I was experiencing the random-chime-at-night problem like several others, and was able to fix the issue. This may not apply in all cases, but if you have a mechanical doorbell with two chimes (set up for front and rear door, where one goes “ding” and the other “ding-dong”) the random chiming may be caused by a basic mis-wiring of the mechanical chime. This miswiring may have been done years ago but has gone undetected all that time. For the two chime mechanical door bell there are three screw terminals in the unit. The correct way that these should be connected is a lead from the transformer should be attached to the center terminal, and the leads from the two doorbell pushbuttons should be attached to the two outside terminals (left and right). The subtle thing about this is that when the doorbell circuit is equipped with simple push buttons these leads may be mis-wired and yet the mechanical doorbell will still work as intended, so no one may be the wiser. For example: if the transformer lead is attached to one of the outside terminals (let’s say the left terminal) and the pushbutton leads are attached to the center and the other outside terminal (the terminal on the right) the mechanical chime will give the “ding” and “ding-dong” sounds as intended. The only hint that something may be mis-wired is that when the pushbutton connected to the right hand terminal is pushed both chime solenoid plungers are activated, yielding the double chime. So you can live with your doorbell miswired like this for years and never notice an issue.
But now if you convert the pushbutton connected to the terminal on the right to a ring video camera, and install the pro-power kit between the center terminal and the terminal on the right (as the instructions tell you to do), then that video doorbell is being asked to operate both chime solenoids, and there are now two pro-power kits wired in series in the circuit. In my case my video doorbell worked fine for the first eight hours after I installed it, but once night fell and the infrared LEDs came on the unit went crazy and started randomly chiming. This would happen only at night, and only when the infrared LEDs were activated - I found that as long as my porch lights were on there was no problem, but the moment I turned off the porch lights the chiming would start. My guess is that the extra current required by the video doorbell to operate the LEDs, with the pro-power kits in series in the circuit, causes a malfunction in the circuitry in the video doorbell, and it essentially shorts the doorbell leads. Meanwhile my other video door bell, which replaced the original pusbutton (which I now know was incorrectly wired to the center terminal), worked fine with no issues.
My original mechanical chime is over 30 years old, so I’m guessing it was mis-wired like this for all that time. I was able to figure it out using a voltmeter, disconnecting the three leads from the screw terminals in the mechanical chime, and checking voltages between each pair of wires. When the pair of leads at one of the doors is shorted (simulating a pushbutton being depressed), at the mechanical chime you should read 16VAC between the transformer lead and the pushbutton lead that is being shorted. This is how I was able to figure out that the transformer lead had been incorrectly connected to the terminal on the left instead of the center terminal. I reconnected the wire leads with the transformer lead properly connected to the center terminal and the doorbell pushbutton leads to the two outside terminals, then reinstalled the video doorbell units and pro-power kits, and now everything works like a champ! So lesson learned: just because your mechanical chime works like it should with the original pushbutton doorbell switches, don’t assume that the system is wired properly. Hope this helps.
