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

How soon is the ST/Arlo official integration, I wonder? :slight_smile:

For those birds and bees, try this reduce the sensitivity to 4 or 3. Thatā€™s
seemed to work for me.

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It all depends on how much tip you want to give @Tyler s team :smile:

Arlo Cams coming in few weeks

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I have a better Ideaā€¦ @Tyler , Is Blink ever going to get completely integrated into ST? Because the Samsung camera which I have is junk. It fragged. Didnā€™t last at all (it was standing right next to my Blink camera in the 104 degree livingroom on my vacation!) And so far, Thanks in great part to @RBoy, Blink is working out for the Best.

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Iā€™ve got it at 2 right now. Meant to mention that. At 1 (and sometimes 2) the clip starts with the person already on my porch. Iā€™d prefer to see them coming up the steps.

You need at minimum 4. I have it detect the UPS on my back porch. It does capture some shadows and the UPS delivery guy.

Well, it seems pretty good at 2, but 3 seemed about perfect except for all the bugs. I just have a sliver of the road in my view and thatā€™s getting cars, but I think Iā€™m going to have to remount it elsewhere to eliminate that problem.

I think my next project is to figure out how to get my notifications from ST instead of Blink directly but have it NOT notify me while ST is in ā€œSleepā€ mode (but still record the clip just in case). Surely this is possible, right? If Iā€™m away, Iā€™ll likely want to have the notifications but even then I may choose to turn them off during sleeping hours and just catch up in the morning. If someone really kicked my door in, my SHM notifications will go off, though Iā€™ll probably just sleep through that anyway!

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Thatā€™s fairly straight forward, the DH sends a motion detected event. Setup a rule in CoRE or just use the SHM notifications or any notification app to send you a message when the motion sensor is set off but only when in mode X.

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Yep, CoRE is what I was thinking, but Iā€™ve not yet dabbled with it. Iā€™ve just somewhat followed its development.

Dumb question, but now do you disable notifications in the Blink app for Android (while keeping motion detection on of course)? Is blocking notifications at the Android OS level really the only way?

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I wondered the same thing, but didnā€™t explore the options. Let me know if you find an answer.

Iā€™ve been using CoRE to monitor the DTH motion active/inactive status and itā€™s much different than the native recording triggers. In the BLINK app, sensitivity is set to 5, and for recordings, this is just about perfect. But CoRE gets a lot of false positives for the DTH notices. Are the sensitivity settings, perhaps, not used by the DTH for motion notifications?

Am I right in thinking you want to do the same as I want to - namely to use the camera just as a motion sensor to do something like control lights while SHM is disarmed, without the Blink app shouting at you every 30 seconds?
Incidentally this is one of those irritating reply posts that gets your hopes up, but doesnā€™t actually answer your question (as Iā€™m still looking for the answer myself!) - sorry!

Some day I wouldnā€™t mind doing things like that, but today I donā€™t have a huge need for it. My problem is the false positives I get from bugs and things like that overnight. I want the clips to get recorded (in case it catches something I do care about), but I donā€™t want to get notified on them while Iā€™m sleeping. So if I just move the alerts to SmartThings, I can have more control over that. Iā€™ve just not had the time to mess with it yet.

The downside is that the SmartThings app will send me the motion notification and then Iā€™ll still have to go into the Blink app to view the clip. But frankly, I do that most of the time anyway because the Blink app is still a bit ā€œdumbā€ about notifications. Example (on Android):

  • Motion event A occurs, Blink app notifies me.
  • I ignore this event or my phone is away from me when it happens.
  • Motion event B occurs, Blink app notifies me again, but overwrites the first notification.
  • I actually see and act on this notification/clip. When done I tap the ā€œbackā€ button (or ā€œdoneā€) the Blink app closes.
  • If there were other motion clips (as there are in this example) Iā€™m potentially unaware of them.

I intend on reporting this behavior to Blink (once I figure out how) because it isnā€™t really ideal (I think if there are additional unviewed clips it should send me back to the clips screen of the app, not just exit). But getting notified by SmartThings instead forces me to open the Blink app and enter the clips section where I wonā€™t miss any. Point being, it isnā€™t a huge deal to have to manually open the Blink app anyway.

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@awc

Good points raised about overwritten notifications.

You should send the Blink support an e-mail to create a notification instance with a time stamp for each recording to let you watch them as you click on each of the notifications.

For sugestions to Blink go here: https://blinkforhome.com/suggestions

For support from Blink go here: http://support.blinkforhome.com/customer/portal/emails/new

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Thanks. I submitted this suggestion along with two others that annoy me. It seems that it doesnā€™t cache any clip you view and has to download it each and every time, burning up more mobile data. And at least on Android, the top banner and the video controls banner on the bottom cover up nearly half the video display area and take about 4 seconds to disappear. Thatā€™s crazy considering the max clip is only 10 seconds!

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Keep your ideas coming. Hope they implement them. I really want to have longer recording times for on AC mode. And have already sent it up the foodchain.

I want longer record times on battery! Iā€™ve had them installed since January and unless the battery meter is woefully inaccurate, I havenā€™t lost any battery life yet.

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After finding out about Blink I contacted them to find out if it supported SmartThings and they said this:


Blink is not currently compatible with SmartThings but we know this is functionality our customers want and hope to offer this in the future. You can check out our website here for future product updates: http://support.blinkforhome.com/customer/en/portal/topics/881964-updates/articles

And then I found this, and it sure seems like youā€™ve supported it RBoy, and itā€™s approved by Blink no less! Soā€¦Iā€™m not quite sure whey they donā€™t believe Blink supports SmartThings, but Iā€™m glad I found this and didnā€™t just accept their response.

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Working on getting that changed, spoke to them yesterday about it and theyā€™re putting together a plan to update their website. Their concern was support, which is provided at this forum as they arenā€™t equipped to handle ST issues internally.