Blink

The Blink integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] lets you view camera images and motion events from Blink camera and security systems.

Setup

You will need your Blink login information (username, which is usually your email address, and password) to use this module.

Configuration

The preferred method for setting this up is by using the configuration flow. Go to the integrations page in your configuration and click on new integration -> Blink. When you are prompted for your pin, there are (currently) two possibilities:

1. You are sent an email asking for you to allow Home Assistant to access Blink. In this case, leave the pin field blank and hit Submit.

2. You are sent an email or SMS containing a 2FA pin. In this case, please enter the pin and hit Submit.

Your integration will then set up. Given that setup is asynchronous, you may see your sensors before they have finished extracting data from the Blink servers. After a few minutes (at most) this information should populate.

Once Home Assistant starts and you authenticate access, the blink integration will create the following platforms (note: Blink Mini cameras do not currently support any of the sensors, nor the battery status binary sensor):

• An alarm_control_panel to arm/disarm the whole blink system (note, alarm_arm_home is not implemented and will not actually do anything, despite it being an option in the GUI).
• A camera for each camera linked to your Blink sync module.
• A sensor per camera for temperature and Wi-Fi strength.
• A binary_sensor motion detection, camera armed status, and battery status.
• A switch per camera to enable/disable motion detection

Since the cameras are battery operated, polling must be done with care so as to not drain the battery too quickly, or hammer Blink’s servers with too many API requests. If an alternate polling rate is desired, disable the “enable poll for updates” option in the Blink integration system options and poll with homeassistant.update_entity action. The cameras can be also manually updated via the trigger_camera action. 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.

Please note that each camera reports two different states: one as sensor.blink_<camera_name>_status and the other as binary_sensor.blink_<camera_name>_motion_enabled. The motion_enabled property reports if the camera is ready to detect motion regardless if the system is actually armed.

Actions

Any sequential calls to actionsActions are used in several places in Home Assistant. As part of a script or automation, actions define what is going to happen once a trigger is activated. In scripts, an action is called sequence. [Learn more] relating to blink should have a minimum of a 5 second delay in between them to prevent the calls from being throttled and ignored. The actions that act on a camera needs a target parameter.

blink.record

Trigger a camera to record a new video clip.

blink.trigger_camera

Trigger a camera to take a new still image.

blink.save_video

Save the last recorded video of a camera to a local file. Note that in most cases, Home Assistant will need to know that the directory is writable via the allowlist_external_dirs in your configuration.yamlThe configuration.yaml file is the main configuration file for Home Assistant. It lists the integrations to be loaded and their specific configurations. In some cases, the configuration needs to be edited manually directly in the configuration.yaml file. Most integrations can be configured in the UI. [Learn more] file (see example below).

homeassistant:
  allowlist_external_dirs:
    - '/tmp'
    - '/path/to/whitelist'

blink.save_recent_clips

Save the recent video clips of a camera to a local file in the pattern %Y%m%d_%H%M%S_{name}.mp4. Note that in most cases, Home Assistant will need to know that the directory is writable via the allowlist_external_dirs in your configuration.yamlThe configuration.yaml file is the main configuration file for Home Assistant. It lists the integrations to be loaded and their specific configurations. In some cases, the configuration needs to be edited manually directly in the configuration.yaml file. Most integrations can be configured in the UI. [Learn more] file.

blink.send_pin

Send a new pin to blink. Since Blink’s 2FA implementation is new and changing, this is to allow the integration to continue to work with user intervention. The intent is to handle all of this behind the scenes, but until the login implementation is settled this was added. To use it, perform the action with the pin you receive from Blink as the payload (for a simple “Allow this Device” email, you may keep the pin value empty).

Other actions

In addition to the actions mentioned above, there are generic camera, alarm_control_panel, and homeassistant actions available. The camera.enable_motion_detection and camera.disable_motion_detection actions allow for individual cameras to be enabled and disabled, respectively, within the Blink system. The alarm_control_panel.alarm_arm_away and alarm_control_panel.alarm_disarm actions allow for the whole system to be armed and disarmed, respectively. The homeassistant.update_entity action will force an update of the blink system. Blink Mini cameras linked to an existing sync module cannot be armed/disarmed individually via Home Assistant.

Examples

The following are some examples showing how to correctly perform an action using Blink:

Snap picture and save locally

This example script shows how to take a picture with your camera, named My Camera in your Blink app (this is not necessarily the friendly name in Home Assistant). After snapping a picture, the image will then be saved to a local directory called /tmp/my_image.jpg. Note that this example makes use of actions found in the camera integration

alias: "Blink Snap Picture"
sequence:
  - action: blink.trigger_camera
    target:
      entity_id: camera.blink_my_camera
  - action: camera.snapshot
    target:
      entity_id: camera.blink_my_camera
    data:
      filename: /tmp/my_image.jpg

Arm Blink when away

This example automation will arm your blink sync module to detect motion on any of your blink cameras that have motion detection enabled. By default, Blink enables motion detection on all cameras so, unless you’ve changed anything in your app, you’re all set. If you want to manually enable motion detection for individual cameras, you can utilize the appropriate camera action but please note that motion will only be captured if the sync module is armed.

Here, this example assumes your blink module is named My Sync Module and that you have device trackers set up for presence detection.

- alias: "Arm Blink When Away"
  triggers:
    - trigger: state
      entity_id: all
      to: "not_home"
  actions:
    - action: alarm_control_panel.alarm_arm_away
      target:
        entity_id: alarm_control_panel.blink_my_sync_module

Disarm Blink when home

Similar to the previous example, this automation will disarm blink when arriving home.

- alias: "Disarm Blink When Home"
  triggers:
    - trigger: state
      entity_id: all
      to: "home"
  actions:
    - action: alarm_control_panel.alarm_disarm
      target:
        entity_id: alarm_control_panel.blink_my_sync_module

Save most recent video locally when motion detected

When motion is detected, you can use the Blink Home Assistant integration to save the last recorded video locally, rather than relying on Blink’s servers to save your data.

The following example assumes your camera’s name (in the Blink app) is My Camera and your sync module name is My Sync Module. The file will be saved to /tmp/videos/blink_video_{YYYMMDD_HHmmSS}.mp4 where {YYYYMMDD_HHmmSS} will be a timestamp create via the use of templating.

- alias: "Save Blink Video on Motion"
  triggers:
    - trigger: state
      entity_id: binary_sensor.blink_my_camera_motion_detected
      to: "on"
  actions:
    -  action: blink.save_video
       target:
         entity_id: camera.blink_my_camera
       data:
         filename: "/tmp/videos/blink_video_{{ now().strftime('%Y%m%d_%H%M%S') }}.mp4"

Save all recent clips locally on a schedule

A list of all the recent video clips is updated at each refresh of the Blink system. The video clips are available in a download list (per camera) for up to an hour, and they can be downloaded at any time before the one-hour expiration time. After a clip is downloaded it is removed from the list.

The following example demonstrates saving recent clips every three minutes. It assumes your camera’s name (in the Blink app) is My Camera. The file will be saved to /tmp/videos/YYYYMMDD_HHmmSS_MyCamera.mp4. The file name of the downloaded video file is not configurable.

- alias: "Save Recent Clips from My Camera"
  triggers:
    - trigger: time_pattern
      minutes: /3
  actions:
    - action: blink.save_recent_clips
      target:
        entity_id: camera.my_camera
      data:
        file_path: /tmp/videos