I wired my doorbell to work off of the transformer in my house instead of the battery. All was well for a couple of months, but the other day the doorbell shut down and the app said the battery is low. When hardwired does the battery charge? And if it’s hard wired why would the battery run down, and why would it matter if power is still going to the doorbell? Anyone else experience this?
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Battery drain is based on number of activations, length of recording, and temperature. More activations, longer recordings, and colder temps drain the battery faster. If your doorbell transformer is putting in current slower than the other factors are taking it out, over time, your batteries can’t keep up and they will go dead.
This happens a lot when the doorbell transformer is under rated and when temps are colder. Combine the 2 and you will have issues.
Make sure your transformer is 18-24 vac and rated at 30 VA. You may get by on lower rated transfomers, but do you want to ruin a doorbell that cost you over $100 by not spending $20 for the right transformer?
Another related issue is using an existing chime that drops too much voltage. If the chime is causing excessive voltage drop, you won’t get the required current to charge the batteries. This is a contributing factor if you have an undersized transformer.
You can change the recording time by selecting Optimal Battery Life in the Power manager. You can also reduce the sensitivity of the motion detection if you are getting bogus alerts and this will reduce battery usage.
You can’t do much about temperature, but be aware that below about 40F, the internal charge controller cuts back charge to avoid damaging the lithium batteries. If you have long spells of cold weather, you might have to pull the doorbell off and warm it up to charge it.
When I first got my battery doorbell, I was interested in how much it was charging, but couldn’t tell because all I could see was the green plug icon. So I added a switch to cut off the doorbell current so I could see if it was keeping up. I had a 10VA transformer at the time and it was falling behind. Replacing the transfomer with a 30VA model took care of that and now everything works as designed.
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Thank you for that info. So at my local home depot there is a 16 volt 30va model and a 24 volt 40va model. Which of these would be best? The former is below the voltage requirement while the latter exceeds the va spec. Will the 40va damage the doorbell?
I’d go for the 40VA /24 Vac model. It won’t hurt your devices as they will only use as much power as they need.
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This happened to me too, the reason was because of the cold weather, what is the weather like where you are? If it’s cold and frosty the battery will drain fast.
Very disappointed. 2 weeks later after installing what should be an overpowered transformer the doorbell battery still goes dead. If it’s wired to the transformer why does the battery still drain? Shouldn’t it charge? Why does the doorbell still rely on the battery? Very poor design.
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How many activations have you had? Should tell you in Power Manager.
The transformer only trickle- charges the battery. If your other settings aren’t correct you can still drain it.
The battery doorbell is designed to run off that battery all the time. If you wanted a Wired doorbell, you should have bought one.
The marketing and the manual state that the doorbell can be run off of the battery or transformer. Nowhere is it mentioned that the battery will still drain and shut off your doorbell even when powered… If it did I wouldn’t have bought it. As far as “correct settings”, you imply that my settings are incorrect. Granted, my house is high traffic with five adults, two kids, lots of Amazon and food deliveries. I understand that this will drain the battery quickly. I experienced that. Lower record times and sensitivity settings only resulted in clips that didn’t capture much - and the battery still drained. That’s why I opted to power the doorbell. But sadly by design that doesn’t alleviate the problem with this doorbell. does anyone from the company actually look at this form?
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I have the sqme problem. Hooked my battery doorbell to a transformer from day 1, and it worked like that for almost 1 year. Since then, I don’t see the green charge power-icon anynkre and I have to recharge it evrry 10 years. Bought already 3 new (and different) transformers…but it just doesn’t work anymore. Feels like some update killed it?
Did you recently update the app (on Android)? I noticed the plug icon disappeared, when downgrading the app it was back again.
Seems like a visual bug. It is normal for the battery to decrease percentage but it should be charged back up of course.
It is not only visual, the battery is actually going to 0%… 
Cripes mine went flat over night. Just bought it yesterday. Going back to the supplier today. I previously had a ring door bell with the same transformer. It has never stopped. Very poor design. How ever i do love the cameras.
Actually I just read that the ring doorbell camera is exactly the same. Sorry i retract the poor design comment.
I recently changed over my doorbell from battery to wired. I’ve been noticing comments on battery percent after people have changed over to transformer power.
After I replaced an old underpowered doorbell transformer with a 24v/40va I was watching the battery % steadily decline. Since I replaced the transformer I thought I’d double check my wiring and make sure the power was getting to the doorbell. I removed the doorbell from the circuit and verified that the transformer was working as expected (voltage was being sent) - and it was. Frustrated, I put it back together and double checked the APP and was surprised to see a little green plug beneath the “Doorbell” text on My Devices display.
So what it looks like to me, you need to reset (disconnect then reconnect) the doorbell to get rid of the battery symbol and replace it with the Green Plug. Now, navigating to the Doorbell / Power Manager the % is now replaced with the green plug. If this solves the problem for a couple weeks I’ll feel better, my battery was <20% before the reset. If you runs after a couple weeks I’m thinking it’ll be on a steady AC diet. BTW, I’m using Optimal Surveillance.
If Eufy support is monitoring. Please update documentation to reflect that a conversion from Battery to AC probably needs a reset (and what’s the best way to accomplish that?)
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