Update on my previous post. I had only had 120 events and had always only seen the green plug. We just had a long two day snow storm and I double my events in two days because the doorbell caught me shoveling for about an hour for the past two days.
My doorbell dropped to like 84%. The green plug icon went away after it dropped what looks like 88%. It seemed to trickle charge and just changed from 87% to the green plug icon again.
Thanks for the update. So to confirm did you manually disconnect the power to see the battery % symbol or did it its own? Likewise did the green plug re appear on its own once it charged itself back up?
No manual disconnection just a ton of usage in a 48 hour period that drained it faster than it could trickle charge.
After coming in from shoveling went to delete all the recordings of me shoveling. Saw the Battery symbol and power menu said 85%. Went into the app again later and it read 87%. Went to post but wanted to get exacts and then the green plug was back. Been the green plug since
Thanks for that. Think this clears it up then that mine and your operation shows its working normally under these circumstances. Mine running on an 8v transformer.
I’m 200 miles away but just had a couple of notifications, noticed battery showing 84%… few mins later back to plug symbol. I’m pretty sure that if it wasn’t trickle charging back up it would be lower than 84% now when it was 86% quite a few days ago when I posted above…
And seen this today. So the final answer is that it’s confirmed 100% an 8V 0.5amp Hager St301 transformer works perfectly fine with regards to charging the wireless doorbell.
Is it not an option to charge using a permanently connected usb cable to the battery wireless doorbell?
If not, why not?
this has been a known issue since the doorbell was released. i had support rifle through with me different transformers. first one provided 18v, and the second one (current one) provides 25v. The transformer didnt make a difference. It’s an inherent limitation of how the doorbell is charged. They even sent me a second doorbell just to make sure the first one wasnt defective. No change.
It seems like the doorbell simply cant charge fast enough for the amount of power it requires. if i turn off motion detection altogether, the charge trickle charges up to full after a few days, but this defeats a huge benefit of a video doorbell.
Eufy isnt going to do anything about this, and they’ve moved on to other projects. the only thing I think we can learn from this experience is anything eufy / anker is cheap, and thats what you get. this seemingly is the trend with these products which on one hand, i can understand – they need to keep making money to survive, but they are killing the hens that are laying their golden eggs.
I disagree with what was said above with lia57 – you have the thing in optimal surveillance which nerfs a tons of the motion detection. when an event occurs, its really beneficial to not rely on when the doorbell thinks motion has stopped as the motion detection is really funky and will not pick up all motion. in addition if there is an event that happens (e.g. a shifty/shady character) at your doorstep, having 2 minutes of recording is huge under customized settings.
You can, if you can run such a thick gauge wire to the doorbell. it would work.
some additional comments – this draining issue with the battery seems to be a software bug. Here’s how its tested in my situation:
I then flip it back to customized surveillance with 120s clips and a 20s retrigger interval (as i had set it since i bought it), and low and behold! It holds charge again constantly at 60% for the last 10 days. I totally expect whatever software bug to kick in as it normally does after a while and i’ll rinse and repeat.
In short, its a software bug. anker support and software development are absolutely tone deaf about this, and it shows.
I also had the same exact experience as @Nuts. I would always have to disconnect the unit and manually recharge it via USB and i would then hook it back up to the transformer and i would be good for 2 or 3 months and have to repeat the process.
This last time when i was getting the low battery notifications and it was goin on and offline. I turned off motion when it came back online for a moment and left it with motion disabled for a few days. I did not get the low battery alert and saw that it was still online. After 3 days I see that it actually charged with motion off.
In the past I thought that the unit would not charge at all. I see now that even though its hardwired to a transformer (24v 40va) that the unit is still running off the battery power and the only function of the hardwired portion to the transformer is to charge the battery but if there are a lot of unavoidable motion triggers then the charging wont keep up.
This is not an efficient way for this doorbell to operate. I’m sure they have their reasons for this method but if @eufy can run their non battery powered unit directly from power then they should be able to do it with this one or find a better, more efficient way to charge the battery without having it deplete.
I went through so much troubleshooting because of this issue. I replaced my transformer 3 times and the doorbell once, and factory reset the system twice. Too much time wasted when one from support told me anything from what i described above. If they had then I could at least manually turn motion off at nights or weekends so i knew that this can recharge the battery instead of always having to disconnect it from the front and plug into usb.
If the schedule section had an option to turn off motion at home/away time I could at least turn off motion at night so the doorbell can charge up but that option does not exist.
