There are well known names in the doorbell camera marketplace. I’m sure they work fine. They also come at a price, both high initial cost and monthly subscription fees. I don’t mind the high initial price if times are flush, but we avoid subscription fees where we can.
We are away for long periods. We wanted the doorbell camera to be powered or to have long battery life. What we settled on at the time of purchase in November 2023 was an Aousu 5MP Ultra HD
Installation is simple. The instructions are straight forward for set up and pairing to your home wifi network. You install the app on your phone, plug in the wall unit, mount the cradle for the doorbell button with a couple of screws, charge the doorbell with a USB cable (provided) and clip the doorbell camera into its cradle. They provide a small tool to easily remove the doorbell camera unit for periodic charging, but a paper clip works fine (pro-tip: disable the anti-theft alarm in the app first!)
Charging the internal battery is simple. It claimed to have 180-day battery life. That was slightly optimistic, probably based on more moderate temperatures than the ones in northern Saskatchewan winters. The internal battery lasted from mid November to mid March with high sensitivity that often picked up windblown branches. On a busy street with the sensitivity set on high or if you have a hyperactive visiting 8-year-old grandson that repeatedly pushes the doorbell you wouldn’t get that kind of battery life.
If you are away for weeks, not months, at a time just sticking the doorbell camera on the wall near your front door and charging as needed is a fine approach. If you wire it up to a transformer or an existing doorbell circuit, that will keep the battery charged no matter how long you are away.
If you have an existing doorbell button and an existing doorbell chime you just hook the doorbell camera in place of the button and you’re good to go. The existing transformer provides power and the chime provides some load to the circuit.
If you are starting from scratch you will need to install a transformer some wires and, maybe, a load resistor. The older powered Ring doorbells require a resistor when hooked up directly to a transformer. The newer ones don’t. The specs are clear. The specs for the Aosu are ambiguous. After some dialog with their tech support, I ordered the same resistor that Amazon sells for the older Ring doorbells along with a transformer.
All the parts came from Amazon. I bought the wire at the local Home Hardware store. They didn’t have the twin conductor bell wire I was looking for but sold multiconductor thermostat cable. I wired the primary of the transformer to an available 120 VAC and attached the resistor to one side of the secondary. One of the two wires from the doorbell camera goes to the resistor and the other to the other secondary terminal on the transformer. It goes without saying that you use the same two coloured wires at the transformer and the doorbell camera.
One of the ways I handsomely supplement my retirement income is by pre-commissioning industrial instrumentation installations. This involves finding wiring and other mistakes before they go to start up a new plant. I have a reputation for finding mistakes others have missed. It is of some embarrassment that the reason I had to ask my son-in-law to intervene in mid March and come by the house to charge the doorbell camera while were still in Texas was I used different coloured pairs at each end of the cable. No bueno. If you wire it correctly it will charge without intervention. If I had wired it correctly, I wouldn’t know how long the doorbell camera will run off the internal battery before needing recharging.
The app for your smart phone works fine. It is intuitive.
You get notifications of movement and people at your door and can see and hear what’s going on. They can ring the bell and you will be notified and can see and talk to them. There are also canned responses you can use such as “leave the package…” etc.
There are no subscription fees. There is enough local storage to get by without needing them. There is the option to buy extra cloud storage for a modest fee. If you have an existing legacy doorbell the installation is easy. If several months between charging the battery works for you installation is easier yet. If you need to install a transformer you may need professional help depending on your skill level. Follow local codes.
