How to Make Your Ring Doorbell Sound the Chime on Your UK Mechanical Doorbell

Despite the many privacy issues that have come to light recently, IoT video doorbells have become quite popular. They have a camera built into the doorbell housing that you can view when someone rings the bell — or just whenever you feel like it. Not only can they potentially provide some security, they can also be a convenient way to see who is at the door without having to get off the couch. One problem, however, is that they don’t always integrate well with your traditional doorbell. If you live in the United Kingdom, Instructables user Dancase has a tutorial on how to make a Ring Video Doorbell sound your mechanical chime.

According to Dancase, this is a much easier problem to solve in countries like the United States where our doorbells are rugged and can handle relatively high voltages. In the United Kingdom, doorbells are more restrained and operate at lower voltages. The Ring Video Doorbell Pro is designed to work with a 24V power supply, which would be just fine for a US doorbell. But that’s too much for the dainty 8V doorbells in the UK. In an ideal setup, the Ring doorbell will sound your traditional chime just like any other doorbell would. The goal of this project is to make that possible.

As you’re probably expecting, achieving this requires breaking the mains voltage out to the 24V required for the Ring doorbell and the 8V required for the mechanical chime, and then linking them together. The Ring doorbell comes with its own 24V transformer, so you just need a way to get 8V to your mechanical chime. It probably came with an 8V transformer, but it might be internal. The piece of the puzzle that you need to tie them together is a simple relay. The 24V from the Ring doorbell will act as the trigger, which will switch the 8V on to the mechanical chime. It’s a simple and affordable solution for those of you living in the UK.