Installing Video doorbell in Australia is too complicated, but it could be and should be simple.

[WLB]

Installing Arlo products is usually very easy, but installing an Arlo Video Doorbell in Australia is a nightmare.

I have multiple hubs and 12 cameras. That was all remarkably simple to set up. The instructions for the video doorbell make it look easy to install too, but it isn’t.

An electrician, an electrical store, and a security systems installer couldn’t work out how to do it.

This may be simple to some people, but I am not an electrician and it was not simple for me. I suspect it won’t be simple for many others, and yet there are simple solutions that Arlo should make people aware of being purchasing this product.

Firstly, no power supply is provided. There is an expectation that people will have a wired doorbell. It would appear that most people use wireless doorbells these days, so a wired doorbell may need to be installed in newer houses, if one plans to provide power to the Arlo video doorbell, via an existing doorbell.

An Arlo video doorbell requires a 16-24V transformer.

Australian wired doorbells tend to require 8V.

Thus, using an Australian wired doorbell won’t provide enough power.

Arlo could have made the installation much easier by providing the correct power supply with their video doorbell.

This would have enabled the electrician to join the wires from the transformer directly to the wires that have been used for the existing wired doorbell. I presume that using a 16V transformer for an 8V device would have destroyed it, but I suspect there could be a way of bypassing the existing doorbell.

I suspect that Arlo would price themselves out of the market, if they advised consumers that an electrician will almost certainly be needed. Perhaps they do, but I wasn’t aware of this when I bought it. This adds to the total expense of the doorbell.

My situation may have been extra complicated because the doorbell was part of an intercom system.

In the end, I had to order a 16V wired chime box online, because Australian wired charm boxes are only 8V. I bought a “Newhouse Hardware CHM1 Door Bell Chime”, but it didn’t come with a power supply.

The user manual for the Newhouse doorbell says that this must be powered “with a 16-volt/10 VA or 16-volt/15 VA transformer”.

Jaycar was the only store in town that I could find that supplied a 16V transformer that would plug into the wall. I bought the “16VAC 1.25A Unregulated Power Supply BareEnd” from Jaycar.

My son, who is studying electrical engineering, and I were able to connect the power supply to the Newhouse chime. My son soldered a wire from the transformer to the power supply to an existing wire connected to the old doorbell. Otherwise, everything connected as per the app and the video doorbell was receiving power

Unfortunately, it took numerous attempts to get the video doorbell to connect to the hub.

After numerous attempts on separate days, I moved the hub and modem closer to the doorbell and it connected and now it works as expected.

It took a lot of online reading and searching for the correct chime and transformer before I could make it work. In my opinion, everything that one needs should come in the box.

Ultimately, this has become an expensive exercise, because I needed to pay the electrician and buy a new 16V chime and a 16V transformer.

That is way too complicated, in my opinion, when there may be a simple solution.

The simple solution is that Arlo provide a 16V transformer that can be plugged into a wall near the video doorbell. Effectively, an electrical switch could be installed on the inside wall near the doorbell and the transformer could be directly connected to the video doorbell without using a wired chime box. Yes, an electrician would be required, but it would be easy. It would have been a simple matter of getting an electrician to connect two wires to the back of the video doorbell.

[ZippyRainbow]

I have purchased a Arlo Video Doorbell too, and after a few days of inconsistent working, I can see this is also my issue.

I guess I will need to go down the same track as you now and get these products ordered online.