Carlon Lamson & Sessons RC3200 Extend-A-Chime Plug-In

If you have a finished basement, and/or don't have ceiling/wall access to run wires to install a second hard-wired chime in another room, this is the perfect solution. Even after having said that, at this price, this might even be a better solution given the labor of pulling wires, the convenience of being able moving the chime at any time, or easily adding more chimes to the system.For me, this item worked great, and was exactly what I was looking for: a transmitter that wires to the existing chime (therefore no batteries required), and a chime receiver that could be plugged in anywhere (also no batteries required). The configurable chime tunes (8 I believe, easily set with jumper blocks) and a volume setting are a nice bonus. Before ordering, you may want to confirm the voltage at your existing (wired) door chime, as I have read other reviews that stated if the voltage is too low (less than 12VAC?) when the doorbell is rung, it may not work reliably.My review is 5 stars since it works as designed for me, but I figured it might bear mentioning my setup. It is as follows:- Standard contractor doorbell, nothing fancy. Installed on the wall right by the front door.- Standard 16VAC transformer in basement mechanical room.- 1 doorbell button (front door).- Carlon/Lamson/Thomas & Betts/Whatever Extend-a-chime plugged into an outlet, in the basement, in a storage room, behind a door, approximately 20-25 feet (rough guess) from the transmitter upstairs.Confirmed voltage at the doorbell chime upstairs was approximately 14VAC when quickly pressing the doorbell as a typical visitor might do. Holding the button down was not necessary.If I had to find something wrong, it would be the way to set the transmitter frequency. This is done by clipping wires, instead of the preferred method of jumper blocks, like the tune selection. I suspect however, you may not need to change this out of the box, unless you are using multiple transmitters in the same house. But even in that situation, you would simply change one transmitter by clipping a wire, and not ever need to change it back.Overall a simple, clean and easy installation, and works as a reasonable person would expect.

I purchased this unit to add a second bell in the basement without having to run additional wires and install a bigger transformer. Total installation time is about 5-10 minutes and can be completed with only 1 or 2 screwdrivers (depending on if you need flat and/or Phillips heads) and the most basic of mechanical skill.The transmitter is easy to install, though a bit bulky, so it may be necessary to leave it in the wall behind the main chime if you don't have much room to work with in the chime's housing. Before putting everything back together, however, I suggest testing the unit once it's wired in to make sure it works and has the desired tone. These setting are all on the transmitter so if there are any issues you'll need to pull everything apart again. The receiver is as easy to install as plugging in to a free electrical outlet and chimes a split second after the bell is pushed. My doorbell is running off of a 16V-10VA transformer and it seems to have more than enough power for everything (1 mechanical chime and the transmitter for the extender).The only complaint I have (which is mild, at most) is that the receiver's chime is a bit on the quiet side, even when the volume is set at HI. I'll still be able to hear it throughout my basement, but I can see if the TV is a bit loud it will be easy to miss.All in all I'm very pleased with this purchase with its ease of installation and very reasonable price and would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick DIY solution to adding an extra door chime that doesn't involve the headache of batteries or a more complicated installation.

This chime was easy to set up and does the job that I need it for; however that pretty much where the pros stop.The cons of this system, like other reviewers mention, is the lack of design.The speaker box is huge for the little sound it outputs. It's on max volume and I have to be sure to direct it toward the room I will be in upstairs, otherwise it's no louder than our chime downstairs.You could get a bunch of the speakers for your other rooms, but then you have these $20 speakers all going off at different intervals and taking up outlets.The channels are something you should only have to change once, but it would be nice if they used jumpers on them so you can change the channel many times. The channels are set by cutting wires in the back of the units. You can only make 5 or so cuts before you are stuck on the last channel. So if you move, or your neighbors cause interference with this device, you might want to get good a soldering.They should make a chime that resembles the typical home "ding-dong" rather than a cut off version of a church bell. My fiance commented at how ridiculous even the simplest chime sounded.The transmitter box could be smaller to fit inside the transformer box. I know that this unit was probably engineered in the 1990s when technology was huge, but there's got to be away to update this to use less space to be able to shove it behind the bell in the wall.Overall I feel this product isn't worth the price I paid, but it's the only one on the market that seems to get the job done without batteries. Perhaps I'll have to create a transistor box to work with an arduino or raspberry pi.