I think this is the most exciting news I’ve heard this year. I’m on my third Skybell (they all end up failing the same way) and I am so looking forward to an alternative! I will be watching the forums with bated breath.
I’m thinking it probably should be pretty quick, probably a few weeks give or take hopefully.
Curious, what model of skybell has been failing, is the it HD round?
What are the specs of your transformer for the doorbell circuit? I’ve seen a good chunk of battery issues with the HD round model.
Yep, the HD round. Strangely my issues haven’t been the same battery problems as everyone else (on my neighbor’s unit the battery swelled and the thing opened like a clam shell). My problems are the PIR lens…they all seem to craze at first and then later crack and fall apart. This leads to lots of falsing when you don’t want it and a failure to sense motion when you actually do. I’ve had this happen on multiple Skybells, on multiple properties. When still under warranty they’ve asked if we use anything unusual to clean it (we don’t) or if it is in direct sunlight most of the day (they are). I have an Optex FTN-RR2G FitLink motion in the same area and it has outlived all the Skybells.
I know no one can predict exactly when ADC will launch a new product but I really appreciate you sharing what you can. Other customers reading this should take note that part of the Surety difference is the level of transparency and communication with the customer, and this is a good example of that.
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When still under warranty they’ve asked if we use anything unusual to clean it (we don’t) or if it is in direct sunlight most of the day (they are)
So you’ve had it crack and wear down in under a year? Yeah I would assume sun damage, but that speaks to an overall concern with the materials.
Well, from the looks of it and the info I have, the ADC model looks to have a much higher build quality.
Only one unit actually had a problem within the warranty period, at about 9 months old. It started with lots of false trips and activation failures. Taking a high resolution photo of the Skybell and then zooming in on the PIR lens revealed it was quite oxidized. All the Skybells we have had seem to exhibit this around the 1.5 year to 2 year mark. In my experience the problem gets worse over time until the lens becomes brittle and eventually cracks and pieces fall out, usually at the end of year 2 or 3. The rest of the Skybell (including the camera lens, plastic housing, and push button) still looks brand new, which says to me that they need to consider using a different plastic for the PIR lens. Maybe they fixed this in newer revisions… It doesn’t matter to me at this point as I have officially bought and recommended my last Skybell.
I understand that engineering a UV resistant translucent plastic isn’t easy, but for what these things cost I certainly expect more. Looking at the picture of the new ADC unit I don’t see a PIR lens so I’m wondering if they’ve released any other tech specs yet. Surely there has to be a PIR that I just can’t see in the picture, as using the camera only (pixel change) to detect motion would be problematic in its own right. Since ADC has released that it will support analytics I guess it is always a possibility.
I am very happy to see it supports the SVR but I would love ADC to release an ONVIF compliant camera at some point (which they told me at ISC years ago will never happen). The fact the battery is replaceable (hopefully easily) will be a huge improvement over Skybell, in my opinion. I’m hoping the WDR on the camera and the WiFi antenna are better too.
The PIR on Skybells was actually very problematic from experience. It worked well in certain circumstances, but given the wild differences in layout it may be viewing, I think it was really hard to dial in proper sensitivity.
The new ADC doorbell works with Alarm.com Video Analytics, with smarter target processing to identify when humans approach vs. vehicles or lighting changes or animals, etc.
Any idea if the new ADC doorbell will allow access to an rtsp stream for local archiving (in addition to, not in lieu of using it via ADC)?
No, this is not likely. I think there was talk about it working with the SVR, but I haven’t found any confirmation of that yet.
New doorbell model Alarm.com ADC-VDB770 showing available on my B36 portal some time next week.