Choosing the Range of Your Wireless Door Chime

• What is “wireless range”
• The “published range” versus the actual range
• Factors that interfere with the range
• Tips on improving range

What is Wireless Range When it Comes to Door Chimes?

When talking about wireless door chimes, entrance alerts, and driveway alarms, the wireless range of products is defined as the distance, usually in feet, from the transmitter to the receiver. Doorbell transmitters are the pieces in a kit that will generate and send a wireless signal to the receiver.  For door chimes, transmitters are the push button, the part a visitor presses when they ring your doorbell. For entry alerts and driveway alarms, the transmitters are built-in with a motion, magnetometer, or contact-based sensor.  When these sensors are triggered, the transmitter sends a signal to the receiver. Door chime receivers are battery-operated or plugin units that receive the transmitted signal and play a tune, tone, melody, or other doorbell sounds.

The Published Range vs. the Actual Range of Wireless Products

When manufacturers publish the wireless range of products, they have to use a standardized way to determine the range.  For testing purposes, they use line of sight, which is essentially the unobstructed distance in a straight line, usually determined in a lab environment. Although this isn’t how consumers will use the products, it’s the easiest way to ensure manufacturers are measuring the range the same way this gives an apples-to-apples comparison.  In most situations there will be at least one wall between the doorbell transmitter and the receiver, but if manufacturers published ranges this way, how would you know if it was a brick wall, or a thinner, dry-wall constructed wall? How does this affect your decision?  If the distance from the doorbell button to the receiver is 150 ft., and you purchase a common wireless door chime kit with a published range of 150ft., chances are you will have reliability issues.  On the other hand, if the published range of a kit is 75ft., but you only need 20ft., chances are you won’t have any issues.

Factors That Interfere with Wireless Door Chime Range

• walls
• building materials
• mounting material you mount the transmitter on
• surrounding environmental factors
• other wireless devices

Walls Will Reduce the Range of Your Wireless Device

The most obvious factor that will interfere with the range of a system is a wall.  The type of material the wall is made of will play more of a factor.  The general rule of thumb is that each wall a signal passes through will diminish the signal by 20%.  For example, if you have a sensor at the driveway entrance with a receiver plugged into an outlet in a room adjacent to the exterior of your home, that’s one wall the signal needs to penetrate.  If the product has a published range of 1,000 ft., one wall takes the range down to 800ft.  If the receiver is behind another wall, even an interior wall, the signal will diminish by another 20%.  Another 20% off 800ft. is now 640ft.  If the wall is solid concrete, you need to take 30%-40% off, steel, 50% off.  These numbers are not set in stone, but they do provide a general idea of how signals are diminished. I took a call yesterday from a lady who purchased the Carlon Wireless Kit, RC3250.  She wanted to mount the wireless doorbell button on a wrought-iron gate.  She called and said sometimes the doorbell would ring and sometimes it wouldn’t.  I asked how far it was from the doorbell button to the receiver and she said it was less than 100ft., therefore the product should work as advertised. Ultimately, the problem was the range.  Not only was the exterior wall of her home stucco, which automatically reduced the signal by 30ft. (taking it down to 120ft.), the push-button was mounted against a solid wrought-iron gate, another factor to consider.

The Mounting Surface Matters

The fact that these transmitters are wireless poses another issue to consider and that’s what you mount it against.   When triggered, the transmitters emit a wireless signal that the receiver needs to pick up.  When metal is directly under the product, problems occur because the wireless signal will bounce off the metal.  Weaker signals will lose a tremendous amount of range due to this bouncing around, while stronger signals will not be as effective. In the case above with the wrought-iron gate, we were already stretched to the max because of distance, and exterior wall material, the metal right up against the transmitter was too much for this system to handle. This is why we typically recommend commercial applications purchase a motion-based entrance alert versus a door/window contact entrance alert.  Door/window entrance alerts sit right up against the door frame, which is usually metallic in commercial applications.  A motion sensor sits a few inches away from the metallic frame, which is usually enough for the wireless signal to emit uninterrupted.

