on cellular.
You might could build a the same system for less buying the Ring stuff on sale and putting it in Packout box. Biggest issue is going to be battery powered runtime.
Kent Skinner
I wish Ring had a decent track record of respecting user privacy. I wouldn’t even consider installing their products.
Matt S
The Pro Base has a battery backup in it already, lasting about 24 hrs. You will need to plug in the base station while on-site to charge during working hours; you would probably need to fill the case up with the stackable batteries if you were going to get a whole weekend of coverage while off-site. I do not believe the cameras will record if the base station battery runs out (no internal memory on the cameras). The batteries in the cameras themselves will last quite a while without charging.
Hon Cho
Cameras are great for creating a record of theft but when many local law enforcement agencies either don’t have sufficient resources or don’t put much emphasis on property crimes, products like this don’t really do much for you in either crime prevention or recovery of stolen goods.
Frank D
Cost adds up pretty quick and I don’t know how much of a deterrent cameras would be vs the motivated criminal with a mask and/or hoodie.
Yes, you will have an alert and hopefully a cloud recording of what happens/-ed; but you’re likely also going to find all your Ring gear smashed and/or stolen.
Rcward
Just what I need Orange security cameras.
fred
On one jobsite we found that some of the off-hours security guards were doing the stealing.
To quote Juvenal : “Sed quis costodiet ipsos costodes”
Jim
If you’re worried about vandalism, materials theft, or illegal dumping, I don’t know if cameras will do much. Unlike someone’s home, the criminals can be fairly sure a jobsite it empty in the middle of the night. Maybe the cameras would help if someone was dumb enough to make their license plate obvious before burning the building down, but otherwise I haven’t many instances where the police were throwing a lot of resources at tracking down people who dumped a mattress or stole a dozen 2x4s. Long story short, I don’t see this type of system providing any cost savings to developers.
James Staggs
I bought one for a job site that we had 10k in appliances stolen from a storage unit outside.
The data gets used up quick, the camera motion won’t set off the alarm. I bought a few ring door sensors and paired them. It could use some tweaking but it’s not a bad start.
RH
As a guy that installs security systems, part of the problem is people don’t care if they have footage taken of them stealing. They are typically in and out so fast you can’t get a responder there, especially since state laws require any triggering to first go to a monitoring agency. We’re also seeing the rise in WiFi jammers that can block out the low-end WiFi on most cameras, allowing thieves to break-in to vehicles, grab items and scoot.
There are better options I put in now:
– Wired cameras, where I purposely hide the wire. More than a few people think its not working with their WiFi jammer.
– Cameras good enough to get license plate numbers. That really helps the police track people down. Worst case, the next time they go to renew plates they flag in the system.
– Speakers. More than a few people are scared off when someone starts talking to them through a speaker/microphone combo.
We’ll get to the point where we’ll have the return of cheap armed guards in high theft areas, because ultimately that’s the best deterrent around.