Blink XT Motion Sensor Staying On. Anyone else?

Hardware
1

I’m currently running 0.106.6. I noticed some time around 0.106.3 that my Blink XT camera’s motion sensor was staying On. I am receiving video feeds and notifications through the Blink app, so the motion sensor must be working correctly, but within the last few weeks, Home Assistant is reporting it is always on.

Has anyone else seen this? I’m trying to decide if it is something wrong with my config (though I haven’t changed anything), or if something broke the integration.

I have also manually set the state to Off, but it changes to On again within a minute or so.

Thanks!

2

Yep - can confirm.

My XT motion sensor has been on since 12:54:40 PM on 12th March.
My non-XT motion sensors seem to be unaffected.

EDIT: just restart HA and it’s now cleared to off. Perhaps some shenanigans at Blink’s end? (I understand they are working towards 2FA).

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3

Looks like it reverted again - back to ‘on’ status as of 02:56 this morning.

I’ve raised this issue on github as https://github.com/fronzbot/blinkpy/issues/211

It’s also spread to my non-XT cameras.

4

Mine is now working.

5

As is mine, although I still have motion ‘blips’ overnight on the binary sensors when they are not actually armed.

6

Same for me… Home Assistant Core 0.107.1

I have had motion notification on Alexa at night time for more than a year. I use it for motion sensors outside and works flawlessly.

This week i have decided to add blink motion_detected binary sensors and it is was really bad. Kept triggering as the state never goes back to Off. I have a camera motion_detected On since last night…

7

Back to staying on once triggered now.

8

Like you all, mine has been very unstable for the last few weeks. It will hold the “ON” state for hours, then work for awhile, then back to holding on. At this moment, it’s working. Tomorrow, who knows. :slight_smile:

9

Same here. Motion is on for nearly the whole time. I use HA 0.108.7.

10

Finally have a fix for this is incoming:

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11

How do I install this update?

12

Looks like it got added to the 0.109 beta release so you can install that or just wait for the official 0.109 release instead

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13

So in the UI the motion now just stays Off.
It does appear to be triggering the automation I have setup (triggering a snapshot and update), but the motion is received on such a delay that the snapshot is delayed long enough to not catch the subject creating the motion.

14

Unfortunately, that’s not entirely unexpected. The Blink integration polls the Blink servers at a set interval for changes and can only get information as fast as your scan_interval. Just like the Blink app, motion cannot be determined until after the 5s video is recorded so the process goes something like this:

  1. Motion in camera’s field of view
  2. Camera begins to record
  3. After recording finished, video is uploaded and saved on Blink’s servers triggering a motion detected alert on the Blink app
  4. Blink integration is now able to see the recorded video the next time it polls the servers
  5. It sees a new video and determines the timestamp is new and sets the motion_detected variable to True
  6. This triggers your automation
  7. Automation tells camera to take a picture (command can take up to 5s since it has to go from you --> server --> sync module --> camera)
  8. You (I assume) force a refresh to grab the image
  9. No new video clips since last refresh so motion_detected variable is reset to False

So you’re missing the object likely because of the scan_interval setting (setting it too fast will easily get your account locked out by Blink, so I don’t recommend changing this EDIT- I’m assuming it’s already aggressive- if not, you can change it. Default is like 3 minutes or something don’t remember.). The motion_detected binary sensor must be going on at some point (otherwise your automation wouldn’t trigger) but it’s likely only for a brief amount of time so you’re not seeing it (checking the state history is what you want to do there). In the scenario I laid out above, the only time the binary sensor will be on is between steps 5 and 9.

Either way, it sounds like the update worked since motion is being detected (it triggers your automation). The binary sensor UI stuff (if it is indeed a problem) is unrelated since that code hasn’t changed.

EDIT- worth noting, that just because this is the way the Blink integration currently works does not mean it’s the way it HAS to work. It’s just the only way I’ve gotten it to work. If anyone has any ideas on improving the motion detection capabilities please let me know (open an issue or PR here https://github.com/fronzbot/blinkpy)

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15

Appreciate the thorough explanation. Fact is that blink just isn’t a very good option for this sort of automation, I think. I suspected that going in to this. I have had these blink cams for a long time, never been very happy with the company, but the tech had such great potential. By the way, my scan_interval is 300 (5 minutes). What do you recommend that I can get away with?

16

Yeah looks like 5 minutes is what I set as default and 3 minutes is what I use. I’ve definitely used 60s before with no problems. Personally I’d be uncomfortable going faster than that, but I believe I’ve seen some people on here do just that.

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