I have a doorbell with camera, and also two security cameras that are not part of the doorbell system.

I can watch someone ring the doorbell with either the doorbell camera or both security cameras. There is about a five second delay from the time the button is pushed until the chime inside the house rings. There is no audible sound before then. Except... the dogs go berserk, warning of barbarians at the gate the moment that button is pressed.

Question "a": How is this possible?
Question "2": How can I fix this?

tanstaafl.

I would theorize the obvious: the circuitry in the "doorbell" may be emitting some dog-audio frequencies as it powers up and begins to transmit.

Which part of the "doorbell" is the question though.. more likely the inside part with the "bell" ?

I should have mentioned, this is a hard-wired system. There is no transmitter. I don't know if a wireless system would work, it would have to transmit through two 12" thick masonry walls over a distance of 60 feet.

Nonetheless, I had reached the same conclusion about dog-audible sound, but since the doorbell button is is probably sending a single pulse to trigger a relay to power the door chimes the delay seems unusual.

Thinking more about it, since the wire is also transmitting video as well as a signal to ring the chimes, I suppose it is complicated enough that strange things can happen.

Are you in the house when watching these cameras? Are you hearing the chime live or via the cameras? Occam's Razor here says that the chime is instantaneous in the house, and the cameras are showing you video that is synchronised with its own audio but is five seconds delayed from live.

Peter

The doorbell doesn't have to emit any frequencies for the dogs to notice someone is at the door. The dogs merely hear the people walk up to the front door. They're better at that than we humans are, they just pick up on subtle things. If someone walked up to the door, close enough to ring the doorbell, but didn't actually push the button, then the dogs would still go nuts.

If the doorbell contains a camera, then it's some kind of smart doorbell system correct? There's probably some kind of delay in its system. Something in the electronics that perhaps deliberately delays the chime. Test it out yourself by ringing the doorbell by hand. Dunno how to fix it, but whatever brand it is, there's likely other people on the internet talking about the same issue so google it.

Another possibility:

Our physical doorbell has a two-stage chime, one chime rings when you press the button and another chime rings when you release the button. The solenoid that rings the bell emits a slight hum while the button is held down. Maybe the first of the two bells isn't working any more and only the second bell rings. The dogs hear the solenoid, but you don't hear the bell until the ringer pulls his finger off the button.

Yes. No.

Yes: I hear the chime, standing a few feet away from it in the living room.

No: I watch the button press both from from an independent camera (one of an eight camera security system that is not tied to the doorbell system in any way) and the doorbell camera, and can clearly watch while the button pusher stands around looking for the doorbell button, finally pushes it... and the dogs immediately go berserk to a dogs-only signal that nobody else can hear.

Then, after about a five second delay, the chimes ring in the living room and the dogs go even more berserk.

Clearly the button press creates some sound inaudible to humans before the chimes ring. People walking on the sidewalk, talking as they pass the door, do not trigger a response. Both the doorbell camera and the security cameras operate in real time, otherwise I couldn't talk to people on the doorbell system, and I can verify that there is no video or audio delay in the security camera by watching the gardener [should I be upscale and call him the Yard Supervision Manager? 😀] with his noisy tools.

I don't know the details of how the doorbell system is powered, other than it is connected to house current. The wires are buried in the masonry walls and the button/camera is hardwired to the chimes/video-display unit. Probably at the chimes end the current is converted to low voltage (5v? 12v?) DC before being sent to the doorbell button end, but that's just guesswork. Maybe the chimes need more power and there is a delay charging up a capacitor to run them or something.

Anyway, it's all a big mystery to me.

tanstaafl.

Are they physical chimes, or does it play an electronic sound?

If physical, maybe the solenoid is sticky and doesn't finish its chime cycle for a few seconds.

Or maybe the button itself is sticky, and so when you take your finger off the button, it's a few seconds before the solenoid releases and the second half of the chime sounds (and the first half of the chime is malfunctioning and silent, and the dogs are responding to the buzz of the solenoid, as I mentioned in my previous post). Our doorbell had the sticky button problem for a while until I fixed it, and the solenoid would stay stuck "on" for random amounts of time.

