Ring Always Home Cam drone: What is it, and how to sign up for an invitation

A year after it was first announced, Ring’s Always Home Cam flying camera drone will finally be available for purchase — for those few who are invited.

Instead of installing home security cameras all around your house, the Ring Always Home Cam is a drone that can give you a bird’s eye view of anywhere inside your home, from wherever you are. 

Ring Always Home Cam: Design

The Ring Always Home Cam drone uses a quadcopter design, with the rotors housed in a protective basket. Below the rotors is a compartment that houses the battery and 1440×1440 HD camera with a 120-degree field of view, both vertically and horizontally. A built-in LED helps illuminate subjects in low light, and it has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi.

The drone docks in a white base when it needs to recharge. The drone itself measures 7.5 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; the dock is 7.5 x 7.5 x 4.74 inches.

It also has obstacle avoidance technology so it won’t bump into walls and such. When you first use the device, it creates a map of your home, so you can direct it to go to specific rooms. 

Ring Always Home Cam: How it works

The Always Home Cam has a flight time of about five minutes; owners can program up to 50 different flight paths into the drone.

If you have a Ring Alarm system, the drone can be programmed to automatically fly to where the disturbance was detected. That’s sure to be a rude surprise for any intruder or teen trying to sneak back into your house. You can also manually fly the drone around to check on things while you’re not home. 

We’ll add more to this as we learn additional details about the Ring Always Home Cam. It’s an interesting idea, but we’ll wait to see how practical — and how creepy — it is to use. While other companies have tried this concept with outdoor drones, but the low price of Ring’s drone makes it more intriguing, and kinda creepy, too.

On Amazon’s page, it notes that the Ring Always Home Cam will only work on one level of your home, so it can’t go up and down stairs. 

Amazon also notes that the Always Home Cam is about as loud as a vacuum cleaner or a blender, and is only intended to fly when you’re not at home. Your pets may take some time to adjust to the sound and sight of it flying through your house.

Ring Always Home Cam: Price and how to get an invite

The Ring Always Home Cam will cost $249, and is an invitation-only device at this time; here’s how to apply for the invitation.