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Installation day!
Just FYI, the unit I bought from Amazon AU does have a NZ style power connector for the chime.
Even though I had reasonable access to the rear side of the wall where I wanted to install the Reolink doorbell I still needed to get a network cable to that location. This is much of the reason it has taken so long to get the thing installed.
I simply needed to get a cable from my “IT cupboard” in an area known as “the dining room” across the entire house to an access panel on the rear of the wall by the front door. Fortunately when rennovating years ago I had left a draw wire connecting the access panel down under the house. We have a wooden floor with piles. The space underneath is not great, but I can fit, in some places, only just. I had been down there after the quakes (the house is in Christchurch) to make sure all was OK.
Access panel:
So I grabbed my roll of UTP cable and headed down under to beneath the IT cupboard. I had a helper above, aware of the plan including the draw wire, and soon enough I was being fed down UTP from the roll which I pulled through until I had what I thought was the right amount. Space under the floor by the IT cabinet is very tight and I had to be careful not to get snagged or tangled in cable. Once I had enough I signalled my helper to go to the access panel. I made my way through the spiders, old bits of tape, wood, and other crud down there pulling myself along, more like shimmy like a snake. It’s quite hard to move when you don’t have enough space even to kneel and I tried a number of different approaches, all quite slow and/or painful when you go over a lump of concrete. I was nearly to the access panel when a muffled voice came from above. There was shouting back and forth, “what?” “I can’t hear!” “louder!” “I pulled up the wire but there was nothing on the end.”
I lay there contemplating life, the universe and everything. Did you know that in Christchurch during the earthquakes liquifaction came up in a number of places, sometimes under houses. Sometimes it came up only a little way, but sometimes it came up to the floor boards. There was one person who had to be rescued by their mate cutting a hole in the floor. I wondered if we might have an earthquake at that point.
As much fun as it was watching the spider crawling my way I eventually started moving again and squirmed my way over to the area under the access panel. Things were perhaps not as bad as it seemed as I had in fact installed two draw wires, each going down a different path in the wall. I taped the UTP to the second draw wire before mentioning this to my “helper”, lest they pull that one up too. The only problem was the second path had been used for speaker wires and was pretty full. We yanked and cursed and somehow, after trying different taping methods, got the UTP through. We even managed to use the UTP to get the bottom end of the draw wire back down underneath again though it’s unlikely there will be space for any more wires in the future.
Getting out from under the house was very welcome, but I was not in a great mood for installing the doorbell itself.
After I had the cable where it needed to go and had fitted an RJ45 to the end I opted to mount the camera on a supplied additional angle bracket so it would better face the driveway. The angle bracket screws to the house, a metal bracket screws to the angle bracket, then the Reolink doorbell clips onto the metal bracket. Easy, except... I attached the angle bracket to the house, then the metal bracket to the angle bracket, but then the camera wouldn’t clip onto the metal bracket. The screws holding the angle bracket to the house were getting in the way. I stared at it and cursed the designer and their family. Being resourceful (and intelligent, ha!) I swapped the supplied pan head screws for some lower profile countersunk types. The doorbell still didn’t fit, binding on the screws. One problem was the location of the screws, the other that the bracket surface was angled and I was putting the screws straight into the house, so they were not sitting “flat”. There was some leeway for the position of the screws (slots in the angle bracket) so I drilled more holes, and made them angled so the screws would sit flat. I cursed the designer once more because I knew how difficult it would be to drill holes into the house at an angle and get them in a nice vertical line so the unit didn’t look as if it had been installed by an amateur (it must be tough being an amateur). So I got the holes drilled but they were a ways off. Luckily there was some wiggle room to move the unit before tightening the screws and this time the doorbell would fit. There was a slight gap between the doorbell and the angle bracket which I thought to be not particularly good. One could surely use a big screwdriver to leverage the thing off for one. Still it was on and not about to come off any time soon. So I left it at that.
Doorbell installed, day 1:
Later that night, laying in bed I got to thinking. I wondered about the horrible bracket design and for a moment I wondered if I had installed the angle bracket the wrong way round – the wrong face towards the house. But surely the metal bracket then wouldn’t be able to be screwed into the angle bracket. The rotational geometry was a little too much to figure out in my head and I ended up asleep. So this morning I got up and removed the doorbell, removed the metal bracket, removed the angle bracket, flipped it round (it also fit when flipped round, interesting!) then screwed it to the house using the supplied pan head screws, screwed straight into the house (not at an angle). There was plenty of space for clearance of the screw heads when installed in this orientation. I screwed on the metal bracket which locked in place over some plastic pins on this side that I had not seen before, very secure now! Then the camera clipped in place with no noticeable gap. Now, the funny thing is I have a vague feeling I read about this somewhere online, that one way was wrong and the other right. That it was documented. Somewhere. Just with having the flu in between I had forgotten that piece of vital information. Of course, ideally, if the bracket didn’t fit when installed in the wrong orientation it would have been much simpler, and it wouldn’t have been necessary to document it.
After fixing doorbell mounting - doorbell now aligned with angle bracket:
Regarding the doorbell itself, my initial thoughts are very positive. I find the app more usable than the Ring app, and I like having a physical ringer inside the house. You can access it via a web browser from the desktop and the UI seems sensible and usable. I’m still pondering the whole day I spent getting it installed vs the ongoing pain of charging the battery doorbell. I think it was worth it. I guess we’ll have to see.
Real images:
Congratulations if you have made it this far. BTW, anyone wanting my old Ring doorbell, send me a PM. If you're in Christchurch or coming by you can come and take it away.
Anyone with questions regarding the Reolink, ask away and I'll see what I can do and answer.
RunningMan:
No issues with bend radius on the cable where it connects in?
It is a 90 degree bend. I am using CAT 5e cable which tends to be a bit more flexible than CAT 6, and I'm not using a boot over the RJ45. The angle bracket also provides a bit more space. All in all it was fine. I was also careful to drill the hole (I drilled 20mm dia.) to line up with the lower part of the gap in the back of the doorbell. I think that is the most important thing to do. That way, whatever cable you have you will have space to come straight out from the house and bend 90 deg. before plugging upwards into the doorbell.
You will need to make sure you have a bit of slack on the house side of the cable though so you can remove the doorbell, in case you want to add/remove the microSD card for example.
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