I’ve been happy with my Ring Doorbell camera, and when one of our motion lights stopped working, I decided I wanted to use the Ring motion detecting Floodlight Camera to replace it. The only problem is that the Ring Floodlight Camera is designed to be wall mounted (about 8′ high) and Ring specifically says it can’t be mounted under an eave. Challenge accepted.
As It turns out, you CAN mount a ring floodlight cam under an eave, but unless your eve is flat the camera part doesn’t have quite enough play in the provided ball joint. (My eve follows the upward slope of my roof.) To fix this, you need to loosen the retaining screw, pop the camera unit out of the ball joint, and then grind a notch that will allow it to swivel upwards (formerly downwards) just a bit more.
The end result looks like this:
Here you can see the notch I ground out of the ball joint:
I used an angle grinder with a grinding wheel, but the plastic is soft, so you could do it with a rotary tool or even with a file by hand if you had a lot of extra time. Note the masking tape to make sure the camera cable stayed well out of the way of the grinding wheel.
There is an internal square tab inside the ball joint, which also has to be filed down (I used a hand file for this one):
After this small modification to the ball joint, there was plenty of flexibility to aim the camera exactly where I wanted it and have the bottom of the motion sensing pod level with the ground. Of course, you will need to rotate the lights so they are not “upside down”, so the “rain shields” are correctly on the top. [Note that the camera part is shipped “upside down” in the box, and normally you would need to flip it over when wall mounting, so you can omit that step.]
I am lucky, in that I have a low roof, so that the angle of the camera is still right around where it should be for capturing good images of faces. If you had a two story house, mounting a camera under the eave wouldn’t give you a very good angle.
Does this modification void the warranty? Possibly. If the device fails due to this modification, it would certainly void the warranty. [For example, if the camera unit falls out and breaks after I modify the ball joint designed to hold it.] However, if the camera unit were to fail due due to an electronic or software problem completely unrelated to the modified ball joint, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act could give me legal standing to insist that Ring replace/repair the camera unit because its failure was unrelated to my modification. [I’m hoping the situation doesn’t come up….I made sure to test the floodlight camera before I broke out my angle grinder to make sure everything was working right before I started hacking on the ball joint.]
I just received my flood light and I may have a newer model than you but i was able to loosen the nut next to the base and rotate the lights so they are not upside down.I have not got the grinder out yet but that’s a great idea because I didn’t want to go to the trouble adding a box on my outside wall.
Yes, I was able to rotate the lights on mine as well!
Thanks Guys, I was holding off until i could install a wall outlet, but this should work. Will give it a try.
I had one installled under mine and no jury rigging was required.
Burring out the gimbal housing isn’t actually necessary. If you remove the housing screw and nut and pop out the camera, you just 180deg the gimbal housing so it points toward the unit base/plate. Gives you the extra movement to get the camera sensor level.
Also collars at the base of the led lights undo so you can pan them around so the rain guards are the right way up.
Would post a pic of the installation I just did here but can’t, sorry.
Do you think the adjustment Of the gimbal housing would work from a higher eave or 2 story? I assume the relayed picture is not displayed upside down? Thanks.
The video is upright, and would “work” from a 2 story eave, but you wouldn’t be able to see people’s faces, so it probably would not be terribly useful for identification purposes other than to identify clothing and vehicles.
This was just what I needed! (although the design should have handled this mounting.) I have had my Spotlight Cams since I started building my new house. The columns on my porch would not take the electrical box so my electrician had to mount the box under the eaves. Thanks for posting this since all my conversations with Ring have been a waste of time. Although the FAQs say it can be hung horizontal, no one at Ring can explain HOW! The bonus, I don’t have to worry about voiding the warranty!
Yes, this worked for me too! NO grinding necessary, just pop out the camera and rotate it 180 degrees and pop it back in. This allowed the camera to angle further up and aligned the motion sensor parallel to the ground. Thanks!
I found that I had to grind out the gimble, possibly because my eve follows the roofline (slopes upwards).
What collars? Maybe mine is a newer model and they removed the collars, but I cannot align my lights pr I properly without them being upside down. They simply won’t spin around in the right direction.
Great info! Thank you!
We just moved to a new home. It was mounted outside a garage on a wall and worked fine. It’s mounted under an eave now and the flood lights will not go off. Had a electrician look at it but can’t seem to fix it either. Any suggestion?
Sorry, no ideas here. As long as the motion detectors are mounted in the proper orientation, the flood light should turn of when no motion is detected as long as you have the software set up correctly (e.g. always on turned off, etc….) Try toggling the flood light using the phone app to confirm they can be turned off, if not, it might be a defective solid state switch inside the unit, at which point you just hope it is still under warranty.
Will this work with the Ring floodlight cam wired plus? I need to mount them under eves.
I don’t know, as I have not installed a Wired Plus floodlight cam. I suspect that the housing will be exactly the same and they only updated the electronics inside, so it should still work, but can’t guarantee that.
Marie: I don’t think so for the wired Plus. I’m working on the same problem. There is no collar at the base of the lights to rotate them right side up. Switching the camera 180 degrees doesn’t change adjusting range when trying to mount on a horizontal service. You’re probably already done by now but I’ll send a pic after the modifications.