High power consumption of Ring Alarm base station

I plugged our Ring Alarm base station into a power meter and was surprised to discover it drawing 124 watts of power, steady for several minutes. No sensors doing anything. Battery was fully charged so it shouldn’t have been drawing extra. It’s normally plugged in 24x7. That’s more energy that our refrigerator draws.

Why so much?

Anyone else measured the power consumption of theirs? Is it similar?

I havent measure mine but I’m interested to know

If I can find my kill-a-watt I will try.

I also am not looking at the power cord as I type. Is it just a usb adpter? As in try another? But if it goes down after a few minutes… I dunno

z-wave startup. cell startup?

There’s no way the alarm itself was drawing that much power, it takes in 5 volts so the wire supplying it would have to be giving it 25 amps, that’s enough make a wire that small literally (not figuratively) hot enough to glow like a light bulb.
That kind of power draw is most likely a short in the power supply. Feel the little white box that plugs into the wall. If it’s warm to the touch then there’s something wrong with it, and if it’s hot to the touch then it’s a fire hazard and needs immediate replacement.

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Your meter likely has a 1x and 10x setting. The ten times (10x) setting is for measuring small current draw.

You measured 12.4W on the 10x setting, thus the meter displayed “124”.

12.4W is almost 2.5A at 5VDC. I recall that’s very close to the max output of the Ring Alarm base station power supply.

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