[DEPRECATED] Blink Camera Device Handler with Motion Sensor, Live Video Streaming, Integration with SmartThings/SHM, Temperature, Signals and Push Notifications

You’ve got to get two Blink sync modules for more than 10 cams. See FAQ #7 at the top for how that works with ST.

The cams have a micro-USB port if you want to power them that way. Then the batteries act as a backup.

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I noticed this as well.

I’ve had this issue a few times where SHM engages and cameras in camera mode. Immeiately when the mode switches to Arm (away) the alarm is tripped because the one ore two of the blink camera detect movement. However nothing is captured, I’m thinking it is some type of high illumination when camera are engaged that is tripping something. Maybe sesitivity too high? Or maybe still an ST issue. Anyone else seeing this?

@marte that’s normal, it’s the poll function called by ST, it makes it fetch the last picture from the server, this would help if say you took a picture or updated it using the blink app or some other app, it will fetch the picture from the server and update the tile.

@sgnihttrams No the limit is per sync module by Blink design, integration cannot change it.

Yes it has a micro USB port you can plug in.

@nomisr Something we’re going to be testing soon and have made significant improvements recently with the new version (upto 90% faster in motion detection). However can you clarify what you’re saying is slower and by how much so we can investigate?

@scott_simmons can you try it with lower sensitivity and let me know if it still happens (I know of something I saw in the labs but don’t want to jump to conclusions here). I.e. can you replicate it reliably - if it happens at low sensitivity then the cause would be different from high sensitivity. Also is there anyone near the camera’s when this happens / any change in lighting levels (I’ve seen the camera been set off by car headlights for e.g.)

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I’ve noticed this as well. The camera was last triggered 3 hours ago, but it’s still indicating “Intruder” (now “Motion” since I updated the code). Clicking the tile does disable the camera, but the alarm status is still there when I re-enable the camera, I’m not using any of the enable/disable/arm/disarm options, and I don’t have it hooked into rules or anything else. It’s a single camera, system armed and camera enabled all the time. The alert status will eventually clear, but not within minutes. I’ll try to study some logs and get more details.

Fixed in version 3.8.2 of the Blink Camera manager, this could happen if the camera detected motion AFTER it was turned off (due to a timing issue or a bug in the camera), anyways the device handler will now manage this situation. Try it out (at high sensitivity also) and let me know if you see any alerts.

###Blink Camera Manager - Version 3.8.2

  • Fixed issue with motion being detected as soon as camera monitoring was turned on under certain conditions
  • Improved UI layout for options configuration

###Blink Device Handler - Version 3.4.1

  • Changed color to blue and text to Motion instead of Intruder when motion is detected (emulate a motion sensor)
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One of my cameras is showing motion and I can’t dismiss it. On the newest versions. Have turned off the camera and turned off the system, neither worked. Any thoughts?

I think I see the pattern. Sometimes (usually?) the “detected motion” event is followed by “motion stopped”. This is when things are normal. The times when the status sticks on alarm, there’s no “motion stopped” event following the motion detection. My guess is the alarm status won’t reset until the next motion/stopped sequence, whenever that might be. I’d go find out, but it’s been a long day and this chair is comfortable.

You could be correct. I just triggered the “stuck” camera and it cleared after reporting that motion stopped.

Yes the motion stopped event is what “resets” the status to normal from motion. That’s on a 2 minute timer after the last motion detected event. So if you aren’t seeing that then ST isn’t firing the timer. You should report it to ST support.
@slagle just a FYI, runIn with 2 minutes timeouts don’t seem to firing for some users. (and it isn’t chained)

I haven’t familiarized myself with the methods yet, is runIn for the new Cron or the old scheduler?

Both cameras that fired off today have sesitivity set at 5, right in the middle. However I have the delay at 10 and 15 seconds. I’ll give the new version a try and report back.

Both, and it’s not cron, it’s a one shot timer, hence it won’t be picked up if it’s missed, however as @slagle said it shouldn’t be missed unless something’s broken/exception

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Well I can’t imagine THAT being the case! :laughing: I realized after posting that runIn was probably an abstraction. As you noted in the other thread, this seems to have started happening recently, and I’m not sure if it coincides with Ticker deployment, but I do recall discussion in this thread about a stuck alarm state long before I ever noticed it. Could just be the randomness that ST builds in to make things interesting.

Good morning @RBoy,

I found this curious when I was updating the Blink App.

Im getting a lot of timeouts in the manager today

Thanks, sorry will fix it, forgot to update the version number in the second place (it’s in 2 places)

Yeah can’t do much, just report it to ST support, the platform must be running slow. Infact you can open the IDE and look at the performance on the SmartApps, it’ll give you more details about what’s running slow.

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A point to keep in mind, the ST platform takes about 2-3 seconds to make EACH call to the Blink server (yes it’s that slow!). So if you’re enabling/disabling say 10 cameras, it can take upto 30 seconds to complete all 10 commands (and it’s serial since the sync module can only accept 1 command at a time).

So yes in theory if you split across 2 sync modules it would be 50% faster as it can process 2 commands at at time.

But the REAL fix would be to ask why the platform takes 2-3 seconds to make a connection and simple http query (it should take 200-300ms, but I’ve seen it take as much as 15 seconds!)

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I think most of my issues are more with the Blink system itself than with ST right now. I’m not really using it at the moment for motion since I still get the camera alerts which just floods my notification. But having to turn off so many cameras slows things down and the actual app is really slow to access.

I wonder if having the Sync module hard wired eventually would make the system somewhat quicker. I’m thinking about moving my module closer to the wifi router, but i don’t really want to risk having interference with the wifi… dilemma dilemma…