Nest Doorbell Wired Gen 2 - Terrible Humming / Buzzing at Chime

[RiskyBizniz]

I recently bought and installed the Nest Doorbell Wired Gen 2 at my front door to replace a traditional "dumb" doorbell that worked fine. Each step throughout the setup seemed to go smoothly and I was quite proud of myself for finishing up so quickly. The bell would chime when I rang, I could see live feeds, recordings worked, audio worked. All great!

Then about an hour later I noticed a terrible humming / buzzing coming from my chime enclosure. I opened it up and could see the right-most solenoid vibrating up & down rapidly causing the noise. I'm not an electrical guy, so I just removed the new doorbell entirely until I can figure this out and ensure that I am not posing any fire hazards.

A few YouTube videos I saw mentioned that installing a resistor inside the chime may help... I thought this was the reason for the Gen 2 Chime Puck? The puck is reading ~2.2 Ohms on an ohmeter. Maybe that's not enough and I need to add my own resistor in addition? Not entirely sure the purpose of the puck, so maybe I'm way off base here.

Here's a photo of the chime (prior to installing the chime puck): https://i.imgur.com/YlCOaU3.jpg

Here's a short video of the the chime with everything wired up and turned on (and sounding terrible). You can see the puck wired into the Front and Trans terminals per the instructions: https://i.imgur.com/9bX5y4G.mp4

Here's a photo of what I believe to be the transformer in my basement (16V, 10VA): https://i.imgur.com/RJIm7BM.jpg

I definitely have the app set up for mechanical chime type.

I tried the Google chat help without any success. Showed all these photos to some electrical guys at work, and they were stumped too. They thought maybe the transformer should be replaced, or that the wiring into the transformer was screwy. Maybe the blue "rear" wire is causing some trouble? Honestly didn't know I had a rear doorbell...

Moslty, I am confused because everything works great... except for the buzzing. I would think that if some wires were incorrect, the new bell just wouldn't work at all. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

[MplsCustomer]

@RiskyBizniz 

This Google Nest Help topic has wiring diagrams for the chime puck for the 2nd Gen Google Nest Doorbell: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/12153643?hl=en

I think your wiring is okay, though it's hard to tell completely from your photos.

However, several customers in this forum have reported defective "chime pucks" that had to be replaced: https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/What-does-the-nest-doorbell-2md-gen-puc...

Another possibility is that a couple of customers in this forum have reported chime issues when their transformer is at the minimum requirement of 10 VA indicated here: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9247132

When we got our second Nest Hello Doorbell, we upgraded to a 16 V 30 VA transformer.

[RiskyBizniz]

Thanks! It seems like the easiest Step #1 to take is to replace the transformer with something a bit beefier and hope that takes care of it. My only concern with doing this is that, assuming the 10 VA isn't "enough", wouldn't that just cause the doorbell/camera to not work as it isn't being supplied enough power? That's not my issue in this particular case. Everything works, just with the terrible extra buzzing/humming.

Assuming that doesn't help my issue, do you know how I go about getting a new chime puck. I am betting I just go through the chat support again? Tried that last night but they seemed reluctant to provide a new puck, insisting that my wiring was incorrect.

[MplsCustomer]

@RiskyBizniz 

The buzzing is certainly one indication of an incorrectly wired chime puck. You can double-check your wiring against the diagrams in the Google Nest Help topic in my earlier post, but yours do seem correct.

But the buzzing can also be from an inadequate transformer. In the post below, another customer had a 16 V 10 VA transformer like yours, and had buzzing and a vibrating chime striker symptoms like yours. They resolved it by getting a 16 V 30 VA transformer, and they have a detailed description of what they went through.

https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Cameras-and-Doorbells/THE-Solution-to-2nd-Gen-Wired-Doorbell-...

If the transformer does NOT resolve it, then yes, you'd have to go through Support again. If you get a phone option, you could try that.

[RiskyBizniz]

Thanks, I will give this a try. Again, my only reservation is that I don't think my issue is necessarily similar to the post you linked me. That OP seemed to not be able to get their chime to activate at all due to insufficient power being supplied by the transformer. I don't have that issue. My chimes work well when the button is pressed. If anything, my concern is that I'm feeding the chime too much voltage... Although I suppose this may still be remedied by swapping the transformer with a new one.

Thank you for the suggestions though. For $25, it is worth a shot 🙂 I will let you know how I make out.

[Mart2]

Were you successful in obtaining a new chime puck? If so, how did you go about it? I need one also.

[RiskyBizniz]

Well, sort of. I actually just went back to the retail store that I purchased it from and did a full product return and bought an entirely new kit (bell, puck, hardware, etc.). It was a very easy process but I don't know that everyone would have the success I did depending on the retailer that you bought from. I haven't gotten the chance to measure the resitance of the new puck yet to see if that actually was a contributing factor to my issues. I'm tackling two parts: (1) replacing the bell transformer to a 30VA (from 10VA), and (2) the new puck/nest from my retailer exchange. I figure one of these things has to fix my issue!

[RiskyBizniz]

Just as a followup in case someone comes to this thread in the future... seems like I did fix my problem. Unfortunately I swapped out just about everything, so I can't say for sure what exactly was causing it.

I purchased and installed a new 16V, 30VA transformer from Home Depot (previous was 16V, 10VA).

I returned the doorbell and puck to my retailer and exchanged it for a new set.

So it could have been a bad puck, a bad connection somewhere along the line, or a transformer issue. I didn't want to take the time to isolate the incident and just replaced it all in one swoop. Though if I had to guess, the root cause was the transformer.

The chime box still makes a very low hum but if I wasn't going up and searching for it, I would never notice. So I consider my issue to be closed.

[JackyMarie]

Following.  Same issue.

[RiskyBizniz]

Please see my most recent post. Was able to fix my issues by ( I think ) swapping out my transformer to something rated 16V / 30VA

[janthadeus]

Hi folks,
 

RiskyBizniz, awesome! Thanks for posting and I appreciate your time in providing the Community the steps that resolved your buzzing indoor chime — it's a big help.
 

Mart2, let’s check — could you fill out this form and let me know once you’re done?

JackyMarie, did you get a chance to try the shared steps above by RiskyBizniz? If so, how did it go? Let me know if you need further assistance.

I appreciate the help here, MplsCustomer and RiskyBizniz.

Thanks,

JT

[aatienza]

Hey there,

It's us again. Were you able to fill out this form?

I appreciate the help, everyone.

Thanks,

Archie

[Brad]

Hi there,

Just checking in to see if you have had a chance to fill out the form we sent. We'll leave this topic open for another 24 hours in case there are any follow-up questions or comments.
 

Thank you for all of your help here, Archie and JT!

Best regards,
Brad