The Ring Alarm system is great, offering homeowners a simple way to install and manage their home's security system. But sometimes you want to turn off the alarm system completely, which is difficult considering that the Base Station has a internal battery backup.
This article discusses how to turn off the Ring Alarm system (by removing the battery), and also covers alternatives to simply yanking the battery out!
A Recap of the Ring Alarm System
The Ring Alarm system is a fairly innovative product: instead of hard-to-install wired alarm systems with expensive monthly subscription fees (I'm looking at you, ADT!), Ring came along and unveiled something different. The Ring Alarm system has a range of battery-powered sensors, which all communicate wirelessly (using something called Z-Wave) to the central Base Station:
The fact that the individual sensors are all battery-powered means that installing the alarm system is fairly simple, especially since the sensors all come with pre-installed adhesive strips too:
The Base Station itself connects to your home's internet, and it can do this over Wi-Fi or via an Ethernet cable for better stability (remember that Wi-Fi can be jammed, but Ethernet is safe from this):
Whenever anything happens in your home (such as a protected door or window is opened), you will be notified of this within your Ring app. If you pay for professional monitoring, a third party company will also monitor your alarm system alerts – and contact the local authorities if needed.
The Ring Alarm system also comes with a battery backup (and optional cellular backup, for an extra monthly fee), meaning that you'll always be protected even in the case of a power or internet outage.
Reasons to ‘Turn Off' the Ring Alarm System
That's all great, but what happens if you need to completely turn off your Ring Alarm system, so that you don't get anymore alerts? There's a few reasons why you might want to do this:
- You're moving to a new home or apartment, and you naturally want to box up your Ring Alarm system (without it being set off!).
- You are experiencing a weird bug with your Ring Alarm system, and you want to try the old “turn it off and back on again” trick.
- You want to change the Wi-Fi details, but you've run into an issue that makes it hard to change the Wi-Fi details within the Ring app.
Well in this case, you'll want to remove the internal battery from the base station. Here's how to do that.
How to Remove the Battery from the Ring Alarm Base Station
The process for removing the internal battery from the Base Station is pretty similar for both the first and second gen Ring Alarm base stations, but with one potentially key difference: the Ring Alarm Pro supports power packs. These are extra battery packs costing $129.99 each:
Be sure to remove these power packs first, by unplugging the cables on the back of the power packs, and also your base station.
With that said, the rest of the battery-removal process is the for the original and next-gen base station.
As is the same with laptops, you should never attempt to remove the base station battery with live power flowing through it. So before doing anything, you should unplug the main power cord from the base station.
The next step is to flip the base station over, and locate the screw hole where the battery is located. On the original (first gen) base station, it's near the groove where you can run the power cable down:
On the Ring Alarm Pro base station, it's easier to locate since it's one of the only visible screws:
Once the battery-compartment screw is removed, you can slide out the plastic cover. This will show you the actual battery:
Now it's ‘simply' a case of removing the battery, but this can be a bit fiddly – be sure that you don't just pull the battery and damage the three wires. Instead you should try to gently pry out the white wire plug with something flag – such as a tweezers or a flathead screwdriver:
Once you have popped this white wire plug out, you can remove the battery with ease – there should be nothing else keeping the battery in place:
And that's all there is to it! Your Ring Base Station is now completely turned off, because the device that monitors your whole security system (i.e. the base station) no longer has any power source.
Whilst this is a simple enough process, you might be wondering if there's an easier way to silence your Ring Alarm system?
Easier Ways of “Turning Off” the Ring Alarm (Without Removing the Battery)
There are a few ways that you can ‘turn off' (or otherwise silence) your Ring Alarm system, without yanking the battery out.
Just Let The Battery Die
The battery in the Ring Alarm base station will last for 24 hours tops. The original base station's battery is usually good for the full 24 hours, but the newer Ring Alarm Pro lasts for less time (sometimes as little as 6-8 hours) due to the integrated Eero router which drains the battery more.
Therefore you could potentially argue that the best way of ‘disabling' your Ring Alarm system is to just pull out the power cord, and then leave the battery die. It'll make some warning noises whilst the battery dies (it makes small beeps/chirps), but if you can live with this for 8-24 hours, it might be the easiest approach.
Switch to Self-Monitoring, Disable the Siren, Then Ignore the Notifications
If you pay for professional monitoring, you're bound to be worried about how to best silence your Ring Alarm. But thankfully you can switch back to self-monitoring, meaning that the authorities won't accidentally be called out.
To do this, launch the Ring app, click on “Settings”, “Monitoring” then “Monitoring Type”. You can then select “Self Monitoring” from this section.
Next, you should ensure that the siren won't be triggered whilst you disable (or adjust) your Ring Alarm system. The best way of doing this is to set your security system to be in “disarmed” mode. You can do this via the keypad, by clicking the first button on the top row (the one with a shield and a “x” in it):
Alternatively you can launch your Ring app, and select the “Disarmed” setting at the top:
This mode will still record events (such as doors and windows being opened, if you have sensors on them), but it won't end up triggering your Ring alarm siren:
When Disarmed, no sensors in your home will be monitored and no alerts will be sent to the monitoring station although the system will still be powered on and functioning. Use Disarm when you're at home and want the freedom to go in and out of your house easily.
– what the “Disarmed” mode on the Ring app does
Finally, you should go into each sensor and ensure that the notification toggles are off:
Wrapping Up
At this point, you will have essentially ‘turned off' your Ring alarm system:
- The authorities won't be called, since you turned off professional monitoring.
- The siren won't sound, because you went into disarmed mode.
- Any ‘annoying' notifications (to your phone) also won't be sent, because you disabled them for all your sensors.
This might be easier than yanking out the battery, but of course you will then need to change everything back once you're done. So it's up to you which method you prefer.
(I personally prefer the destructive/satisfying approach of yanking the battery out, but your mileage may vary!)
