I’m in the process of using AppDaemon to build a dashboard which includes a couple of widgets that display static images from two Blink Cameras I have.
Typically these cameras are configured to trigger and record a short video clip when motion is detected but it seems that when this happens the associated still image isn’t updated.
Is anyone able to please help me with this? Is it necessary for me to define an automation which fires when the motion_detected binary sensor is tripped?
My aim is to have it so that when motion is detected the image on the dashboard is refreshed on the next cycle.
Grateful for any pointers people can give in relation to this.
platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.blink_bedroom_motion_detected
to: ‘on’
action:
service: blink.trigger_camera
data:
name: Bedroom
delay: 00:00:15
service: blink.blink_update
However, it doesn’t seem to work that well if i’m relying on the motion detection.
It seems that there is quite some delay between the motion triggering the camera recording a section of video and causing the ‘motion detected’ event to fire.
Hi Peter, for your first question: when motion is detected and blink records a video, the still image is NOT updated. This mimics the behavior of the app (the app does not update the thumbnail on motion either).
Your next question, yes you would need to define an automation, but as mentioned in the docs (which you can find here
As a note, all of the camera-specific sensors are only polled when a new image is requested from the camera. This means that relying on any of these sensors to provide timely and accurate data is not recommended.
So, assuming you did not change the default scan_interval, you may not detect motion for as long as 5 minutes after the original event. You can change the scan_interval, but I wouldn’t recommend going faster than 90s so you don’t get rate limited (and possibly banned) by Blink (I personally set mine to 180s and have never had an issue). Depending on how quickly you want the still image updated, you could experiment with that value.
For what it’s worth, my intent for the Blink component was to be less of a notification platform, and more of a convenient area to enable/disable motion detection. In otherwords, it should work very well when you’re telling Blink what to do, but rather poorly when you have to rely on data from Blink. Unfortunately, that’s the nature of polling-style APIs.
Thanks Kevin. I hadn’t realised about the scan_interval so I might well have a look at modifying that value slightly.
To be honest i’m more likely to use the automations to turn motion detection on and off for the various cameras as needed. One of the features that seems to be missing in Blink right now is to do this from within their own interface, so at least using Home Assistant I can handle those situations.
Similarly I can also use presence detection to make sure that when both myself and the wife leaves the house the system is automatically armed and the motion detection enabled on all cameras. As i’m new to HA it’s going to take a while to get to grips with all of it’s nuances and functionalities.
