BLINK binary sensor "motion_enabled" doesn't show up

[lombardoalex (Alex L)]

Hi!
I 'm new to Home Assistant and so far it’s been pretty good but I have an issue with the Blink cameras.
I have added the following to my configuration file:
blink:
username: xxxxxxxxxxxx
password: xxxxxxxxxxxx
scan_interval: 300
binary_sensors:
monitored_conditions:
- motion_detected
- motion_enabled
sensors:
monitored_conditions:
- battery
- temperature
- wifi_strength

Everything works well except I can’t get the “motion_enabled” binary sensor to show. The “motion_detected” is there and seems to work but the “motion_enabled” doesn’t even exist in the list.
Am I missing something? Or am I doing something wrong?
Any help would be greatly appreciated, it’s been driving me crazy.
Thanks!

[fronzbot (Kevin Fronczak)]

First thing you should try it’s just removing the monitored_conditions section and everything underneath to ensure its not a syntax issue. All of those sensors are added by default, so everything should show up once removed. If it still doesn’t appear we can do further debug

[lombardoalex (Alex L)]

I took everything out, rebooted but I get the same thing. As before the motion_detected binary is available but no luck with the motion_enabled.
Thanks for the help.

[fronzbot (Kevin Fronczak)]

Ok, I’m going to ask for some info to help try and get to the bottom of this:

1. What version of home-assistant are you running?
2. What type of camera do you have? Indoor, XT, XT2, Mini, etc?
3. Is there anything in your log file related to blink? You can view this by going to Developer Tools > Logs
4. What is the motion_enabled attribute of the camera set to (this can be found by going to Developer Tools > States and then finding your camera. See below for an example entry. Make sure you see all of the same entries that I see, but note that the values will be different.)

[lombardoalex (Alex L)]

1. Home Assistant 0.108.6
2. 3 Outdoor cameras. 1 XT in a Sync module and 2 XT2 on a different sync module
3. Nothing related to Blink
4. This is just for one of the cameras. Looks pretty much the same
   
   

[fronzbot (Kevin Fronczak)]

Ok, glad to see all the variables are there.

The fact that you don’t have any errors related to blink and that the motion_enabled variable exists with the camera is quite baffling and, unfortunately, makes this nearly impossible to debug (since I cannot recreate this behavior). But we can try a few things:

1. As a sanity check, could you provide a screenshot similar to what I provided below showing all the blink binary sensors you have? Easiest way to do this is go to Developer Tools > States and type in binary_sensor.blink and allow the list to populate.

2. Save your configuration.yaml file and strip it down until the only thing that remains is your blink configurations. I have provided an example of such a configuration below (specifically, this is what I use when developing the component). This way we can remove absolutely everything in case there’s some weird behavior happening between multiple components.

homeassistant:
  name: Home
  latitude: 0
  longitude: 0
  elevation: 0
  unit_system: imperial
  time_zone: UTC
http:
frontend:
config:
history:
logbook:
blink:
  username: <your username>
  password: <your password>

Let me know what you get!

[lombardoalex (Alex L)]

Here is the binary screenshot. I’ll work on the other.
Thanks again for the help

[lombardoalex (Alex L)]

I found something interesting that may or may not be the issue. I commented out Blink from the configuration.yaml and rebooted. Once it came back up I restored the Blink settings in the configuration file and rebooted again. After rebooting I checked the state attributes and I noticed that the motion_enabled was true but the motion_detected was false but when I checked the binary it’s still the same as before (see pictures). I’m not sure if it means anything.

[fronzbot (Kevin Fronczak)]

The motion_detected variable isn’t persistent between restarts and always starts up as false, so that behavior is expected.

I’m confused though- according to the image you posted every camera you have has both the camera_armed and motion_detected binary sensors. What do you think is missing?

[lombardoalex (Alex L)]

Yep, the motion_detected came back. And yes I’m also an idiot ! I thought that armed referred to the sync module and not the individual cameras but it is actually for the motion enabled (I just verified it). I can’t believe I wasted two days chasing something that was actually working. Sorry for wasting your time and thank you fol helping me make sense of this.
I’m glad I got started with HA but I have a long way to go.
Thanks again!

[fronzbot (Kevin Fronczak)]

Haha no problem, happens to the best of us. Sounds more like the documentation I wrote about each part of this component could use improvement so I’ll add it to the to-do list. Glad everything is working!