As many others in this thread I had the same issues with a few doorbell so I decided to open up the doorbell and check what was going on. My doorbell was not charging while it was connected to an AC power supply which I specifically bought for the doorbell. Measuring on the connection pins on the outside of the doorbell I found that there was 16 V AC on the wires so this was not the issue. After opening up the doorbell I found that the screw terminals are internally connected with Pogopins to the PCB, and one of these pogopins was not being pushed out anymore it seemed stuck maybe because of heat the tiny spring inside burned away. I decided to remove the Pogopins from the PCB, they where easy to desolder. I soldered wires in place instead. after soldering in the wires the doorbell works again on AC as it should showing the green power plug in the Eufy APP.
Hi, I’ve recently bought the duel Homebase doorbell and connected a 18v 500ma transformer which the manufacturer states is compatible with my eufy doorbell. Initially once connected I saw the green plug symbol which I thought was correct keeping my doorbell fully charged. However, over a couple of days with moderate use ( mainly motion detection) I’ve noticed the battery power level has slowly depleted to 96% and the battery indication has changed from a green plug to a charging icon.
I will continue to monitor the performance of the battery/transformer and give an update in a month or so!
I think I’ve found a fix. Here’s my situation, I hardwired eufy video doorbell after a remodel in which the old wired doorbell system was removed. I reused the old doorbell transformer and it worked for a couple of days before eufy doorbell no longer was charging, green plug icon gone and battery percentage down to 13%. So I upgraded the transformer to a new one from Amazon that had high reviews and worked with eufy doorbell. Again it worked for few days showing green plug icon then back to usual discharge state. I checked voltage at doorbell, it was within Eufy required specs. Contacts were clean and secure. Finally, checked if ring doorbells had similar issue. Came across a thread on how ring doorbells designed to work with wired doorbell chime system in place. Chime was acting like a resistor. So they came out with a resistor to mimic the chime in where people either removed old wired chime or installed new low voltage hardwire line for video doorbell. Look up " Wirewound Resistor for Ring Video Doorbell (1st Gen) and Ring Video Doorbell 2" on Amazon. This is what I purchased and installed on one leg of wire from new transformer and now my eufy video doorbell charges like it should on hardwire. Green icon and all. Eufy should really have been on top of this fix. So simple, hope this works for others!
Eufy gives you a jumper to cut out the existing chime in case your existing transformer isn’t up to sourcing enough to power the doorbell. Addding a resistor will just drop the voltage and limit the current, so probably not a good solution to lack of charging. I suspect your problem will return.
Note that Eufy designs and calculates battery life based on 10 detections a day, recording for 30 seconds each time. If you have more detections, or set your recording time to longer, the transformer setup will eventually fall behind keeping the batteries charged.
You can look at your detections in Power Manager and see how many you have over a period of time.
One last variable is temperature. If temp drops below 40 F, the device will start limiting the charge current to prevent destroying the lithium batteries. At 32F, all charging stops.
Fortunately you have suspected wrong and the problem has not returned. It’s been 3 months and no issues, the fix is still working flawlessly even after several nights of temps below freezing. The solution is working 100% for me. Also, i have it now set to optimal surveillance meaning more detections, longer video clips therefore more battery usage. Absolutely no problems at all. This was a suggestion for others like me that almost gave up on the Eufy doorbell because I tried all the other suggestions. I didn’t say this was the one and only fix but it worked for me and still is working, it’s also helped others. Before you replace your transformer try this much cheaper fix of using a resistor.
If I read this right, adding a resistor on a wired Eufy video doorbell with out a chime will not drain the internal battery, since the resistor will act like if the chime unit was there. But I’m curious, with the new Eufy dual camera video doorbell, it comes with a chime unit. Would adding a resistor make a difference?
My search continues on finding the right Wall Plug in Transformer that can run the dual video doorbell. The current ones I have eventually give the doorbell that low battery indicator.
I wish I had seen your idea earlier. I have not yet installed my Battery 2K HD which comes with a homebase 2 which can act as a chime. I had a 24v 12VA transformer on hand but decided to get a 40va to be safe. I would think I would not (also?) need the resistor but who knows?
Many have posted that it requires a 30VA, but the quick start guide says it only needs a 10VA.
I wish someone woould make a wired one that just has a bettery backup for short, infreuent power outages that will become all too common.
How is that setup working out with the resistor, no issues?
Also which transformer did you get?
