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

I meant that Blink doesn’t raise events to ST like other motion sensors do. @RBoy has done excellent work towards bringing Blink into the ecosystem, and we can now control the cameras as if they were any other “thing” (e.g. push commands to them). But events FROM the cameras are delayed by the polling frequency, since the cameras don’t implement the proper hooks to report them immediately. So if I want to turn on a light when the camera detects motion, there might be a long delay before the light comes on.

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That was a point of discussion with Blink, too early to share details here yet but working with them on trying to figure out a new set of push or push emulated API’s to make this happen. I think this will open a whole new market for them.

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I know I paid ~$50 for a ST motion sensor in the beginning before picking up a bunch of PEQ sensors on close out for 1/2 that price. So, as others have said, paying $50-$60 for a motion sensor that is also a camera is pretty incredible. i do think that you tend to put motion sensors in slightly different locations than cameras but for $20-$30 bucks having the option to use as a camera is pretty cool.

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Well I can see a bigger picture forming, you’re talking about a Motion Sensor that can now also send you a Picture when it sees a motion event PLUS it’s also a temperature sensor (think about replacing the Monoprice Motion Sensor here).
Not to say in future it may provide luminosity information and possibly audio. So

  • motion
  • temperature
  • camera
  • luminosity
  • audio

Start combining them and see the picture of how many use case you can come up with:
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Someone comes onto my porch, it detects the presence, takes a picture, see’s that it’s dark, turns on the light and the temperature is too low so it sends an alert.

My kids’s sleeping in his/her room, when he/she moves it detects it and notifies me, optionally takes a picture. The temp sensor is used to control the HVAC operations in the room (see my remote temp sensor based thermostat app) and when it’s light it turns off the fan/hvac and vice versa. If I hears a noise, it can send me alert.

Interestingly am using a version of the above use case to monitor the kids if we’re out of the house, i.e. we know when to head back when we’re out for a morning walk before the kids wake up, we get an alert.

All this without the need for any additional sensors. For 60 bucks - not bad!

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Plus, when there is a motion alert, you can ease your mind by checking live view when a false alarm.

It is battery powered yet if used in a high volume area can take power.

There is so much potential.

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And if all this is possible, I want to configure it as an emergency light. For example, say the power goes out and it is night time. I would enable motion detection to turn on the LED light.

I wanted to do this with the Fibraro motion sensors but the LED light is only adjustable during configuration.

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thanks for you contributions. you did a great job. i was able to turn on lights when motion detects on camera. i was getting push notifications. you made this happen.

I did not get chance to test SHM integration completely. i turned on the integration and arm away, arm stay and disarm. they are triggering slow. i turned it off as i am using routines as they are fast then from SHM.

can we get notification when we turn the blink on and off for both motion and camera. may be i am not asking to much.

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Completely agree! These use cases would work out great at my house. Keep up the great work.

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Just curious, I just got my cameras yesterday, i have a bunch of motion sensors along with 5 of the cameras, so does the cameras work quick enough to take the place of the motion sensors at this time? I haven’t installed any motion sensors or cameras yet so I want to see if I need to install both in some areas in order to have instant on when motion detected.

The response time for a notification is currently between 10 and 60 seconds (ST limitation). Eventually (the goal) is to get to 2-3 seconds response through push notifications so they might be able to replace a motion sensor

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Love the functionality to select whether the exposed switch switch arms/disarms the system or just motion on the camera…

Would it be possible to add a feature to designate a virtual switch that would reflect and set the arm / disarm status of the module? This would allow both specific camera control and systemic control.

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Not sure I get it completely, there is already a tile in the Device to control the System.
The Switch interface can be configured to work at the Camera level or System level.

You want to update an external Virtual Switch to reflect the status of the System tile from the device? If so you can do that with Rule Machine. Setup a rule to turn on/off the virtual switch based on the attribute “monitorStatus” which reflects the System status. You can also use the “enableStatus” to get the current state of the Camera.

###Blink Camera Manager (update on request of Blink) - Version 3.6.2

  • Make scheduler more reliable and motion detection slightly faster (about 10% - 20%)
  • Update client identifier string to include version number

Blink Device Handler - Latest Version 3.1.2
(no changes)

Right exactly. I’m actually doing it through rule machine right now, but thought it might be a nice native feature of the manager app. Allows for some more granular rules using native routines or other apps that only support switch devices. While the current option lets you pick the switch behavior,you can’t have both without bringing rule machine in.

Right but there’ no way of having 2 interfaces within a single device. So if there needs to be a second virtual switch it needs to be a new device which is then controlled by the blink camera manager. Hmm I see what you’re saying. My concern is making the interface too complicated/overloaded. How many folks would need to control both interfaces at the same time.

I’m already confused with the current interface, please don’t make it more complicated. Here are my impressions thus far:

I really only want the camera’s on when the SHM is set to Armed(Away), all cameras. I don’t even care about the integration of pictures within ST at this point.

