Thanks for all the details, that was very helpful.
Yes that’s the way it’s supposed to work, you’re confusing the “switch” interface with the Tile. The Tile is the tile which controls the camera enabling/disabling.
The “Switch” interface is what is called from a Routine or another App, i.e switch.on() or switch.off(). It has nothing to do with the tile.
I’ll update the message on the screen to specify routines or apps. It dosn’t apply to the tiles.
Don’t press the on/off from the things list. Go into the cameras device page. Click the top middle tile that has light bulbs and states either “System Active” or System Inactive". Clicking this tile should deactivate/activate all cameras.
So what am I supposed to turn on as part of the Smart Monitoring? If I want to turn on only some camera’s for different routines, I used to use the switches which looking at the conversation DO NOT turn on the sync module or arm the blink system. . Seems like it would be easier to setup the sync module as a thing and just turn that on or off when needed. Maybe there is a way to dummy up a sync module to just arm and disarm. That way you can easily use the other camera features outside of the Monitoring. Sorry I agree the use isn’t as initiative your thinking.
If in the Blink Camera Monitor app “Switch interface controls system instead of camera” is off, the camera switch which is seen in SHM, Rule Machine and other apps will turn on/off individual cameras. If the “Switch interface controls system instead of camera” is turned on, the the switch exposed to other apps turns off the entire system (all cameras). If you change this selection in the Blink Camera Monitor app, then recreate your rule or selection in SHM for proper operation. Hope this helps.
It’s pretty straight forward:
For Rule Machine you have set of commands you can call to enable/disable cameras and turn on/off the sync modules. It has nothing to do with the above.
Blink Camera Manager
Version 3.3.0
This hopefully will put a patch for the broken ST timers that some users are facing making motion detection more reliable.
In my experience with Rule Machine it sees each Blink camera as a switch. How this switch functions changes based on the selection in the Blink Camera Manager. I use this switch method to disarm/arm individual cameras with Rule Machine and it works quite well. This method also permits the use of each camera state as a trigger or condition, and not just an action.
Additionally, the custom commands in Rule Machine can be used at anytime (as an action) to arm/disarm individual cameras or the entire system, depending on the command chosen.
Blink Camera Manager
Version 3.3.3
Blink owners: Is there a current solution to the following request: blink camera takes a picture or video if a smartthings motion sensor is triggered? Thanks.
you can use @RBoy DH/App and then make a rule in rule machine to take a picture based on the event you want
that is how I had to configure it. Even setting the camera sensitivity all the way down my medium (60lb) dog would set off the camera. I now have them set to disabled unless one of the alarm triggers is activated.
You can use this from my first post:
Also added a Smart App called “Trigger based Camera Pictures” which allows you to use triggers (motion sensors, contact/door sensors, momentary switches like door bells) to activate the Camera to take pictures and turn on switches and enable Camera monitoring optionally. The pictures will show up in your SmartThings camera device page.
EDIT: IMPORTANT REQUEST TO ALL USERS:
Folks please update to the latest version of the Blink Camera Code:
Thank you
Thanks for responses. Do these solutions save multiple pictures or do the photos get overwritten in the app?
From what I can see the app shows the latest picture on the Image Tile and when you click on the Tile it shows you the previous pictures taken (with timestamps)
Okay this update is coming on behalf of the engineers over at Blink. They’ve requested a few changes to the app connectivity to the blink servers to make it more stable/reduce overhead.
Critical changes include reusing tokens and reducing unnecessary calls which should make the overall SmartApp more responsive and stable (and reduce load on the Blink servers)
Also introduced an option to retry command on failure (if the Blink servers are busy etc it will retry).It’s enabled by default.
Is there an official API or can you tell us if there is a beta?
Nope not that I’m aware of…20 chars
I placed one camera out side. i want to turn on porch lights when motion is detected by blink. is it possible. i tried Smart App Smart ligthing. i configured if motion is detected(selected blink camera as motion device) turn on porch light. and turn it off after 5 mins. but it is not working.
i did not try rule machine yet.
other issue i have is in Routines i configured to turn on turn off blink with other configuration like arming the system and disarming the system. but when i click on routines i am getting network error. this is happening after adding blinks to routines.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Anwesh
Should be fairly straight forward. There are two ways to do it.
Install the Blink Camera (SmartApp and Device). It’ll show up as motion sensor. Now you can use any app that interacts with Motion Sensors.