I’ve been interested in getting a WiFi doorbell for my house. Having looked at the issues surrounding the two market-leading brands, decided to go the cheaper route and purchased a no-name brand from China.

The doorbell and separate chime are excellent, but are not waterproof.

I experienced this after having had the doorbell working for a week or so – England is anything but dry and before Christmas a downpour lashed our front elevation for around 18 hours, thoroughly wetting the outside of the unit. While the camera still worked and I could connect to it from my phone app, I did not suspect that water had entered the compartment. When it did occur to me was after one door press by the post delivery worker that left a lingering ‘ding dong’ in the air after it should have stopped.

The next day the lingering ‘ding dong’ did not stop at all and I had to remove power from the chime unit. I opened the unit and saw moisture inside and dried it out, but realised several days later that I could not connect to the unit from the mobile app and so have taken it off the wall to fully waterproof it. Thankfully the ringing had stopped but I worried that it could re-occur in the middle of the night or while we were away.

I will use electronic conformal liquid in a spray form to coat the PCB and internals, and will try to either glue non-moving parts in place with silicone sealant as well as putting a bead around the external rim of the back-plate. My challenge is that there is several holes where ingress is needed for the microphone and the speaker! How to waterproof those? And the press button will still have to move inwards to depress the micro-switch and if glued solid it could not do this.