Wired doorbell rarely triggers mechanical chime

[panopticon42]

Hi, when I installed my Arlo doorbell a month ago or so, pressing the doorbell button reliably triggered the mechanical chime I had attached it to.

Last night I noticed that the doorbell rarely triggers the chime. It seems to work sometimes if I haven’t touched it for awhile. Does anyone have any advice? I already followed these KB articles:

https://kb.arlo.com/000062327/My-existing-chime-does-not-ring-when-I-press-my-Arlo-Essential-Video-D...

https://kb.arlo.com/000062346/How-do-I-reset-my-Arlo-Essential-Video-Doorbell (recommended by Arlo support.)

On a side note, I spent 45 minutes chatting with Arlo support today and it was a total waste of my time. The agent was very slow to respond, often taking three minutes per reply. And the agent was very unhelpful, asking repetitive questions (“are you sure you followed the steps in the link I sent? Are you sure you’re sure?”) Finally I asked to talk to the person’s manager and they said I would get an email about that tonight. No email yet…I wonder if it was just a ploy to get me out of their support queue. I wonder if I should try a company with more reliable support. What good is a Plus subscription if the support is useless?

[panopticon42]

So I just contacted chat again and this person was much more helpful. They quickly reviewed the case history and recommended that I switch my power unit and doorbell wire to the “rear” terminal. And now the doorbell works. It only goes “ding” instead of “ding dong”, but it’s a big improvement.

[StephenB]

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@panopticon42 wrote:

Last night I noticed that the doorbell rarely triggers the chime. 

It could be a marginal transformer (not providing quite enough power to ring the chime reliably).

[panopticon42]

Thanks. How would I diagnose that? I held a multimeter across the wires at one point and observed consistent 13V potential.

[panopticon42]

Now the doorbell has image quality issues. When viewing the camera live and while viewing the camera recordings I see weird artifacts. The video is choppy and jumps around. Or the image looks like wet painting that has been smudged.

[panopticon42]

I can’t upload videos to this site, so I uploaded them to dropbox. In the videos you can see the choppiness. The bus jumps backwards, freezes, and then disappears.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/k56jqhyapiui064/AABqeWmx6QGhvvV8AaJg7ayVa?dl=0

[StephenB]

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@panopticon42 wrote:
 I held a multimeter across the wires at one point and observed consistent 13V potential.

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The wired doorbell transformer spec is 16-24 VAC

[panopticon42]

Originally I had measured the potential with the doorbell still attached to the wires. After removing the doorbell from the wires, the potential is 15.8V.

[StephenB]

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@panopticon42 wrote:
Originally I had measured the potential with the doorbell still attached to the wires. After removing the doorbell from the wires, the potential is 15.8V.

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That's close - is the chime still marginal, or is it working?

The video issues are bitstream corruption - generally caused by loss on the WiFi connection, or the internet connection to the cloud.  The first thing to check is the signal strength at the doorbell location.

[panopticon42]

The doorbell is connected to a base station. How do I check the signal strength?

Since switching from the “front” to “rear” terminals on the chime, the mechanical doorbell works every time. (But does only a “ding” not a “ding dong”)

The signal strength was not a problem before, and the video was fine for a month. The base station hasn’t moved. I think it’s a problem with the device.

[StephenB]

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@panopticon42 wrote:
The doorbell is connected to a base station. How do I check the signal strength?

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There are two ways.  There is a signal strength icon in the app (which has a couple of bars).

If you have an Android phone, you can also download several wifi analyzers which will show you the signal strength of the networks that the phone "sees".  If you go near the doorbell, you'll see the strength of the base station signal in that location.

[panopticon42]

Thanks. The video doorbell shows full signal strength as you can see in the attached image. The doorbell is attached to an Arlo base station, so I don’t think that I can use a WiFi analyzer directly on its signal, but I get strong signal from my WiFi (130 Mbps down and 45 Mbps up) at that location, and the WiFi and base station are collocated.

Arlo has agreed to an RMA for the defective device, but I have to pay $20 if I want them to ship a replacement before I return the defective unit. We had car prowlers last week, and now Arlo wants me to pay to return their defective device or else go without a security camera for weeks? Terrible customer service.

[panopticon42]

Whoops, I can’t attach an image because it has the “jpeg” extension but Arlo’s system only allows “jpg”. I’m on my phone and can’t change the extension.

Here’s a link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/edatvio4y4x70jk/Photo%20Nov%2013%2C%2005%2012%2016.jpg?dl=0