Wyze Duo Doorbell w/ Mechanical Chime

Hello!
My Duo is up and running and shows it’s charging in the viewer interface. I have the WiFi chime but it’s not loud enough for our space. I have an existing two-wire mechanical chime that was working find before. I ordered a Chime Controller and installed it with two wires per the instructions. What next?

2 Likes

Since you’re using Android, hang tight. For some reason the Mechanical Chime option suddenly disappeared from the Android settings, but it is still showing up for iOS users. We think Wyze made a mistake and will be fixing the oversight with an app update, but they haven’t publicly discussed the bug yet.

If you have an iOS device or someone in your family does, you can login to your Wyze account on that and set the mechanical chime up to sound through an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, etc). Otherwise, wait for Wyze to add a fix to that missing Android setting.

Personally, I HIGHLY suggest you contact Wyze support and ask them about this so they get another support logged showing that this is an important issue they should give priority to. The more official logs they have about people bringing this bug up, the sooner they will likely push a fix for it. Also, if you do that, please let us know what they tell you.

3 Likes

I second @carverofchoice’s recommendations, and I’m genuinely intrigued by this statement:

How did you manage that? Availability of the Video Doorbell v2 Chime Controller as an accessory for separate purchase is something I’ve been saying that I think Wyze should do, and your mention is the first report I’ve seen of someone obtaining one of these by itself (if I understand you correctly).

Welcome to the Forum, @keanon! :wave:

2 Likes

It was in the store inside the Wyze app! I also bought a V2 refurb for the part alone, but now I don’t need it and can’t return it. Dang.

3 Likes

Hey, thanks! That’s dope! I had no idea it was visible there as a separate product, because I don’t see it available that way on the Web site.

Thanks for the reply! :+1:

Dunno what to tell you about the extra Video Doorbell v2. Maybe gift it? I have a second one sitting here in a box because Wyze replaced the original when I was having problems with it, but then I was able to figure out that my home’s chime had been wired wrong for years (the transformer wire was going to the FRONT terminal instead of TRANS), and my original v2 has been working reliably since I remediated that issue.

3 Likes

When your bell was wired wrong before was it working?

Yeah, and that’s what’s really strange about the situation. I wired it according to the standard instructions when I originally installed it, and everything seemed fine: It always had adequate power (which I tested at the original “dumb” doorbell button wires during pre-installation), and the mechanical chime rang for months with a button press (after a brief lag). At some point, the mechanical chime stopped giving a ding-dong! with a button press, so I would Restart the Video Doorbell v2 in the Wyze app, and that seemed to make it work for a day or so. I also found that sometimes holding the doorbell button in would make the mechanical chime ring, too, but that wasn’t reliable or practical, so I tried the method of changing Doorbell Chime Type to Digital and setting a Ring tone length parameter. That worked for about a day. Eventually I rewired the Chime Controller to the mechanical chime using the alternate wiring method, but then occasionally the chime would have this extraneous buzz/rattle/hum when it rang.

While I was trying to help another user here, I did even more testing/investigating of my entire doorbell wiring setup, because this user seemed to be struggling so much, and I wanted to make sure I was giving accurate information from my own experience. Working through that problem got me thinking about my own doorbell problem, and that led to my discovery that the line/live/“hot” wire coming from my transformer wasn’t actually what was connected to the TRANS terminal in my chime box. Once I figured that out, I decided to wire the Chime Controller back to the standard wiring method just to see what would happen, and it’s worked well ever since.

1 Like

Hi all, we will release app 3.2.5 next week, which will have chime controller feature. Thank you!

3 Likes

Thank you, Alex. Will I still use the normal Chime Controller wiring scheme? Black to front wire, red to front terminal, white to transformer terminal with current transformer wire?

Your are very welcome Keanon. Yes, please use Wyze chime controller and it will the same wiring. Just need to choose it in the app setting to make it working properly. Thanks.

2 Likes

@keanon, you’re wiring the Chime Controller’s white wire to TRANS and red wire to FRONT? I did it the other way 'round (red to TRANS, white to FRONT) when I followed the instructions in the Chime Controller Installation Guide for Video Doorbell v2. That’s what’s working for me (since the correct wire from the transformer is actually connected to TRANS now).

@WyzeAlex - Excuse me for being a little thick about this, but is the 3.2.5 release fixing the Android issue of missing mechanical chime option for the vdb duo? I have 2 unopen that I am ready to return because of this. If so, I’ll wait for the update. Thanks.

Once the app gets updated, I’ll try both ways. My chime is from 1958! It’s a beautiful sound but the wiring has been the same on there the whole time until now.

1 Like

@keanon - Do you have the advantage of beta testing? My house was built in 1967 and the mechanical chime gives a ding for front doorbell and ding dong for back doorbell with the v2 chime controllers. Hoping to have this with the duo but I can’t wait too long because of the return window.

@WyzeAlex will this repair the random mechanical door chime as well?

Thank you.

The app updated today. It told me it detected AC wiring and asked me if my chime was mechanical or digital. I set mechanical. I reconnected my Chime Controller. Black to front wire, white to front terminal, red to trans terminal shared with existing wire. It’s not ringing.

I think this is a good piece of information for a starting point:

I have follow-up questions:

  1. What kind of doorbell button were you using before? Was it a regular “dumb” doorbell button?
  2. Do you have a multimeter available for testing? I’ve used an inexpensive multimeter[1] and set of test leads[2] during my own testing/troubleshooting with my Video Doorbell v2, and having those available has been invaluable.

What you describe seems like the right way to do the standard wiring for the Chime Controller, and you could also try the alternate wiring method (as previously mentioned in this topic) as long as you’re working in the chime box, but at this point I don’t know if your problem is a hardware issue or an app issue.

While it may have added the feature allowing the Duo Cam Doorbell to use the home’s built-in mechanical chime using the Android app, there’s a lot of discussion in the announcement topic about things this app release has broken, so even with doing some testing and trying different wiring combinations, this issue with the built-in chime may require another app update before things work as intended. I’m speculating about this last bit, but if the new app broke some existing things then I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that this chime feature might also be broken.

I appreciate your updates here, and I have some ideas of how I’d approach this problem if you have the patience for some long posts and troubleshooting. :grin:


  1. The specific SKU I have no longer seems to be available, but another SKU appears to be nearly identical. ↩︎

  2. These or something similar are handy for clipping to wires, terminals, and multimeter probes while testing and troubleshooting. ↩︎