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Cold weather concerns with Nest Doorbell Battery

fernadno
Community Member

Hi,

Similar to some other posters here, I recently noticed that my Nest Doorbell battery (activated 2021-08-28), although wired, had lost much of its charge (down to 3%, indicated a 23 hour time to charge in Google Home app).

The 23 hour recharge estimate remained unchanged for 3 hours when kept wired to doorbell wiring.

From another recommendation on the forum, I decided to try unplugging from the doorbell wires and taking the doorbell indoors to charge via USB cable until 100%.

My doorbell remains plugged into a USB port, showing 2% charged, and an 18 hr 29 min time until full. It has been plugged in now for 1 hour, with no noticeable change in charge condition.

Outdoor temperatures have only recently dropped to below 0 degrees Celsius for longer than a few hours (max -7 degrees C).

Should I be concerned about the battery condition and how this doorbell is reacting to colder weather? Winter has yet to truly begin, and I am worried that this doorbell will not be functional as temperatures continue to drop. I know that ambient operating temperatures fall within -20 and +40 C (as indicated here).

 

 

 

1 Recommended Answer

Brad
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey folks,


We appreciate the feedback on our battery Cameras and Doorbells. Our team is looking closely into this behavior, and we will continue to pass along reports we see here in the Community. To learn more about cold weather battery charging behavior in Nest cameras and doorbells, please stop by our Help Center.

 

Best regards,

Brad.

View Recommended Answer in original post

606 REPLIES 606

They clearly don't know what they're talking about.  It will in fact shut down when it gets down to around 1 or 2 percent charge and it does not need to be lower than -20C to do so.  Mine has shut down for that reason at ~0C.  Now that I've configured it to trigger on events less often, it can go down lower without loosing ground as quickly, but the same thing now happens after a few days at -5C or lower.    We're in a cold spell right at the moment  (-10C or so for a couple of days), and it's on it's way to shutting down now.  It's at around 20% (down from 67% two days ago).  It will likely shut off some time tomorrow.

Yeah, I’m secretly hoping this late December purchase is a somehow an improved design as the guy did ask for my SN before responding it would be fine but I’m likely dreaming. Shut down will likely be my destiny as well. I’ll be tracking it over the next couple of days. Getting to -20C Friday, That will likely be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

In the meantime, I checked my transformer. Through my voltmeter, I already knew it was delivering 22v but I couldn’t find the VA. It’s in a hard to reach place. Managed to squeeze in confirmed VA is 10. So, I can rule out an insufficient transformer. 

How can you tell what level the battery is?  Mine doesn't show battery level as it's a "wired" model.

You can ask a Google assistant device what the battery level is.

CastenS
Community Member

Ask Google assistance about your battery level. 

MartyMcFly
Community Member

I am in the same boat. The Nest Doorbell was bought and installed wired since October with no issues.. I noticed two days ago the charge was down to 15% even known it does show as plugged in. At first I thought it was some sort of battery protection in the cold as it was -10 celsius but the temperature is now a nice -2 and it is still not charging. I have opened a ticket with support about this also.

JDLaw
Community Member

Same boat. Alberta weather, camera is offline, and has been for days. Product shouldn't be sold here

FXL
Community Member

I strongly agree that this product is not winter-proof in Canada, and Google should've known it. In my opinion, Google should have sold it with a clear warning that the doorbell is likely to stop working below -20 degrees Celsius even if wired.

 

The optional 'wired' installation can be misleading in a way that the doorbell would be cold weather proof. I thought the hard-wiring would provide power when battery fails in the cold snap, and the battery is for the backup for power outage. Expecting I'm covered for power outage as well, I justified to pay more for this doorbell while competitors offer hard-wired doorbells at less than half the price.

 

As you can easily guess, my friend's $50 doorbell is working fine, while my three times more expensive doorbell is frozen dead.

CastenS
Community Member

Agree. For the price of these, this is a joke. 

firmwaredev
Bronze
Bronze

-17C here this morning, and battery is holding at around 18%, so lost just a little overnight.   0 events though, so maybe not so surprising.  It does seem to be doing better than the last cold spell, but I reduced events since then as well (and have had even less than normal traffic the last couple of days).  Will keep tracking it.  Software version still showing v1.59, so I don't think any updates have occurred.

Curious to see how it will behave in my case once fully depleted. I suspect it will shut down as it did for most other people but once it does and I charge it back up fully inside, will it be less affected by cold with a full charge and some amount of trickle charging? Arguably, that would make the battery warmer... Just speculating here. 