Oo, here's an idea. In my childhood home there were several chimes, the thing would play a full melody on a set of tuned physical tubes. Maybe the first few notes are malfunctioning on your melodic chimes, and only the final note rings out for you, and again, like in my earlier post, the dogs are responding to the buzz of the solenoids activating.

Some googling tells me that there are kits which retrofit a smart camera doorbell onto old school physical chimes, and that these can sometimes exhibit the problem you describe. The issue seems to be in that retrofit circuit somewhere. Example: https://community.ring.com/t/ring-pro-video-doorbell-delay-in-ringing-mechanical-doorbell/4045

Two sounds are emitted, according to that post:

Chimes are electronic.
The button is not sticky.
The "full melody" is a two note "song".

Press and release the button, the chimes play a "ding doo" sound (E followed by C) repeated once for a total of four notes, a one second pause between the pair, the first "ding doo" starting about five seconds after the button is released.

If you press and hold the button, the chimes do not play, but [I think] the microphone is activated so the person pushing the bell can talk to the person inside. This is hard to test by myself, as the button is a good 60 or 70 feet away from the chime box in the house. I'll verify that when I have some help.

tanstaafl.

I guess the next steps depend a bit on how much you're prepared to annoy your visitors and/or your dogs in the name of Science. If you cut power to the whole system, do the dogs still go bananas? (Are they hearing the physical noise of the button-press?) If you disconnect the chimer's speaker leaving the button live (if that's possible), do they do it? (Does the chimer make some high-frequency coil whine or suchlike that they're hearing?) Assuming the button is "dumb" (momentary, normally-open), if you briefly short the wires at the chimer end (simulating a button-press) do the dogs react? (If you're that close to the chimer when it goes off, maybe *you* will hear the coil whine.)

Peter

Wow so there is some kind of electronic delay in the system which delays the chime for 5 seconds. I wonder why.

Maybe the chimes actually do ring immediately, but the electronic emitter doesn't play it loudly enough at the beginning. For example, maybe it repeats the melody three times instead of twice and you're not hearing the first one because it's not sending enough DC voltage to the emitter circuit at first. Maybe the voltage ramps up. And the dogs are hearing the quiet bit, but you're not.

Or maybe it's something to do with that talkback microphone you described. Maybe the button press engages the talkback mic, which (by design) delays/mutes the chimes, and the dogs are responding to the noise of the faint sound coming through the talkback speaker, or even just the faint click of the talkback system engaging at all.

This is tricky because the usual way someone would do this is to have the other person on the phone. But these days, cell phones introduce a significant round-trip delay. Like lag in Quake Arena, but much worse.

With that run length, I wonder if there's some kind of a DC relay between the doorbell and the chimes, and the relay is being sticky (and could be the thing the dogs are hearing).

I still think it's a "smart" device somewhere in the setup, that is taking a few seconds to boot before it rings the bell.

I'm a little bit skeptical that the chime is hardwired. The doorbell may well be hardwired for power, but if there's that kind of delay, I'm really not sure the chime is part of the circuit.

An old-school, basic doorbell is a pretty basic circuit, the kind they had me make in shop class in middle school. The doorbell just completes a circuit that delivers power to a solenoid that then hits a metal bar to make the chime.

In smart doorbell retrofit situations where the doorbell relies solely on the existing wiring for power, some doorbells can't use the chime at all, and some require a little effort in order to get them to work. The Ring doorbells require a little adapter pack that you shove into the chime its self that adds a little resistance.

It would be helpful to know what the products are.

Is your chime mounted high up on a wall? Does it never require a battery change? What are you using for the transformer that's powering the doorbell? Is it original to the home? Because it might be underpowered and maybe the doorbell is waiting to recover little bit before sending out voltage to power the chime.

It's definitely an odd situation. I have a Eufy smart doorbell that is unable to operate my home's existing chime, so I have it paired to a plug-in chime. That chime goes off less than a second after the button is pressed, and it's all going through wifi (which I hate for smart home devices but whatever).

I think the "chimes" are not mechanical, but electronically produced. The box on the wall contains a small video screen, a button that initiates the camera, a button that trips a solenoid to unlatch the door, a telephone handset that enables two-way audio, and what looks like a small speaker grill.

