How to Use Ring Alarm Motion Detectors with Pets

Motion Detectors are a crucial part of your Ring Alarm System. However, homeowners with pets need to take extra considerations into their Ring Alarm system to help ensure their pets don't accidentally trigger the alarm when they're not home.

How Ring Alarm motion detectors work

The Ring Alarm Motion Detectors help detect motion inside your home by using passive infrared sensors (PIR) to scan the room they're placed in. These detectors use heat to detect motion in the room, such as when a warm body (like a human or animal) passes in the area it is monitoring.

Small pets

The PIRs used in Ring Alarm are "pet-friendly", meaning they have settings which are calibrated to ignore heat sources from animals that are approximately 30 pounds or less (at medium setting) and 50 pounds or less (at low setting). 

Larger pets

If you have a larger pet or multiple pets, they are more likely to set off the Motion Detector so we recommend adjusting the sensitivity to the lowest setting.

How to adjust the sensitivity control for your pets

Ring Motion Detector sensitivity control can be found under Devices in the menu of the Ring app or web portal.

• We recommend that you test your Motion Detector to see if your pet(s) trigger your Ring Alarm.
• Use your seven-day practice period to try and adjust the sensitivity slider on your Ring Alarm to a point where your animal no longer sets off the alarm.

  Learn more about Motion Detector settings.
• The Test Motion option can also be utilized when adjusting your Motion Detector settings.

  Learn how to Test Motion.
• This control only adjusts general sensitivity, and depending on your pet, you may find that there is no setting where it does not set off the alarm. If you have any issues, a pet gate can keep your pets away from Motion Detectors when you're not home.

Others helpful tips

• Consider closing doors in your home to lock the pets in a section of the house that has no Motion Detectors.
• If the layout of your house is a bit more open, try using indoor security gates to keep your dog away from the monitoring area. However this method may be less effective with cats, in which case you may have to consider locking a cat in a room while you're away.