In the short term, it certainly would benefit.  But that would go away pretty quickly. I'd expect it to equalize with the environment within a couple of hours, tops.   But being fully charged up (especially since you can get to 100%, instead of just 75% on doorbell A/C), definitely helps.   That's part of the reason mines doing a little better in this cold spell.   The prior cold spell was proceeded by a long period of moderate cold that was just slowly eating away at the battery, so didn't have much reserve.  This last spell followed a very warm period that let it get up to max (or close..around 70% or so), so a lot more buffer left to ride out the cold.   I think long term average temp is what's going to be the deciding factor of it's really workable in a given location.

dimedancing
Community Member

Mine’s been mostly offline for weeks now while temperatures have generally been below -20. Every couple days I get a notification saying it’s back on, but it only lasts for an hour or so and then it goes offline until temperatures “return to normal” (lol). Battery currently says 7 weeks even though it’s wired in on 14v, so it’s clearly not drained; it’s just choosing not to work.

 

Needless to say, when Google emailed me to renew my Nest subscription, I ignored it.

Yup, mine is offline until normal temperature and battery has 81%. This makes me believe that there is a temp sensor inside the unit and software shuts it's off. 

 

 

FXL
Community Member

Mine was at 77% before shutting off a couple of nights before(below -25 degrees C). It just came back online now(-22 degrees C with direct sunlight on the doorbell) with 65% battery level.

 

The battery seems to have lost about 10% of charge due to the cold temperature, but not completely depleted while the lowest temp went as low as -30. I also think the temp sensor shuts it off regardless of the battery charge level.

Yeah, not surprising.  It is spec'd for -20C, so can't really fault it for that, even if undesirable.   They probably just choose to cleanly shut down rather than letting the power levels drop to zero and get un-cleanly shut down.

I suspect another reason would be battery longevity at low temps.  If you continue to charge at very low temps, you can get lithium plating occurring on the internal electrodes, which can permanently reduce the battery capacity and in some cases even cause short circuits, which would be a safety issue.   It's just one of those things you have to deal with when using Li-Ion rechargeables. 

The engineer in me is already working on a small heat strip to attach to the body. But at -27C right now my brain is frozen too. 

I will have something by this fall. LOL

Yeah, that would be a cool (no pun) project.  Need to be pretty careful though to regulate it well.  You don't want it heating things up in the summer.  Thermal runaway of the battery would be a really bad thing with it attached to your house :).

At this point I have been thinking a 5V 3W heat film taped to the back of the camera. It's worth a try and see how much heat it develops inside the camera. I can run it off a USB battery and only plug in when it's cold. 

 
Updating Media

 

Dbarrag
Community Member

What shall we do? Go for a refund/return or wait and see? I suspect Google won't be able to fix this before the return window expires. I'm stuck with a 1 year nest aware subscription so I may be forced to switch to the old wired model. Ugh

Good question.  I'm well past my return window, so too late for me.    I was trying to remember your prior posts - you were having some more success recently, weren't you, or was that someone else? 

On the Nest Aware, one caution there - I think I've seen some folks having trouble with mixing/matching that subscription between the old and new devices - mainly going from an older nest aware subscription that was using older cameras/doorbells to the newer battery models.   You might just contact support to make sure you can actually transfer that over.

I'm still in my return window but I won't send mine back. I moved from old Nest to new Google Nest to have everything in the Google app. And, aside from the power situation, I like this doorbell better. The looks, the AI and again everything in one app.

I'm encouraged by my settings experiments which have cut the drain significantly. I'm now feeling like this could be manageable. The early drain was in part caused by my thinking there was truly limitless power and the associated power hungry configuration. With the conservative settings and a full battery next time I charge it inside the house, I feel like it could last a decent amount of time. 

And I'm holding out for an actual solution from Google... Perhaps a software update and/or hardware add on to maximize the power going to the doorbell.

Worse comes to worst, I got this one at a decent discount (maybe that should have been a cue ;-)) and could always swap for the real wired version when (if?) it comes. 

Yeah, I think I'm in the same boat at this point.  We're coming out of a cold spell today and while it did loose quite a bit of ground (and still is loosing ground even with zero events overnight) I think it'll make it through to warmer temps that are coming in the next couple of days.  For me, I mainly just needed to cut down the recording zone.   I deliberately did not trim down the sensitivity and quality settings, as I want as much pre-roll as possible and high quality recording.  If I had to cut those down, that would probably be deal killer for me.   As mentioned, I'm in Indiana, so it's more moderate weather with a lot of ups and downs, which gives it some time to recover during the warm spells.   Still, January has just begun, so we'll see :).   I'm optimistic that I might be able to make this work in my location.  For folks in colder areas, I'm not so sure it's going to be workable at the higher settings I have in place.  And of course, any place that spends much time below -20C is probably not going to work at all.  It's just going to shut down at that point regardless of charge, per the spec.