 Surrounding Environment and Other Wireless Devices

Other environmental factors will play a role in the effective range of your wireless device, however, under normal circumstances, they are not as important as walls and mounting surfaces.  When I refer to environmental factors I am talking about any outdoor elements that could interfere.  Trees, hills, rocks, etc. will play a role, but in many cases, there are easier ways to overcome these obstacles than dealing with unmovable factors like walls. Trees between the receiver and transmitter won’t play a major role unless it is an extremely heavily treed area.  Hills and valleys should not play a major role unless there is a huge dirt hill right next to the transmitter. Neighboring wireless devices could also cause some interference, but privacy codes help alleviate this problem.  Simple adjustments to the privacy codes on your doorbell will usually eliminate this issue.  We have an entire article that covers this topic here: How to Avoid Doorbell Interference by Changing your Privacy Codes.

Tips On Improving Wireless Range

In most cases, there are some basic things you can do to ensure you are getting the maximum range of your product.  These tips won’t work in every case, but when making your decision on what product to purchase, or deciding if you need to return your product, think about these tips and see if they work.

1) Make sure the product you have is within the published range of the product.  I know this sounds simple, but in many cases, this isn’t something people think about.  If the distance from the doorbell button to the receiver is 100ft., don’t get a doorbell kit with a range of 75 ft. Our driveway alarm systems are available with a variety of wireless ranges.  If you know the distance from where you place the sensor to where you place the sensor is 600ft., I would not go with a product like the WMA-3000 which has a range of 650 ft.  I would get a product like the Di2000S-A Driveway Alarm with a range of up to 1,000 ft.  Another option would be to move the sensor closer to your home or try to move the receiver to the closest exterior wall facing the sensor.

2) Place your receivers closer to a window or wooden exterior wall.  I would recommend upgrading your system to a stronger one, but if the range is close (when considering interference) then simply placing your receiver closer to an exterior window of your home might do the trick.  The only caveat to this is making sure it is an exterior window or wall.  If your home is brick, for example, it is easier for the signal to penetrate glass than brick.

3) Moving the transmitter off a metallic surface is another tip to consider.  If you want a wireless doorbell system but the door frame, we recommend placing a wooden shim in between the push button transmitter and the surface.  A thin piece of wood should do the trick.  By doing this, it lifts the transmitter from the surface giving the wireless signal just enough room to escape the interference from the metal.  Many users who have screen doors face this problem and in almost every case, wood, or even a piece of cardboard helps.

4) Get a High Powered Wireless Doorbell. Unless you are trying to install a wireless doorbell system where the receiver is inside a solid concrete enclosure (like a bomb shelter) a higher-powered doorbell system will often do the trick. Here are the top two long-range wireless door chime systems that we carry.

The LRA-D1000 is the most popular long-range system that we carry.  With a published range of up to 1,000 ft. from the push button to the receiver, this product usually has more than enough range to get the job done.  The kit ships with one battery-powered receiver (optional plug-in receiver sold separately) and one push button.  Additional buttons are also available. This product will play several different melodies and also have visual indicators, one that flashes an LED strobe and one that flashes a Roman Numeral that corresponds to the zone the transmitter is associated with.

The ERA-UTDCR Commercial Door Chime System – our most powerful door chime system with a published range of up to 4,000 feet!  This kit ships with one push button and one receiver.  This system uses a “universal transmitter” the ERA-UTX that may be used as a push-button OR a door/window contact.  It communicates with the ERA-DCRX plug-in receiver. This transmitter is great because of its versatility.  This transmitter is great because of its versatility.  Another great feature of the ERA-UTX is the NO and NC inputs that allow you to integrate it with other devices.  For example, you could wire a decorative wired doorbell button to the transmitter and when the wired button is pressed, the wireless transmitters send a signal to the receiver.   The receiver is expandable and has four different tones it plays.   It is also compatible with additional receivers, and other types of sensors like motion sensors, door/window contacts, and magnetometer sensors.

We hope this article provided you with a basic understanding of wireless transmission ranges as published by manufacturers.  These principles will hold when evaluating the range for just about any wireless product. For more information about this topic, our products, or anything else, please feel free to contact us.