Hi Ring team. I’m building Porchlight, a caregiving app, for the Build, Ship, Shape hackathon (Ring track). It’s a private app with account linking working end to end: token exchange, account link, and webhooks all verified.
I’ve enabled the Contact Sensors (Indoor & Outdoor) scope in the console, and my account has a Ring Outdoor Contact Sensor that is online and healthy in the Ring app. After re-linking, the consent screen lists only my cameras and doorbells. The access token’s scope is ava.v1:read, and GET /v1/devices returns only camera devices.
Is sensor access still gated by the dynamic-scopes Early Access program? If so, could you enable it for my app? The door sensor is central to the use case: telling a family member when an elderly parent’s door opens at night with nobody outside, or has been left open.
Hey, thanks for the detailed writeup, and it’s a great use case.
Sensor access is in Early Access, and there are two things that determine whether a contact sensor shows up, both worth checking:
Sensor scopes only work in an app’s Sandbox version, not the live version. Even with the Contact Sensors scope enabled in the console, sensor discovery only works through the Sandbox/Test flow with an allowlisted account, not the live Appstore version of the app. Worth confirming you’re linking through the Sandbox/Test flow.
Only the newest standalone sensor hardware is currently in scope. Early Access supports standalone sensors that connect over Amazon Sidewalk with no Alarm Base Station required. Older sensors that pair through a Ring Alarm Base Station (Z-Wave) aren’t in the current scope and won’t appear, even with everything configured correctly.
On the product page, look under Power and Connectivity, the supported model lists Amazon Sidewalk and notes “No Base Station Required.” That’s the quickest way to tell whether your Outdoor Contact Sensor qualifies.
Also, quick terminology note: there isn’t a separate “dynamic scopes” enrollment we toggle per app. The gating is the Sandbox-only Early Access behavior plus the supported-hardware scope above, rather than a per-app switch.
If you’re on the Sandbox flow with a supported standalone Sidewalk sensor and it’s still not appearing, open a support ticket with your app/client details (best not to post those here in the forum) and we can have engineering take a look.
Hi, I’ve purchased couple new ring sidewalk devices: temp and humidity sensor, outdoor contact sensor and indoor window and door contact sensor you’ve mentioned. All except of the latter where added as standalone devices and I could get access to them in sandbox apps.
However Window & Door Sensor (Newest Model) is shown under alarm base station (my setup has alarm base station) and is not shown as other sidewalks devices including outdoor contact sensor on ring app main dashboard.
Thanks for the detail, that actually tells us exactly what’s happening, and the short version is you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s down to how these sensors choose their connection.
The newer Window & Door Sensor can connect either over Amazon Sidewalk or over Z-Wave through an Alarm Base Station, but it uses one or the other, not both. The choice is made automatically during setup based on your location: when you set the sensor up, if there’s an Alarm Base Station on that location, the sensor is routed down the Z-Wave (Base Station) path. If there’s no Base Station on the location, it goes down the Sidewalk path. The setup flow makes that call for you, there’s no manual toggle.
That’s why your other sensors behave differently. The ones that came up as standalone devices connected over Sidewalk, so they appear in device discovery. This Window & Door Sensor got routed to the Base Station (Z-Wave) because your setup has one, so it shows up under the Base Station in the Ring app rather than as a standalone device, and sensors connected that way aren’t part of the current sensors Early Access, which covers standalone Sidewalk sensors only. So it won’t surface through device discovery while it’s attached to the Base Station.
A couple of important notes before the fix:
Simply unplugging or powering off the Base Station won’t switch the sensor over to Sidewalk. The sensor stays registered to the Base Station until it’s unregistered.
There’s also a feature tradeoff to be aware of: Sidewalk-connected sensors don’t have full feature parity with the Z-Wave (Base Station) versions. Most functionality is the same, but a few features differ, for example, a Door & Window Sensor on Sidewalk doesn’t have the quick exit feature that the Z-Wave version has. Sidewalk can also carry a bit more latency than Z-Wave.
To get this sensor onto Sidewalk so it shows up in device discovery, you have two paths:
Set it up on a location that has no Base Station. You can create a new location in the Ring app and set the sensors up there, with no Base Station present, they’ll go down the Sidewalk route and appear as standalone devices. One thing to know: subscriptions/billing are tied to a location, so a second location may need its own plan to use all the features there.
Unregister the Base Station on your current location, then set the sensor up again so it routes to Sidewalk. This is the heavier option: unregistering removes your alarm system from that location, so it’s only worth it if you don’t need the Base Station/alarm on that location. The path is: Menu → Devices → Alarm → select the Base Station → Device Settings → Advanced Options → Unregister System.
For a build/integration setup, a lot of partners find it cleanest to keep a dedicated set of Sidewalk sensors on a Base-Station-free location purely for development, separate from any sensors you rely on at home. That avoids disturbing your actual alarm setup while giving you clean standalone Sidewalk devices for the integration.
Hope that clears up the “what am I doing wrong” question, nothing on your end, just the Base Station steering the connection.
That helps a lot! One followup question so the Outside Door Sensor ( Outside Door Sensor | Ring ) is different one and is not added to base station by default (if it exists)?