Interesting. It was -19C when I woke up. Battery was at 29%. Dropped to 25% really fast. Infinity symbol disappeared and was replaced with 5 days remaining. Warmed up to -14C outside BUT my entry door has full sun starting late morning all the way until dusk. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky so the doorbell got a chance to thaw, so to speak, despite the frigid temps. Climbed back up to 28%. Infinity symbol has returned. 

While I very much believe Google needs to address this, I do have to say I am enjoying tinkering to get it to stay alive. Will go back up to 3C tomorrow. I won’t bring it in to recharge until it dies on me. Curious to see how I can keep it running.

I hear you on deal breakers… That said, I’ve noticed lower pix quality has the advantage of bringing up video much faster when you call it up.

CastenS
Community Member

-23°C, my doorbell camera just came back to life. Battery was 81% when it shut down last week and held at 81% all week. Now it shows intimate again.  

mpb65
Community Member

Lucky you.  Cold here in Toronto so mine is of course is only at 8% and not charging of course.

Maybe a class action suit might wake Google up to deal with this issue?

mpb65
Community Member

Mine has shut down in cold weather here in Toronto.  Again, no support from Google.

plegaspi11
Community Member

Like wise here and it did shut down after 23:30 last night when the temperature in Markham dropped down to -21C.  It did turn back online this morning around 09:30 when the temperature raised up a bit at  -18C and showing it's plugged in with the infinity icon.   The battery level did show at 51% this morning around 08:00 while the doorbell status was offline.   I wish there's away to bypass the battery and prevent this issue.  I'm also still deciding whether I should return this product or find a solution to this cold weather issue.

PL

mpb65
Community Member

RETURN IT!  Unfortunately, I am outside the return window.

At this stage, it was -20C last night in Toronto.  My cheap solar powered Christmas lights managed to stay on all night.

My very expensive Google doorbell has now been dead for several days with not even a hint of a trickle charge. 

Pathetic product Google!

plegaspi11
Community Member

Yeah that might be the case for me and return it.  I wish they put more R&D for this product especially for colder climates and hopefully Google will compensate everyone who are outside the return window.  

PL

Bzsy
Community Member

Having the same problem! Came looking for an answer, and left dumbfounded. Where’s Google at? 

mpb65
Community Member

Nowhere.  They are ignoring us completely.

FXL
Community Member

Screen Shot 2022-01-11 at 10.50.16 AM.png

Attached here is the response from @madebygoogle twitter about the doorbell battery issue.

 

I checked out the link provided by the Google, and it makes clearer that Google is responsible for misleading the customers to believe the doorbell would be working fine in the cold weather when hardwired.

 

Screen Shot 2022-01-11 at 10.56.46 AM.png

FYI, below is the link to the official 'fix a problem' page talking about the cold weather and hardwiring. I'm getting more inclined to return the doorbell unless hearing from Google soon about what they are going to do to make it right.

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/10901611?hl=en&ref_topic=9299926

 

Please tweet to @madebygoogle to keep providing feedbacks.

mpb65
Community Member

Their response is nonsense.  My Google Doorbell is hard-wired.  This means it should receive a trickle charge continuously.  Needless to say, it doesn't during cold weather.  And I have no intention of removing it each time the weather freezes to USB charge it.  Ridiculous.

FXL
Community Member

So is mine. I think Google should be responsible for misleading people that hard-wiring would be the winter-proof solution. The truth is, my hard-wired doorbell keeps shutting off when temperature drops below -20 degrees C.

mpb65
Community Member

Same here.  Please post on Twitter if you are active there.

Mikeriog
Community Member

Hey everyone, on Twitter post this thread and your thoughts on the customer service you feel we're receiving... Please make sure to @madebygoogle

Let's bring this into the public domain because people like brad are doing nothing to even initate a proper discussion with us.

I know Google doesn't love when these issue go public so let's do our part.

mpb65
Community Member

Can someone please do this?  Is it possible to post the entire thread?

I think @alirahimpour89  already did at least once.   Let me see if I can find that thread.  Maybe we can  just pile on there.  He just posted the url to this thread. 

I did it and they just wanted me to create a support ticket. Hope more people will do the same to get Google to actually take it seriously... This "monitoring" stage has gone on for way too long...