2 Messages
Doorbell camera fried?
My electrician installed the doorbell camera according the installation guide, and the volt meter read 17~V AC, well within the recommended range. The camera wouldn't turn on, and then after a while he said it smelled like burning.
We took the camera inside to plug into an outlet/cable to test it as we did before installing it on the door and it wouldn't turn on.
Is there something he's missing? Or is there a preferred lower voltage?
Thanks
Kim
Official Solution
davey_d
Community Admin
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5.7K Messages
10 months ago
Hi @kimhuston ,
The Video Doorbell Pro does have a very small battery that is used for performing certain tasks (like when you take the camera off the mount to perform a reset - which is what you did when you held that button in the back).
But that battery is charged when the Video Doorbell is properly secured on the mount; the circuit itself should keep the unit charged. So there's no need to plug it in via USB (and that port also doesn't even charge the battery at all).
Though I'm not sure what could have been happening that caused that initial issue; 17v is indeed well within our recommended range of 8-20. Perhaps it was just the act of unmounting and re-mounting the Video Doorbell, so that the electrical contacts were better situated, that fixed the issue for you.
In any case, I'm glad the camera is now working as expected. If you run into trouble again, please keep us updated!
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Accepted Solution
kimhuston
2 Messages
10 months ago
I saw on a couple questions here that the camera might need to be charged, so the electrician charged the camera while he installed a lower voltage transformer (or whatever the part is called that regulates voltage output from a 120v line). He went from the 17v AC output to a 10v AC output.
He put it on the bracket after that and it still wouldn't turn on.
I called customer support, as suggested, and spoke to somebody that said to hold down the larger of the two little buttons in the back of the camera for 20 seconds and then put the camera back on the bracket. After about a minute the lights started turning on and it went from I think green to yellow and then it said that it was initiating or whatever it was. Then it went to white and I started the connecting the device to the app process. All the went according to plan and now it works!
In the end I'm not sure changing the voltage mattered at all. I think it was just the charging, resetting, waiting the long amount of time for it to reset, and the adding the device again to the app that did it.
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captain11
Captain
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6.2K Messages
10 months ago
@kimhuston My friend who is a Sr Network engineer for a national IT firm fried 3 of them before SS finally got it to work. Call support, authenicate and then hand the phone over to your electrician. Mine went in fine but I did need the chime adapter. BTW, only works on analog chimes!
Please post your outcome here if you get a chance.
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