When I purchased my Ring Doorbell Pro, I knew that I currently had a Deta doorbell but I hadn't looked at the wiring much beyond that. To be honest, I intended on getting an electrician in to install it. But now that the country is locked down due to COVID-19 and a smart doorbell isn't really essential business, I have spent a bunch of time exploring how to install the Pro myself.
As it turns out, I have the Deta C3501 doorbell which is fairly common in newer UK houses. It is a mains voltage doorbell, meaning that a full 230V AC will go from your consumer unit to your Deta transformer/chime unit somewhere on your wall. Many of the other Deta models (C3500 and C3504 spring to mind) are also mains voltage doorbells, powered in the same way – and so this guide should help you out if you have one of these other models too.
Anywhoo, the broad steps for converting to a Ring Doorbell Pro are:
- Look at your current doorbell, and consider if you're keeping the existing chime.
- Check the Ring instructions and plan out how you will make the conversion.
- … do the actual work!
- Add/setup your device in the app.
This guide covers each of these three steps in detail, but if you prefer video format then feel to check out the below as well:
Step 1 – check your current doorbell
Check the current wiring
Firstly, go to your consumer unit and turn off the power to your doorbell. If you're like me, you may have a separate ‘Doorbell' switch which you can easily turn off:
If not, your bell is probably powered by the ground floor lights but if you're not sure, carefully turn each switch off and use a voltage test pen to verify that the power is now off:
Once you've isolated the relevant consumer unit switch and turned off the power, take the cover off your wall-mounted Deta transformer/chime unit (this can be a big stiff at first but it will come off eventually):
As described, the bottom left cable is the mains voltage input cable (230V AC) coming from the consumer unit into the Deta transformer/chime unit. The bottom right cable is actually a CAT5 cable, with the blue/white and orange/white strands in use being the output cables going to the doorbell.
Your wiring may look a little different, and the output cable may use 1mm (or similar) twin+earth wiring instead of CAT5 cable. But either way, the main thing is the bottom left cable is thicker and is an input, and the bottom right cable is thinner and is the output.
Decide whether to keep your existing chime
The Ring Doorbell Pro comes with a Chime Pro, which plugs into your wall plug and works wirelessly. When the Pro is clicked, the Chime Pro will chime – along with any Echo devices in your house.
However an alternative option is to try and keep your existing hardwired doorbell, which essentially means bypassing the ‘doorbell pressed' cabling (but keeping the solenoid/chime cabling), using the ‘doorbell bypass kit' included in your Pro box.
Before you consider this route, however, you need to check the Ring Video Doorbell Chime Kit Compatibility List.
One thing you'll quickly notice on that page is that zero Deta models which Ring tested are compatible. In other words, for this purpose of this guide (covering changing a Deta doorbell to a Ring Pro), you can't use the existing chime part of the wall-mounted Deta unit.
To be honest, this is good news for me because I like clean solutions (I can rip out the Deta doorbell completely, if I want), and I was always planning on using the Chime Pro and my existing 3 Echo devices to notify me of a doorbell click.
Okay, with this decided, we can move onto step 2 – planning.
Step 2 – plan out your wiring
Firstly I'll be removing the existing Deta doorbell completely. After all, I can't use the chime part of it, and I don't want the transformer aspect (as it likely delivers only a tiny amount of power to the actual doorbell). I could rip everything out of it and leave the empty box, and house the Ring transformer in this.
The downside of this is that the Ring transformer would effectively be loose inside the Deta unit, which is a bad idea – especially since it's supplied with 230V mains voltage! The Ring transformer is actually designed to be mounted on a DIN rail, which is the metal or plastic rail inside a consumer unit (you'll see this if you take the cover off the consumer unit – don't do this unless you know what you're doing!).
As a result, I bought a Wylex ESE2 enclosure which fits the Ring transformer perfectly and it has a DIN rail:
Great, next up is the wiring itself. I have a neutral (blue) and live (brown) wire in the bottom left, which are the inputs. These will go into the bottom of the transformer in positions “5” and “6”.
Then the two twisted pairs (blue/white and orange/white) – which are the outputs going to the Ring doorbell – will come out of positions “1” and “4”. This would be perfectly adequate to power the Ring Pro, and hence our wiring would look like this:
However, remember the ‘bypass kit' in your blue installation box? Well if you take the sticker off it (why wouldn't you?!…), it actually says “Ring Pro Power Kit V2”. If you Google this, Ring's support page says that one of the output cables should go through this.
This is because the Pro Power Kit V2 contains a self-resetting fuse, in other words it acts as a circuit breaker. If there's an electrical short or similar issue when your Pro is installed, this circuit breaker will kick in and the circuit will trip. Then you can reset the circuit in your consumer unit, and the Pro will carry on working fine.
Side Note: The Pro Power Kit V2 acts as a resistor in the circuit. So if you have read that Ring Doorbells require a resistor, you're already safe (assuming you did use the Pro Power Kit, of course!).
This is much better than your Doorbell Pro getting damaged! It's frustrating that this really crucial information isn't clear from the Ring user guides, and that the “Pro Power Kit V2” is hidden by a ‘bypass kit' sticker (even though many people – including me – won't be bypassing an existing doorbell). Nonetheless, it's good to know and it means that the end wiring diagram for converting a Deta C3051 to a Ring Doorbell Pro will be:
Step 3 – do the actual work!
Firstly I stripped back the existing doorbell, completely removing it from the wall and leaving behind the input and output cable:
Then I fed the cables into the back of the Wylex enclosure (through the DIN rail holes) and fit the back onto the wall – luckily it had the same screw hole positions as the Deta doorbell so I didn't need to drill extra mounting points:
I then had to wire everything up, but cutting the blue twisted pair output cable in-situ (to include it in the Pro Power Kit) would have been tricky, so instead I butchered an existing CAT5 cable and took some extra blue/white twisted pair from here:
Then I could wire up the transformer and put the front of the Wylex enclosure back on:
That's it for the tricky (internal) bit, now let's go outside. I removed the white cover off my doorbell to see:
I then removed this second cover/push button enclosure and removed the wiring to get:
I then wired up the Doorbell Pro, all straightforward enough:
Mounting it – onto my wooden frame – is simple, no drilling needed – just screwing in the two provided screws:
Now the moment of truth! I go to my consumer unit, press the ‘Bell' switch on and voila!
Step 4 – setting up the doorbell in the app
This means it's in setup mode. I can now switch to the mobile app and finish the install there. This is all straightforward enough so I won't cover it step-by-step, but it's worth noting that there's a QR code on the right hand side of the Pro (that needs to be scanned as part of the install process).
I wasn't able to scan this when it was mounted due to my narrow doorframe, but I thankfully took a photo of this QR code beforehand – so I could just scan this off another screen at set-up time.
Anywhoo, with it all set-up, I can go into the app and view out the front of my house any time:
Summing up
Thanks for reading this article, I hope you've found it useful!
I don't have tons of experience with electrics, and it's always better to contact a qualified electrician if you're not sure. But having said that, if you have a Deta mains voltage doorbell and you follow the steps above carefully, there's no reason that – like me – you can't easily install the Ring Doorbell Pro.
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