I've had my Ring Video Doorbell 4 for a few years and it's been working perfectly. When I installed it originally, I removed the old doorbell and hooked the low voltage wires to the Ring doorbell and the trickle charge it receives has had zero problem keeping the battery topped off.

A few weeks ago, we got some extremely cold weather in the mid-west and temps dropped to negative 10. I noticed that the battery was no longer being trickled charged and the doorbell completely died. Knowing that low temps prevents the battery from charging to protect it, I brought the battery inside for a few days and charged it up to 100% then put it back in the unit and I was back in business. EXCEPT, the battery was no longer receiving any trickle charge whatsoever. I also noticed that when the ring doorbell is pressed, the inside (mechanical) doorbell wasn't making a noise. I checked the transformer inside and it's putting out 20V and I got out my multimeter  and touched the leads to the 'front' and 'transformer' wires on the chime inside my house while somebody pushed the Ring doorbell button and the voltage stayed at 0. This tells me either the wiring to the Ring doorbell is damaged (possible but unlikely) or the freeze did some severe damaged to the Ring battery (to the point that it's preventing the circuit being closed and not letting the mechanical chime work and not accepting a trickle charge).

As it stands right now, the Ring doorbell is working. I get alerts on my phone when somebody pushes the button and audio video chat works...... it's just not receiving a trickle charge any more and the inside chime doesn't activate when the button is pushed.

I got into the app and made sure to select 'mechanical chime' but it keeps stating the obvious, that the unit is not receiving power from the doorbell system. Will a new battery definitely fix this or do I have to unscrew the doorbell unit to get to the wires so I can short them to test the mechanical bell? If shorting the wires DOES produce a chime inside the house, how do know if it's the battery at fault or the actual unit?

Or is there a simple fix because it was receiving a trickle charge and ringing the chime just fine until that fateful day when temps dropped into the negatives.