My existing doorbell and transformer wiring are on a house wall perpendicular to the door. Would I be better off buying a battery powered Ring doorbell that I can mount on the door frame looking straight out towards the street?
I hate to lose the convenience of being battery free but wonder if the 160 degree field of view would give a good view of someone approaching the front door.
Thanks!
@chas1 wrote:
My existing doorbell and transformer wiring are on a house wall perpendicular to the door. Would I be better off buying a battery powered Ring doorbell that I can mount on the door frame looking straight out towards the street?
I hate to lose the convenience of being battery free but wonder if the 160 degree field of view would give a good view of someone approaching the front door.
Thanks!
Hello @chas1 ,
Actually, all of the RIng Doorbells really run off battery power (except the “Pro” and “Elite”). Even when they are wired to the existing house transformer, that just “trickle-charges” the battery. These doorbells cannot run without the battery, since the external power does not really power the doorbell.
With more and more options becoming available for the Ring Doorbells, many of these use power-hungry algorithms and other new options are placing a higher demand upon the battery. This generally is not an issue when you utilize the existing house transformer that is “trickle-charging” your doorbell. But if you elect to use many of these new cool features on battery power alone, you may find yourself recharging the battery more often than you like. Then your choices are to either use fewer of the features available, or be willing to do a lot of recharging.
Additionally, if you purchase the RIng Video Doorbell “2nd Generation/2020 Release” model that contains a non-removable battery, your doorbell would probably be inside the house recharging a lot, instead of outside doing its job. You should consider the doorbells that use the removable “Quick Release Battery Pack” which would enable you to buy a spare to have charged ready on-hand, to simply “swap-out” while the other battery pack is still powering your doorbell. Of course, this would not be an issue if you connect the transformer wires.
Also, I’ve seen Ring Doorbells mounted on a wall that is perpendicular to the door before. Although you might not get videos as soon as you might like, if it was facing the approaching path of the visitor. But you’d be surprised at the motion detection ability to better detect them as they approach “across” the Field-of-View (FOV). And the very wide FOV is pretty amazing.
But if your preferred more of the “approaching view”, another option is to still mount your doorbell on the perpendicular wall, but also utilize the “Corner Kit” available from Ring, to angle your doorbell slightly. These “Corner Kit” wedges are also stack-able, so you could use more than one, to increase the angle even more to the “approaching view.” I even know a guy who is pretty handy and he made his own “Corner” wedge with his carpentry skills.
But if you decide to mount your doorbell on the same wall of the door, I would highly encourage you to extend/modify the two small wires to reach the location where you finally decide to mount your doorbell. Although it might be a pain in the butt, I think you’ll be much happy later that you did.
Also, if you do not connect the transformer wires (which I assume are also operating your house bell-chime) the house-chime will not go “Ding Dong”, requiring you to rely on your cellular phone or the additional purchase of the wireless “Ring Chime” or “Ring Chime Pro”.
I hope you find this information helpful. 
I would be wary in purchasing any of the battery powered units. There are a number of issues with them not being charged even when hardwired and hard resets are temporary fixes.