Amazon’s Ring doorbells get fire alerts, an app store and new sensors

Amazon’s augmenting its Ring smart doorbells with new features, including new fire alerts, an app store, and a new set of Ring Sensors.

The company said the new Ring Sensors can detect motion, openings, glass breakage, and smoke, and can also monitor carbon monoxide levels, leaks, temperature changes, and air quality. They also let you control lighting and appliances that are connected to your smart home network.

Amazon is also adding a new app store to the Ring app to allow users to use its cameras with third-party apps. The store is currently available in the U.S. only, and users will be able to browse a selection of apps in the coming weeks. While the company didn’t specify what kind of apps the store would feature, it said these apps would focus on small business operations and everyday needs around the house.

And as fires grow more common in drought affected areas, the company has teamed up with the fire monitoring app, Watch Duty, to show real-time updates and early warnings in the Ring app’s Neighbors section. Users can also share live updates using their Ring cameras to this section.

Notably, the new devices being launched support Amazon’s Sidewalk shared network feature, which creates a mesh network between the company’s Echo and Ring devices by sharing a small portion of your bandwidth, enabling devices to work even when they aren’t in wireless range of your Wi-Fi router.

Amazon is also adding a new AI-based feature to Ring cameras that learns the everyday patterns of a property and alerts users if anything unusual occurs. Dubbed “AI Unusual Event Alerts,” the company said the feature enables the Ring camera to surface specific warnings when it detects a person, based on location, actions and clothing.

For people who subscribe to Amazon’s Virtual Security Guard services, these warnings could trigger intervention automatically. In the last month, the company has rolled out features that use video recognition to trigger Alexa responses and send you personalized notifications based on a database of 50 faces.

The company has also launched a new Ring Car Alarm with in-built GPS for vehicle monitoring.