Power and communications all enter the box through the cable on the right. The other end of the cable disappears into the masonry wall, and ends up at the camera/speaker/ring button, and splits off to the door unlatch solenoid.

Somewhere along the way it gets house current, but I don't know where. There are several possibilities, including a motion sensing light that is independent of the doorbell system and the security cameras, power to the garage door opener, garage lighting, whatever.

I have watched the doorbell delay through the security camera (not the doorbell camera, this is a separate eight-camera system) and the delay is not a fixed duration. I have seen it as short as two seconds, as long as eight seconds. The dogs hear it the instant it is pressed. In fact, tonight I discovered that my pressing the button on the wall unit that activates the camera sets them off.

These days, when the dogs go off, I just look at the security camera to see whether I want to bother with the door at all. By that time, the dogs have already told me that the doorbell is going to ring.

tanstaafl.

Hey, that's the issue! It probably gets power from the masonry, since the walls there used to be "live", right? And now that you've had an electrician fix much of that "radiant heat" issue in the walls, the power takes longer to get to the doorbell devices.. thus the delay!

I think this might be the manual for this system:

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/628858/2easy-Dt24.html

It appears to be a generic item that gets rebranded with a bunch of different company names. This might be a picture of its innards.

They might be triggering off the fact that you personally are interacting with the system. But if that's not the case, if they are triggering off of some sound that the system makes, then here is my guess:

If these photos are indeed a picture of the innards of the same system, then, the circuit board prominently features a JRC-27F 012-S(555) relay on the board (spec sheet here). The dogs are hearing that relay click. Perhaps they even hear a high frequency whine associated with the power circuit, something that is outside of your hearing frequency range. (Edit: Perhaps it is the high frequency coil whine of that relay!)

Why the system doesn't play the chime for 2-8 seconds after the button is pressed? Don't know. One idea is that maybe the relay is associated with that timing, and the relay is being old and sticky.

Relays don't have coil whine -- straight DC current doesn't oscillate. But if there's a switching power-supply involved to power the relay, it may be producing a whine.

That's as reasonable an idea as any. However, the service life specs for that relay rate it at 10^8 operations. I probably average six doorbell assaults per week, so taking leap years into account that relay should last 319,416 years: =(10^8/6)/(365.25/7)

Hmmm...that doesn't take into account that leap year skips every 100th year except on the 400th year it doesn't skip. So call it an approximation and let it go at that.

I know I'm getting old (turned 79 last month) but I'm not that old!

tanstaafl.

Sometimes relays and solenoids malfunction because of age, corrosion, or manufacturing defects, unrelated to the number of cycles.

Happy belated birthday!

Another idea - Is it possible that the chimes don't ring until the visitor releases the button? Something happens when the button is pushed down, such as the talkback system turns on, or the relay clicks, or some part of the system engages which emits an ultrasonic whine, which continues while the button is being held down. Then, only after the button is released, the chimes ring. And maybe sometimes the visitors are just being enthusiastic about holding down the button for a long time? This is something you could test easily.

No. I can clearly observe through one of the two security cameras watching the door that most users stab the button and let go of it immediately.

tanstaafl.

Ok. If this manual is the correct one, then, page 3 shows the connection pinouts on the back. If you lift it off the wall you should get access to the connections.

My guess is, what you want to try, is unplugging the SW+ SW- "door bell call button connection" plug first. Then try shorting those two pins yourself locally there. Does shorting those pins ring the chime immediately, or does it have a delay?

If it's immediate, then the "delay" issue is in the doorbell button itself or the wiring somehow. If it's delayed, then the issue is in the electronics box of the DT24 unit itself.

This doesn't SOLVE the problem but it certainly narrows it down.

While you're there, you can test for sure whether the chime rings when the pins are first shorted, or when the pins get unshorted (i.e, whether the chime is buttondown or buttonup). If the chime rings on buttonup, then your delay problem could be that the doorbell button itself is sticky (or its contacts are sticky, or there's a weak short somewhere in the wire run, perhaps the wire is submerged or rat-chewed somewhere, causing a capacitive buildup somewhere along the wire run).