"micky" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:51:55 -0500, "Robert Green"
stuff snipped

I spent some time today testing the various frequency setting jumpers
with
no joy. Put a huge metal pot over the WiFi hotspot with no joy. While
the
doorbell may not be in the 400MHz range, the harmonics from the hotspot
could be strong enough to "step" on the doorbell signal. I've taken home
a
dead, water damaged button to look at the circuit board.

Occasionally a little piece of wire extending the antenna helps. The
WiFi

That doesn't prove much. It's just a variation on "inadequate range".

If an added antenna wire extends the range just enough for the unit to work,
that would be OK with me and my neighbor, I think. I just haven't been able
to figure out where the antenna is on the doorbell button unit!

I have a radio in my shop which always worked fine. When I started
trying to fix my old computer in the shop, the moitor interfered with
the FM reception on the one stattion I listen to, 88.1FM (so I
swticherd to internet radio, but there are still times I'd rather just
turn on the radio.) Months later I went through a period where the
radio worked fine even when the monitor was on. A few days. Then it
went back the old way, and turning the monitor on when the computer
was running ruined the radio reception. I have no idea yet why
sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn/t

Well, at least she's got a constant problem - it doesn't work/not work. It
doesn't work at all anymore at the range it used to.

router is unfortunately set up about ten feet away from the doorbell. My
neighbor did not want to turn off the router because it's twitchy to
restart. In fact, I am going to donate one of my old, flea powered UPS's
to
her so that it doesn't get locked up when there's a power blip. I think
it's the WiFi unit, but I was surprised that putting it under a big metal
pot had no effect on the doorbell's range.

Doies the pot have to be grounded? I've never understood this, so I'm
not saying it has to be. But there was some reason in the past I
began to think that. .

To be most effective as a "Faraday cage" I assume it should be grounded, but
I also think the RF output of the router would be seriously attenuated by
the pot, grounded or not. With her understandable reluctance to shut down
the router, it's going to be hard to "indict" it as the cause. I
recommended that she relocate the chime's base unit to be much closer to the
doorbell unit than it is now. Right now, we've relocated the doorbell
switch to the center of the wooden front door, behind the storm door and it
works from there. Still, she would rather have it along the edge of the
doorframe but it doesn't work there. She may be better off with the "inside
the storm door" mounting arrangement because the last switch got wet and
corroded and the tiny microswitch has failed.

I told her I could fix the corroded switch by wiring it to an alarm contact
so that if anyone opens the storm door, the unit will fire. She liked that
idea. Attaching the doorbell switch to alarm contacts has another benefit.
I can locate the "guts" of the doorbell switch inside the house and much
closer to the base unit. In fact, I can take a garden variety hard-wired
doorbell button and mount it outside and lead the wire inside to one of her
spare RF doorbell buttons. I'd do that by unsoldering the bad/corroded tiny
pushbutton switch from the circuit board and then soldering wires from the
hard-wired doorbell switch outside to the spots on the board where the old
switch was soldered. That would mean that the RF transmitter was now inside
the house, protected from the weather and closer to the base unit.

All in all, it's probably going to be cheaper and easier just to get a
better/different unit.

--
Bobby G.