Solar Charger for Ring Video Doorbell 3, Ring Video Doorbell 3 Plus, and Ring Video Doorbell 4

Update 7/18/2021I fixed the Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger, it had the jumper connector wire which connects up between the Ring Doorbell 3 and the Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger connected backwards, I verified this was the case with a volt meter. I ordered Weij 5.5V 291mA solar panels from Amazon and placed them in parallel with the Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Panels. To do this you have to open up the Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger and solder the Weij Solar panels in parallel with the Ring Doorbell 3 solar panels, also I swapped/corrected the jumper wire connection so that the +/- wires are now correct, also make sure you solder the extra solar panels on the input side of the regulator of the Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger. After doing all of this and reassembling the unit, my batter has been kept at 89 to 91% charge every day for the past 2 weeks, before it would discharge around 1.3% per day.One note, what I got was Weij 5.5V solar panels, however the Ring Doorbell 3 solar panels are 6V, I verified this with a volt meter, if you are going to do this buy 6V solar panels, not the 5.5V panels that I bought.Update 6/25/2021I cannot recommend Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger, I suspect that it is a build/testing quality issue at Ring with their Solar Charger, the Ring Solar Charger never worked for me, it never charged up the battery. I did swap the solar wires and when I did that the Ring Doorbell 3 recognized that I had a solar charger connected, but it never charged the battery and several days the Ring Doorbell 3 didn't recognize I had a solar charger connected to it.So what I did is I purchased a Wasserstein Solar Charging Bracket made for the Ring Doorbell 3, I installed it last evening and when I did the Ring Doorbell 3 immediately recognized that the Wasserstein Solar Charger was connected. Today, for the first time my battery was charged by a solar charger, the Wasserstein Solar Charger, the battery started off at 75% charge and it went to 76% charge, so the Solar Wassertein Charger is working. Also the Wasserstein Solar Charger has 36% more charging capability than the Ring Solar Charger, the Wasserstein charges at 0.6W vs 0.44W. I would highly recommend the Wasserstein Solar Charger made for Ring Doorbell 3 instead of the Ring Solar Charger.Update 6/18/2021:I have been waiting for my battery to get below 89% to see if it would start charging, it didn't, today it was at 87% and if you check "Device Health" it will tell you the "Solar Status" whether it is connected or not. Since the day I purchased Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger till today, my Ring Doorbell 3 has stated that the Solar Charger is NOT connected. I pretty much suspected what was wrong in that Ring had accidentally swapped the + and - charger terminals. To test this I turned the Solar Charger connectors 180 degrees from the Ring Solar Charger instructions, sure enough my Ring Doorbell 3 stated that the Solar charger was connected, the problem was I could not mount my Ring Doorbell 3 with the charge connection inverted back into the Solar Charge mounting frame. What this met is that I would have to open up the Solar charge itself and swap the + and - connectors. I did this but it was painful, not to be done by your typical consumer buyer. Inside the charge there are two sets of wires you must swap, I swapped both of them, one thing I noticed is that the leads are very short, the solder joint, probably because of the minimal design room was very poor, essentially only women and children would be able to solder the wires, with tiny fingers, day in and day out, also the minimal room allowed for soldering, short leads would discourage assemblers to do a good solder job. It took me awhile but I was able to swap the power wires and resolder the power leads to the solar panels wires. Overall I would give a grade D or C to Ring for solderability or connectability of the solar panels to the charger connector to Ring Doorbell 3. Also the fact that this unit was shipped to me with the power leads swapped tells me Ring doesn't do any testing to see if the charger leads are correctly oriented for + and - connection after assembly.To see if your charger to Ring Doorbell 3 Charger is connected up properly go to Device Health, check to see of the Ring Doorbell 3 sees the Solar charger (on a sunny day) and if the Ring Doorbell 3 doesn't see the Ring Solar Charger, in all likelihood you have a defective unit where Ring accidentally swapped the power wires from the solar panel to the connector. You can test this like I did, is turn the connector around 180 degrees, connect it and see if the Ring Doorbell 3 under Device Health recognizes that the Solar Charger is connected, if it does I would recommend that you return the unit rather than opening it up and swapping the wires like I did. You may want to email Amazon and Ring what you did and why you are returning the charging unit. I will try and contact Ring and let them know that they are assembling, shipping defective units. Many of the reviews where I read that the Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger doesn't work, probably doesn't work for this reason. Given the above, I am changing my review to 3 instead of 4 stars. I will post later if my Ring Doorbell 3 Charger with the swapped power wires are charging the battery or not.I called Ring technical support and gave them the above input, I stated that if Ring doesn't do anything to fix this problem, send out notice, then I would reduce my star rating from 3 stars to 1 star. If Ring fixes this problem and puts out a statement of possible assembly flaw, I will raise my star rating to a 