Ring Pro 2 (wired), how important is this "chime transformer thing"?

My house was built in the 1920’s or 1930’s. I bought it around 8 years ago. it had a cheap battery doorbell gummy stuck to the front door area and I could see the plastered up holes for a wired doorbell and where it was screwed in.

I got a battery powered ring doorbell soon and we’ve been using that since (I upgraded so I’ve owned two battery doorbells).

Wife buys Ring Pro2. It sounds like you get more/better features since it doesn’t have to worry about saving battery life… and I don’t need to keep changing the batteries.
How difficult is it to hook your 2 doorbell wires to the doorbell anyway?

Reading the instructions, I see something about a transformer you add to the chime. Quickly discover the chime I know about is a battery powered one added for the cheap battery doorbell. It’s not a wired chime to the doorbell wires.

At this point we confirm that there is no visible chime in the house. So that leaves the attic.
I get into the attic and look over the AC/Heater 20ft in all directions and I don’t see anything that looks like a chime. or like wires going down around where the front door is.

Being logical, I would believe that a chime to make noise would be located near the entry to the attic. It’s a central spot in the home and you can get to it. But I don’t see one at all. There are 2 foot insulated tubes everywhere next to beams where a misstep means falling through the ceiling like an ■■■■■.

So short of finding a radioactive spider to bite me, I don’t see myself being able to traverse to the dark corners of the attic. It looks like my options are to try and hire someone better skilled at getting over/under things without a solid floor… or my first plan was never caring that it existed.

It never occurred to me to even dream to care about a futuristic wifi video doorbell making chimes from the 1950’s up in the attic jingle around to make noise. So that’s not a feature we ever cared about. Just like now it would make a noise on our phone. That’s how we’ve done this the last 8 years.

So is this transformer for just making it work with an old timey chime? If so, I would say I can toss it and just wire up the doorbell and join it to our wifi.

Or is this doing some electricity regulation and is required to use the doorbell? It sounds like if that’s the case, the “chime transformer” needs to be between the doorbell and the circuit breaker. Would I be able to just splice that transformer in behind the doorbell? Wires go to ring transformer, then from there wires go to the doorbell?

Sorry if this is a common question. I did try googling ring pro2 and variations on chimes being required and it keeps pulling up details on people having trouble with connecting to a chime product.

Hi @smtdba. Your Pro 2 installation does require the Pro Power Kit to be installed directly into your pre-existing chime to ensure that the Pro 2 gets the power it needs. The only time a Pro Power Kit is not required to be installed is when it is directly hardwired to a compatible transformer or when using our Ring Plug-In adapter 2nd Generation to power up the Pro 2. In your case, it might be easiest to use our Plug In Adapter if you are not able to locate the existing chime or transformer. If you do not feel comfortable working with hardwiring or need more information on hardwiring, we strongly recommend consulting a qualified electrician.