Remember the time your Ring doorbell failed intermittently? No, doesn't ring a bell....
Most of my blog entries are written for fun...to flex my awesome writing skills and to share a few of the silly things I get up to in my spare time.
This one's a bit different... I thought I'd write it for two reasons:
1) There's a chance that a combination of keywords (DETA 3500 TRANSFORMER, RING DOORBELL) might work their magic in the almighty algorithm and help someone out there repeat this project in their own home.
2) Should my house burn down imminently, it will be easy for folks to identify the cause ;)
So, doorbells?
Yeah... I've had a hardwired Ring doorbell (2nd gen) for a few years now - along with a number of their cameras. And I should say from the outset, I'm not a fan.
They just don't work very well... I remember a few years ago when we were trying to sell our house... on a number of occasions the real estate lady was able to come and go with potential sellers without any of the cameras picking it up at all. And if people can enter and leave your house without note - what's the point?
So the event detection is dodgy, and the ongoing subscription cost is annoying - especially when you have several devices. This, then, doesn't constitute an advertisement for the Ring ecosystem!
So the event detection is dodgy, and the ongoing subscription cost is annoying - especially when you have several devices. This, then, doesn't constitute an advertisement for the Ring ecosystem!
But the doorbell felt like the worst of the lot because sometimes it just didn't work, even as a doorbell.
...turns out, the battery would go flat sometimes.
...turns out, the battery would go flat sometimes.
How can the battery go flat if the thing's hardwired?
Good question.In my naivety when I installed the doorbell, I assumed that a doorbell was a doorbell...and if you plugged the wires from your old doorbell into the Ring, you'd be golden. Not so.
Anatomy of a doorbell chime:
 |
| My old doorbell, featuring my beloved DETA C3500 TRANSFORMER. |
So my old doorbell chime was made up of two main bits. In red, "the dinger" - the thing that actually "chimes". In blue, a transformer, to convert mains electricity in to a gentler voltage appropriate for a lowly doorbell. In this case, with the DETA C3500 TRANSFORMER (spamming those keywords!), around 7V.
Turns out, the RING DOORBELL needs between 8V and 20V to charge properly... so there was never quite enough power to keep the doorbell properly juiced up.
So, let's make it better.
2) Use a wall plug transformer and just pin the cable around the doorframe. Simple, but not very aesthetically pleasing.
3) Figure out some way of fitting the transformer in the same place as the existing chime. Cheaper, aesthetically... neutral?
Wait, but why wouldn't you just buy another doorbell if you don't like the Ring one anyway?
Another good question!
Truth is, with Prime Day having come and gone, it was pretty tempting to just buy a different doorbell... but it turns out I'd have the same issue with most other hardwired smart doorbells.... so fixing this now should both get the Ring up and running and also future proof me for a potential upgrade down the line.
Possible approaches
Most of the transformers I looked at were designed to fit on DIN rails - ie they're meant to go in a fuse box. Or they were plug-in-to-the-wall jobs. So we had three main options:
1) Put the new transformer in the fuse box. Probably a job for a sparky. And a lot of fiddling figuring out which cable goes to the doorbell etc. Expensive, hassle.
2) Use a wall plug transformer and just pin the cable around the doorframe. Simple, but not very aesthetically pleasing.
3) Figure out some way of fitting the transformer in the same place as the existing chime. Cheaper, aesthetically... neutral?
Option 3 seemed like the way forward, so I bought a couple of bits:
 |
| A transformer. |
This was the cheapest transformer on Amazon with half decent reviews. It's pretty straight forward... your mains cables go in the two screws on the bottom and you choose the pair of screws on the top to give you 8V, 12V or 24V respectively.
I made one minor modification to the enclosure... it had two little hooks on it to hold the transformer in place... I guess because some are "single width" units and some are "double width". But the shorter one was causing the longer one not to hook on solidly. So I got rid of it.
Behind the chime was a bit of a mess in the plaster, but otherwise a couple of sensible looking things... the mains cable and the thin doorbell cable - each nicely pinned in position to stop them disappearing back into the cavity. Pretty much what I was expecting, but you never know.
One of the only curve balls I found was that the inputs and outputs on both the old and new transformers weren't labelled. I assumed that one would have to be positive and one negative. Obviously this was easy to determine for the nice blue and brown mains wires... but the doorbell was just plain white.
I wasn't sure if it would matter which way round the doorbell cables were attached... but to err on the side of caution, I took a sharpie and marked which cables were on the right side of each pair:
Once the cables were marked up I simply unplugged them and removed the old chime completely:
 |
| Snazzy Ring enclosure |
I also bought this snazzy Ring transformer enclosure. Ring sell a branded way of sorting this problem "Ring Pro" or something. It's basically the same thing, but more expensive. But the snazzy enclosure they sell for storing it in looks nice, and was around the same size as my old chime - save me touching up the paint around it.
You can see there's not much to this thing. It's a plastic box with a fake DIN rail in the middle of it, for your transformer to push on to.
You can see there's not much to this thing. It's a plastic box with a fake DIN rail in the middle of it, for your transformer to push on to.
 |
| Transformer should just sit on the fake DIN rail like this... |
I made one minor modification to the enclosure... it had two little hooks on it to hold the transformer in place... I guess because some are "single width" units and some are "double width". But the shorter one was causing the longer one not to hook on solidly. So I got rid of it.
 |
| Just a little snip. |
With that done, I felt pretty ready to get the old doorbell off and see what's what.
I TURNED THE POWER OFF.
Important step!
Behind the chime was a bit of a mess in the plaster, but otherwise a couple of sensible looking things... the mains cable and the thin doorbell cable - each nicely pinned in position to stop them disappearing back into the cavity. Pretty much what I was expecting, but you never know.
 |
| I'm assuming the original plasterer had a hammer to hand, but not a stanley knife... |
One of the only curve balls I found was that the inputs and outputs on both the old and new transformers weren't labelled. I assumed that one would have to be positive and one negative. Obviously this was easy to determine for the nice blue and brown mains wires... but the doorbell was just plain white.
I wasn't sure if it would matter which way round the doorbell cables were attached... but to err on the side of caution, I took a sharpie and marked which cables were on the right side of each pair:
 |
| Future electricians will have fun wondering what the black smudge means... |
Once the cables were marked up I simply unplugged them and removed the old chime completely:
Clip in the transformer, attach the wires. A little googling suggested we want the live wire on the right, so I went with that. Given Ring wants between 8V and 20V, I opted for the 12V option. I have seen people use the 24V option, but I didn't want to take any chances.
.jpg)
Whilst the little hook gripped better after I cut off its shorter sibling, I still didn't really trust it....so I shoved a spare wall plug in behind it, to make sure it wouldn't come unhooked any time soon.
 |
| They never provide advanced techniques like these in the manual! |
And that's that. Clip on the cover. Fire up the power. Tada!
 |
| Glorious white box of joy. |
Does it work?
You know, it's annoyingly hard to tell. The way the Ring app updates battery status etc seems really broken. So it's hard to tell if it's charging, or what the actual battery level is... There's no satisfying "I fixed it, now I can see it's charging!" moment...
...but best part of a week later the app continues to show that the bell is hardwired with 100% battery, and regular testing suggests it's pretty reliable now.
Any downsides?
The only real downside to this is that there's no "dinger" in the new chime box - so swapping back to a dumb doorbell would mean replacing the chime again.
Did it take long?
No. Not at all. The worst bit was going round putting all the clocks right again after the power was turned back on. A simple project, but got the job done.