Thinking out loud. So we have recently moved. Not yet installed a peep hole on the front door. I have installed the United Pressure mat under neath the front door mat to turn on the porch light and to text me if someone steps on it. So… how do I take a Blink camera, set it above the door, and use the mat to turn it on??? Any clue?
1 Like
You’re planning on putting the blink outside?
Yes, I already have one outside. I know it voids the warranty, but folks are having good luck with them outside as long as they are away from the weather.
How do you plan to keep someone from walking off with it?
I also have 3 of them outside under deep eaves with no issues (yet). If someone walks off with one I’ll at least have a very good picture of them! 
2 Likes
Last time I checked, the motion and recording were tied together so you can’t record without motion being detected and you can’t detect motion without recording.
With the free unofficial DH and SmartApp, you could arm the camera when someone steps on the mat, but it would still need motion to start recording. By the time it armed, detected motion and recorded, the person probably would have already left.
The Blink API isn’t public yet so the free version doesn’t have Live View, but I think the paid Official Blink version has it. I’m not sure if it provides a way to automatically turn it on, but @RBoy should be able to answer that for you.
It may, but just a heads up that what you call “official” isn’t. At least I see nothing indicating so.
So there are two things here:
- Live view of the camera - with the Blink approved version you can “view” the live feed (though note the battery life supports about 20,000 seconds of video) through the ST app
- Turn on video recording - this can’t be done currently, working with Blink on this for the future pipeline, however as @krlaframboise pointed out you can arm the camera when someone steps on the mat and if there’s movement in front of it then it will automatically record a video (depending upon your configured video recording length) and raise a motion event notification thereafter.
BTW just a little trick, if you’re interested. This isn’t an official blink functionality but more of a quirk I’ve noticed while testing the camera, if you force a the camera to take a picture while it is armed it tends to set off the motion detection and consequently turns on video recording. Most likely a firmware bug and could be fixed by Blink in future. However for now it could be used a proxy trigger to turn on video recording.
The paid one used to have Official written all over the place, but you’re right it doesn’t say that now.
Even though his isn’t official anymore, he knows someone at Blink and has been given the API specs so he can implement features in his that I can’t in mine.
I have the RBoy version, and does have live view. I haven’t worked to determine how to trigger it with an app or routine, but you can definitely trigger it from the ‘thing’.
1 Like