Indigo Domotics

Anyone playing with the Blink cameras yet? For those unfamiliar, they are wireless cameras. TOTALLY wireless. They are claimed to have a 1 year battery life. I ordered one to play with:

http://blinkforhome.com/

They also have motion and temperature sensors. The manufacturer is claiming they will have an open API once the first production run is moving along. Device sounds a bit too good to be true and yet, I still took a chance and have one on order......

I looked at these devices today after reading a review in the Boston Globe. Sounds interesting and I'll be following along for the ability to integrate into Indigo.

Just wanted to post a quick update on Blink. I purchased a 5 camera pack and have been using them for almost 3 months now. I have to say I'm really impressed. These cameras are completely battery powered and in 3 months, the battery level has not even started to drop (assume the battery meters are accurate).

The are super fast at catching and recording motion when you arm them. I have found them to be slow bringing up live video if I want to look in to the house often taking 30+ seconds to bring up live video and audio.

I'm still waiting for the developers to release an API and, hopefully, an outdoor camera in the next year or so but, so far I love them. And happy I grabbed them at the pre-release price. Although $300 for a wireless, 5 camera system with HD video is still pretty cheap.

I will provide updates as time goes on.

Hi,

Do you have an update on the cameras - still happy?
If I'm not mistaken - I don't think they released a public API but there seems to be integration with SmartThings so maybe we could add this also into Indigo in the future...

Hope they will also release an outdoor camera soon..

Thanks,
W.

I've been using the outdoor camera under my porch (semi-protected from the elements), and it's working great. Indigo integration should be slick, mostly to turn it on/off for alerting, so it won't go off when I'm home.

I have a few Arlo Pro cameras set up and I handle arming / disarming using stringify

https://www.stringify.com

since no plug in for indigo exists - they have rechargeable batteries in them and they last about 6 months before needing a recharge. Not sure if Stringify supports your HW but for me it works great - when I exit my block stringify arms my cameras as I approach my house they disarm. As it starts to get dark (even if I'm home) stringify arms them for the night...

I hope someone writes a plug-in for Arlo, fingers crossed!

Just an update. I've been using blink cameras for about 3 years now and they have remained reliable. The claimed battery life of over a year is accurate in my experience. I think they actual claim up to 2 years now which is probably possible but I use the live view a lot so I change mine yearly.

As far as a public API, I've seen nothing. I suspect since Amazon bought Blink, we won't see them opening up the API anytime soon. Amazon also grabbed Ring (which I also have). My only question is, why didn't Apple, with all their cash, grab some of these better camera companies? Would have been nice to expand their Homekit market.

Perhaps someone with a higher skill set than myself with analyzing ethernet data might be able to come up with a Blink plugin one day........

There's an API that's been reverse engineered on GitHub. It's not public or sanctioned by Blink, but it works pretty well.

https://github.com/fronzbot/blinkpy