With the latest version I’ve set to be Sync module mode, however with the new setting to engage the sync with Armed(Away) already within the smart App, I’m wondering if you might be setting up some kind of conflict between turning on or of devices within the app.

The latest version seems to work great, no more communication errors, However I’ve noticed smartapp seems to suppress the native blink app for being able to send notifications to the phone. I’ve turn on notifications within the Smartapp now but haven’t actually tested them yet. As long as I get some type of alert and video captured to Blinks cloud I’m good. The rest to me seems like overkill and not a robust as just using the regular motion sensors. Currently with the cameras and regular motion sensors I have 11 in total now, multiple in each room which seem like I’m over doing it. Maybe an end state would be to remove the motion sensors and use the cameras as a multi device since it also does temp.

The Device handler seems to be a mixed bag, sometimes it reports the camera on(enabled) and other times it reports it as off(disabled) however when the Arm(away) function kicks in all camera are enabled(Motion) in the Blink app but don’t report as on within ST. The activity has Camera = 0 and within the actual device(thing) it shows Off, even those I can see it enabled within Native Blink app, even a refresh doesn’t change the state reported in ST.

Overall it is working fine for me today but thought I’d share my experience.

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I completely agree, I want to simplify it further and any suggestions would be welcome. I think that Switch mode option should either be renamed or removed, it seems to be causing more confusion that doing good.

Not really, when SHM turns on and if SHM options are enabled, it will enable ALL the cameras in the system, if you don’t want to enable ALL cameras in the system, then individually turn on each camera in the system from Routines (each camera will show up a switch). I will clarify this in the description of the SHM Integration options.

That’s our end goal

If you make a change to the Blink Camera app, it won’t reflect in ST until you refresh it (there’s no connecting between the Blink camera app and ST, they’re completely independent clients). The refresh should work and may take upto 10 seconds to complete (ST platform is slow to communicate)

Not possible, there’s no connection, the Blink native app notifications come through the Android and iOS ecosystem respectively, they may be malfunctioning. The ST app has nothing to do with it (directly or indirectly)

Absolutely and love it, please keep it coming do we can make this app more intuitive and functional.

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I hear you on the interface cleanliness issue. No worries…

… If anyone else is interesting in slaving a virtual switch to the arm/disarm status of the sync module, I wrote a quick smart app below.

`/**
 *  Blink Status Sync
 *
 *  Current Version: 1.0
 *
 */
definition(
	name: "Blink Status Sync",
	namespace: "swamplynx",
	author: "Swamp Lynx",
	description: "Syncs a switch with you Blink global arm/disarm status.",
	category: "Convenience",
   iconUrl: "http://smartthings.rboyapps.com/images/Blink.jpg",
    iconX2Url: "http://smartthings.rboyapps.com/images/Blink.jpg",
    iconX3Url: "http://smartthings.rboyapps.com/images/Blink.jpg",
    singleInstance: true
    )
    
preferences {
	section("Blink Device") {
		input "blink", "device.rboyBlinkCamera", required: true
	}
	section("Virtual Switch") {
		input "vswitch", "device.simulatedSwitch", required: true
	}  
}

def installed()
{   
	subscribe(blink, "monitorStatus.on", onHandler1)
	subscribe(blink, "monitorStatus.off", offHandler1)
	subscribe(vswitch, "switch.on", onHandler2)
    subscribe(vswitch, "switch.off", offHandler2)
}

def updated()
{
	subscribe(blink, "monitorStatus.on", onHandler1)
	subscribe(blink, "monitorStatus.off", offHandler1)
	subscribe(vswitch, "switch.on", onHandler2)
    subscribe(vswitch, "switch.off", offHandler2)  
}

def onHandler1(evt) {
	if(blink.latestValue("monitorStatus").contains("on")){
		vswitch.on()
    }
}

def offHandler1(evt) {
	if(blink.latestValue("monitorStatus").contains("off")){
		vswitch.off()
    }
}

def onHandler2(evt) {
	if(vswitch.latestValue("switch").contains("on")){
    	blink.monitorOn()
    }
}

def offHandler2(evt) {
	if(vswitch.latestValue("switch").contains("off")){
    	blink.monitorOff()
    }
}`
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Any way to have the green background replaced with the static picture of the Blink camera when Blink is selected as a featured device for a room? (see images)



Aesthetically it would look a lot better. An excellent job overall, now I just need a way to get SmartTiles to pull Blink images.

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I recently received my Blink cameras and set them up. I have it set up to turn on the lights in the room when Blink detects motion. The problem is the time to turn on the lights is past the ten second record time. Is there a way to speed up the response or is this just something with ST? If it is an inherent quality of ST I could always try a stand alone motion sensor. I have read some react extremely quick.

Thanks for building the app!