Doorbell upgrade

[Peter Johnson]

I have a wired doorbell with two chimes wired in parallel and I am thinking of replacing the bell press with a Ring Video Doorbell Pro. Being designed in the US, this runs at 24v.To enable it to be installed in UK 12v installations Ring provide a link wire to be installed in the chime, to disable it. Details here:

Two questions:

1) What would be the likely effect of my 12v chimes receiving 24v? 2) Wouldn't it be possible to put a resistor in the circuit so the chimes get 12v? (I guess that if the answer was yes the Ring would provide one but I'd be interested in knowing what the team thinks.)

TIA

[Andy Burns]

Is the "Pro" much different from the normal one?

[tabbypurr]

if it's mechanical it won't care much. If electronic it may die. A resistor dropper can be used, you may often need a big capacitor too to even out the reuslting voltage. Don't overlook how much heat the R produces.

NT

[alan_m]

I wonder which bit of the system contains all the intelligence?

If it's the door push box with the camera that contains the wi-fi transmitter/controller and the plug in ringer is just that then to obtain your own system just go along to someone with one of these systems and unscrew the bell push/camera from the front door!

[Brian Gaff]

Well Ring is now an Amazon company, but no you could not use a resistor as the drop over that would depend on current drawn through it. Did you miss ohms law? You could use a series regulator chip but in both cases the current drawn would be greater than if it was in fact matched internally, which I'd have though was what Ring do in their circuit. I don't understand why anything should have a different dc voltage in one country to another though.

Remember however you regulate the voltage, as you take current the extra dissipation is expressed as heat unless you use a switch mode device where its the duty cycle that changes. Brian

[Harry Bloomfield]

Peter Johnson explained on 23/04/2018 :

If the two are the same and just electro-mechanical rather than electronic, then adapting them to series connection should be OK - If I understand the question?

[alan_m]

This is 24V AC and NOT 24V DC

Very short sighted to design a power supply for the push button box that couldn't supply the necessary internal DC voltages from the electronics from both 12 and 24V AC. There cannot be anything in the push button box that in other applications would be supplied from a 5V USB connection.

[Peter Johnson]

Don't know. The push is narrower. I'll look at the video later. Thanks for the link.

[Peter Johnson]

It was a long time ago, which is why I asked the question.

[Peter Johnson]

Well, I think I understand the answer. They are both electo-mechanical

- either side of the same spot on a wall as it happens, so I could do that quite easily.

[tabbypurr]

he finally gives us the relevant info.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Keep everything as is, but use a relay fed from the video doorbell to trigger the old system?