My video doorbell has been on a serious delay but I’ve finally found a way to fix it
Is your video doorbell lagging? Here’s how to fix it
I love my video doorbell but ever since I went on holiday earlier this year, it’s been acting up. As I was away for two weeks, I turned off my Wi-Fi before I left so I wasn’t wasting any unnecessary energy, and this inadvertently turned off my video doorbell.
When I returned, my video doorbell didn’t immediately go back online. I had to completely reboot my Wi-Fi before recharging the doorbell battery, and updating a few things in the app. Finally, I was back online but the problems didn’t go away immediately.
Recently, I’ve been realising how delayed my video doorbell is with notifications and detection. As a hybrid worker, I work from home most days and I can see when people come to my door. I’ve started to realise that even though someone has come and gone in front of my doorbell, I only get a notification after the interaction, so at least five to 10 seconds after the event has occurred.
As you can imagine, this was becoming extremely annoying and I was missing deliveries, so I decided to look into why my doorbell was doing this and how to fix it.
Why is my video doorbell on a delay?
There are a few reasons why your video doorbell may be delayed. The main culprit is a slow or inconsistent Wi-Fi connection. Battery video doorbells tend to be affected by this more, as they’re powered by batteries and Wi-Fi which can take a few seconds to catch up.
Slow Wi-Fi doesn’t just affect your doorbell, either. Your smartphone can also be affected which causes even more of a delay. If you have any power settings on your phone and in your doorbell app – you can extend your doorbell’s battery life if you select certain settings – these can also impact how quickly your doorbell responds.
How to fix your video doorbell’s speed
To improve your video doorbell’s speed, go into your doorbell app and select your Device. Depending on the brand you have, you can check Device Health if you have a Ring or Blink doorbell or Signal Strength for others. Look at the RSSI section which stands for Received Signal Strength Indicator.
RSSI is shown in negatives. Your signal should be between -30 dBm and -67 dBm, but if it’s anything ‘over’ -67 dBm, this means your signal is very poor and this is likely affecting your doorbell’s response time. To fix this, you may want to move your router closer to your doorbell or invest in a mesh Wi-Fi system.
If your power settings are slowing things down, you’ll want to go to the Power Settings and update this. Alternatively, device updates could be impacting your app’s cache so you may want to clear this and reinstall the app to speed up your doorbell’s detection and notifications.