5, everyone makes mistakes, honest and good companies admit it, fix it and move on.Original Review below:Below is user metrics for Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger, which I purchased 5/30/2021, following is what I found:1. Assuming 3 hours of direct sunlight, 50% of the solar panels receive direct sunlight the Ring Solar Charger can keep your battery charged given your battery discharge rate without the solar charger is less than 1.3%/day, both summer and winter. This means you have setup your Ring Doorbell 3 to go from 100% charge to 20% charge in 2 months time, without the solar charger.2. If you are in constant shade and you only get indirect sunlight, your daily discharge rate for Ring Doorbell 3 without the solar charger will have to be 0.5%/day or less for you to keep the battery charged with only the solar charger, both summer and winter, what this means is your discharge rate for Ring Doorbell 3 is about 4.6 months from 100% to 20% of battery charge without the solar charger.3. I only gave the Ring Doorbell 3 solar charger a 4 star rating, cause in the design spreadsheet analysis, it is evident they should of doubled the solar charging capability to cover most user cases, IMO where they went wrong on the design was assuming that all the Ring solar charger panels would receive direct sunlight, if the Ring solar charger is shaded on the left or right then you will ONLY get 50% of the solar panels getting direct sunlightAttached is an image of the Ring Doorbell 3 Design Analysis Spreadsheet. The numbers in red on the spreadsheet means that the charging is below 0.29 Wh/day charging requirement, for that defined condition.Some other notes:I. Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger, will not charge until the battery is at 89% of full charge.II. Before installing your Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger, make sure your Ring Doorbell 3 setup is such that the battery discharge rate is 100% to 20% in 2 months (given you have 3 hours of direct sunlight) and if you have indirect sunlight you will have to have a 100% to 20% battery discharge rate of 4.6 months.III. The Ring Doorbell 3 Solar Charger will have less solar power charging capability in the winter than in the summer, about 50% less

I am updating my review based on more experience with this solar panel. The correct description is a "solar trickle charger" not a "solar charger" which implies this panel will actually on a consistent basis charge your ring doorbell. This panel under ideal conditions with basically no events will actually replace some of the lost charge. In my situation neither panel has ever been able to bring the doorbell back to the 89% charge threshold but has on occasion been able to actually make up some of my daily lost charge. I was contacted by the Ring rep based on my initial review and the wording they used in the email was "trickle charger" which is the best way to describe this panel. It will not preclude the need (unless perhaps you have ideal circumstances) to periodically charge your batteries, but if you have a reasonable amount of light and minimal events it will extend the period between charges. The ideal situation is a South facing door with no overhang or obstructions which will prevent the panel from getting direct sun. My situation actually improved during the winter in spite of the shorter days due to a lower sun angle on one of the panels. If you can do it I recommend getting a larger panel with the ability to get better sun coverage. If you go with this solar trickle charger expect (consistent with many of the other reviewers) you will still need to periodically pull and charge the batteries. I suggest getting a spare so that you can keep your Ring online while the other battery charges.Previous Review: If you live in the south and your door faces south this panel may work for you assuming it gets direct sunlight pretty much all-day. As i live in a community where i cannot put a big panel i purchased two of these, one for my north facing camera and one for the east facing camera. my normal battery drain (most settings are for reduce power consumption) runs about 2% of the battery (.44wH/day) so my battery will last about 45 days assuming taking it down to 10%. Note the battery is 22.046 wH and this panel under direct sunlight puts out .52W. Since my power consumption is approx .44 wH per day in theory the panel could recharge this loss in an hour of direct sunlight but from what i have seen i really need 3 to 4 hours of direct sunlight just to offset my daily battery discharge. the north facing camera simply does not get the direct sunlight and while it will show a charge indicator there is not much difference having the panel attached or not in terms of battery discharge. the east facing camera with a good sunny day i can see times where i do not take a full 2% loss in charge and sometimes it will maintain but never enough to actually add charge back into the battery. i am not optimistic at all about winter when i expect to see the panels to provide pretty much no charge at all. note you may need to reboot or reset the doorbell after installing the panel. both of mine initially had issues which required a reboot. you need to look for the charge indicator that will appear as part of the battery icon. right now in fact in spite of having direct sun on one of the panels it is not giving a charge indication and has required a reboot. this is after several days of overcast weather. there is also another thing to look for where the battery will not start accepting a charge until it is under 90% so you cannot tell if you are actually getting a charge until it gets down to 90% (this is per a tech support response i found). i am keeping my spare battery as these panels will not in my case provide adequate charging and will require a regular swap out with a charged battery.