Nest Doorbell/Hello has stopped recording when the doorbell rings (others, all good still)

[Dan1111]

For the last few days, many of the events when the doorbell rings are not being saved and not working. Two days ago the doorbell was rung and the video wasn't saved. Tonight I rang my own doorbell, the music doorbell tone froze after a second and if I try to look at the recorded video, the thumbnail is there but not the video itself.

When I choose a doorbell ringing video in the history, it either freezes and does nothing and the whole app goes a bit wonky, showing the last thing in my live feed sometimes, or it gives me an error at the top saying 'no events detected' even though the thumbnail is moving at the bottom and I have selected it (I have the paid subscription). This is happening to every doorbell ring actually.

This is a new issue after working perfectly for years.

Any thoughts?

[MplsCustomer]

@Dan1111 

Your issue might be that the internal battery in your Nest Hello is failing.  (Yes, it has an internal battery that most of us didn't know about; it is supposed to power the doorbell's camera during the instant when the doorbell button is being pressed.)  This battery failure causes the doorbell to go offline for a minute whenever the doorbell button is pressed. This has happened in succession to all three of our Nest Hello doorbells, and to hundreds of other customers' doorbells; see this long post with over 1,000 replies: https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/Nest-Hello-Doorbell-cuts-out-when-butto....

Since Google Nest says they "cannot" replace such doorbells if they're past the 1-year warranty, we are using the workaround of turning off the "Indoor chime" option on the doorbell. While this means our indoor doorbell chime no longer rings, our doorbells now stay online even when the doorbell button is pressed. We instead turned on the "Visitor announcements" option (https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7672451), to get doorbell announcements on our Nest Hubs and Nest Mini.

A few customers have tried prying open their doorbells to replace the indoor battery, but the doorbells are not really designed to be pried open:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Nest+Hello+Battery+Replacement/131729

[Dan1111]

Thanks for your reply. I am confused though. Why would this only happen where there is a doorbell ring? Because it records fine with tons of other things - motion, sound, people, etc. 

What does visitor announcements sound/look like compared to the indoor chime by the way? What is the difference?

[MplsCustomer]

@Dan1111 

You can see the long thread I referenced for details on the defect. The Nest Hello doorbell is normally powered by household current coming through your doorbell's transformer. However, when you press the doorbell button, power is diverted for an instant to your doorbell's internal chime; during that instant, the internal battery is supposed to power your doorbell's camera instead. But when it fails, that doesn't happen and your doorbell's camera looses power and goes offline for a minute.

When our doorbells' internal batteries failed, the same thing happened. Everything worked except when the doorbell button was pressed.

Check the "Visitor announcements" link I provided for details. This option sends a chime sound and an oral announcement ("Someone's at the front door") to each of your Nest speakers whenever the doorbell button is pressed (unless a speaker is set to "Do not disturb").

[Dan1111]

Thanks! I already have visitor announcements switched on apparently, so now I know what that was referring to. I take it then the only functionality I will lose by disabling the chimes is the actual chimes (at the moment the Christmas ones sadly)?

There are a few different chime options - which exact feature/setting to I turn off to get it to work properly?

On Made by Google FB support, I linked to that thread and they said they have not received any similar reports and so are asking me to try a factory reset!

[MplsCustomer]

@Dan1111 

In the American English version, the option is Settings | Indoor Chime On/Off.

If your Nest Hello Doorbell is going offline for a minute whenever the doorbell button is pressed due to a failing internal battery, I don't know how it's possible for Google Nest Support to NOT know about similar reports. The thread on this defect had over 1,000 replies before Google Nest locked it many months ago.

[Dan1111]

This fixed it so it was indeed the issue you suspected!

[NYJackpot]

This makes perfect sense to me, I did notice during installation a couple years ago, that the camera was recording me for a couple of mins even when the doorbell wires weren't connected. Thanks for the info, did not know that's how it worked!