@fronzbot, not sure if this is useful to you, but I have 8 cameras and 2 modules, no IFTTT integration, and only use the HA integration to view the camera images (so no arming or disarming functionality) on pc using the lovelace interface, and got locked out as well.
I’m now back online with a number of throttles in place.
- 15 minute scan_interval
- A call delay:
- I have an automation to track arm / disarm of each module as an input_datetime.
- I’ve limited UI interactions to toggle arm and disarm to scripts
- any automation / script that arms / disarms the cameras first calls a script to delay the call where a previous call took place within a defined period. This basically requires a 10 minute delay minimum between any arm / disarm calls, based on an input_number so that it can easily be adjusted.
- I’m not currently automating our external camera at all, effectively limiting automations to single hub.
Guess I’ll see how this goes - in practical terms I’ll need to be able to reduce the delay to a minimum of 30 seconds otherwise the external camera will effectively be useless during the day or will constantly pickup the first resident returning to the house.
I think having even as quick as a 5 second delay between calls to arm/disarm would be safe, to be honest. 30s should be more than safe because that’s probably slower than a human would do it on their phone.
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Yeh, I’m probably being ultra paranoid but thought I’d start extra slow.
I’ll probably tweak the parameters next weekend when I start automating the external camera, which will need to disarm first during the day otherwise it will be triggered on return home.
Just an update to say these short 2 second delays between each camera change seem to working well for me in automations.
I am still running a very slow scan_interval (1 hour) but will probably reduce that soon back to something like 10 minutes.
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Any update or you still set scan_interval to 1 hour? Thanks!
Scan_interval wasn’t the root cause of the problem here, it was un-throttled calls to blink arm/disarm (which was fixed in the core library). Default scan_interval for the component has been 5 minutes for a while and is a very safe value (1hr is beyond conservative).
It is still set to 1 hour but I am just about to put it back to default based on @fronzbot’s advice.
do you think that setting the can interval to 10-15 seconds would possibly lead to the account being blocked?
yes, i think that’s much too aggressive
ok, unfortunately 5 min is not really helping to use the camera also as a trigger device for the alarm system.
I tried IFTTT but some time the notifications are delayed by 30 min.
I am now looking into the availability of an android app to monitor notifications coming from blink and eventually trigger something in HA.
thanks for your help.
Tasker should be able to achieve that, possibly with the AutoNotification plugin.
(Tasker does have a notification listener but I switched to AutoNotification some time back).
You can also do RestAPI calls from Tasker - I’ve posted how to do that in this community before.
Many Thanks!
Hi all, seems to be I’m not the only one who got locked out when integrated with HA. I have 2 sync noodles and 11 cameras. My automations are arming and disarming sync noodles and cameras with 3 second delay based on my presence, day or night time from smartthings routines. This setup was working since long time until my account was disabled a week ago. When reached out to the support, I also got similar response saying Blink is only supported by IFTTT and Alexa Wich is kind of wacky when we are used to HA automation. @fronzbot, how about if the Blink team is differentiating the calls with user agent header on the api between supported apps and not supported?
The home-assistant integration is based on an unofficial Blink API and is not officially supported by Blink. That much is true
all were doing is mimicking the behavior of the Blink app. The header sent to blink makes it look like an iPhone.
3s is WAY too fast to be calling the arm/disarm service with that many devices. As this thread shows, rapid back-to-back calls to the arm/disarm service will get your account flagged and banned for suspicious activity.
Basically, the delay you have must be similar to the delay if you were to manually change arm/disarm status in the app which means a minimum of 5s delay (since the app has to wait for a status update from the sync module before allowing the user to do anything else).
Try upping that delay between calls to 10s.
What I meant is 3 seconds is delay between each camera and the module. Should I up it to 10 s instead?
Sorry , I had notfications turned off for some reason.
Yeah, up the delay to 10s.
@fronzbot, no problem and thank you for the suggestion. I have updated it now. I’m just wondering about one more thing that, my blink apps ore on Androids. Not sure if Blink team are looking for any differentiation in the calls being initiated from. Is there any option in the config to point to device type to simulate the calls?
There’s no way to do that right now, but it wouldn’t really make a difference anyways. Blink doesn’t care how many devices you own to control their hub, as long as you’re not hammering their servers with requests. As far as they know, you own both an Android and an iPhone to control the hub.
Hi all
I am thinking to buy 2 Blink XT2 outdoor models mainly because the are on battery and they have nice reviews. Ideally I would like to have them integrated in HA of course.
So are you suggesting this camera or not?
Thanks