Blink XT wireless CCTV
Discussion
I've been looking at getting a home cctv system and have been looking at Arlo wireless (cable is not an option for me) but I've come across the Blink system which appears to be half the price of Arlo and an impressive 2 year battery life from two AA batteries.
Up until now they have only had indoor cameras but in the USA they have launched the Blink XT outdoor camera with IR night vision included. Like the Arla, basic cloud storage is a,so subscription free.
Two cameras and a hub are only $170 while the outdoor XT cam is $119
Thoughts or experience? Amazon UK are selling the indoor only models at present but I can order from the USA
Up until now they have only had indoor cameras but in the USA they have launched the Blink XT outdoor camera with IR night vision included. Like the Arla, basic cloud storage is a,so subscription free.
Two cameras and a hub are only $170 while the outdoor XT cam is $119
Thoughts or experience? Amazon UK are selling the indoor only models at present but I can order from the USA
Well given how devoid of technical specs their website is it isn't really possible to offer any real insight other than 2 aa batteries couldn't power a decent ir illuminator for a couple of nights, never mind a camera, illuminator, pir, processing and rf stage for 2 years, its pretty clear its s
te.
i doubt there is any form of jamming detection on there so can easily be defeated with a £30 box of tricks off ebay. I would bet money their night time image will be a grainy mess with poor dynamic range that would be impossible to gain a usable identification from. It may have some value to you as a fun novelty gadget but it wont offer any real security value.
Although maybe 15 years working in the cctv industry has jaded me.
te.i doubt there is any form of jamming detection on there so can easily be defeated with a £30 box of tricks off ebay. I would bet money their night time image will be a grainy mess with poor dynamic range that would be impossible to gain a usable identification from. It may have some value to you as a fun novelty gadget but it wont offer any real security value.
Although maybe 15 years working in the cctv industry has jaded me.
Edited by OldGermanHeaps on Saturday 1st July 11:07
I agree with the previous poster, I really don't see how this could be any good. They are promising HD video, IR illumination and wireless connectivity for 2 years on 2 lithium AA batteries? That's about 10 watt hours of power. A decent CCTV camera will use that in a couple of hours.
How could that be enough for 2 years usage? Maybe 2 years of daylight standby if it never gets triggered.
I find the claim that it will give you high quality, full colour, video at night a bit ambitious too. Don't most CCTV cameras switch to black and white under IR illumination? Mine do. If I force them to stay in colour mode at night, the picture is a grainy mess.
How could that be enough for 2 years usage? Maybe 2 years of daylight standby if it never gets triggered.
I find the claim that it will give you high quality, full colour, video at night a bit ambitious too. Don't most CCTV cameras switch to black and white under IR illumination? Mine do. If I force them to stay in colour mode at night, the picture is a grainy mess.
Magic919 said:
I think Hikvision are getting left behind here.
Useless landfill toys isn't their target market segment. Their recent developments are the darkfighter x and blazer range targeted at the high end pro market.They do a couple of diy products in the ezviz range but they are dearer than the majority of the white label oem rebadged fire hazard tat that pollutes that end of the market.
Magic919 said:
Sorry, I wasn't being serious.
Oops, i wondered what the wooshing sound was.You'd be surprised how often people with 500k+ houses to protect respond to quotations for quality equipment professionally installed with retarded s
t like "but amazon has wireless cameras for £20" or "the yale system looks very good, and its made by yale"Notwithstanding the disapproval of the professional above, I think I've landed on Blink being the most suitable for my "needs" which are 1/3 plaything, 1/3 security and 1/3 dog-watching.
I have a conventional wired-in alarm system but it hails from the era before app notifications and control were possible. I have been in touch with the original installer about upgrading it to support notifications to my phone and the capability to arm and disarm remotely but the price is over 3 times that of a fully-featured app-based modern system so I've parked that for now. I'm sure there's a way I could integrate the original alarm with 2017 using an Arduino board and IFTTT but I don't have time yet.
So Blink... As a purely security-based item, it's not great but it is "good" partly because it's so cheap you can litter your property with cameras both inside and out (international shipping of the XT "coming soon"). Perpetually-free cloud storage, local storage capability, no installation necessary (because batteries), and integration with other IoT items satisfies many of my requirements.
I looked at Arlo too. Initially it looks better than Blink - higher spec cameras and weatherproof out of the box - but there seems to be more people moving from Arlo to Blink than the other way around... purely judging by the reviews on forums.
Has anyone bought into either Blink or Arlo?
I also looked at Y-Cam which is cheaper still. Camera quality is similar to Blink which I could live with but there is a subscription fee for cloud storage after the third year which I cannot.
I have a conventional wired-in alarm system but it hails from the era before app notifications and control were possible. I have been in touch with the original installer about upgrading it to support notifications to my phone and the capability to arm and disarm remotely but the price is over 3 times that of a fully-featured app-based modern system so I've parked that for now. I'm sure there's a way I could integrate the original alarm with 2017 using an Arduino board and IFTTT but I don't have time yet.
So Blink... As a purely security-based item, it's not great but it is "good" partly because it's so cheap you can litter your property with cameras both inside and out (international shipping of the XT "coming soon"). Perpetually-free cloud storage, local storage capability, no installation necessary (because batteries), and integration with other IoT items satisfies many of my requirements.
I looked at Arlo too. Initially it looks better than Blink - higher spec cameras and weatherproof out of the box - but there seems to be more people moving from Arlo to Blink than the other way around... purely judging by the reviews on forums.
Has anyone bought into either Blink or Arlo?
I also looked at Y-Cam which is cheaper still. Camera quality is similar to Blink which I could live with but there is a subscription fee for cloud storage after the third year which I cannot.
Edited by Watchman on Monday 14th August 16:11
And how do they fund that ongoing? Storage and bandwith for hd video has a high recurring cost. If they can't monetise it they will go pop, then what happens? Something like this would be great for me to offer as budget temporary rapid deployment site security, but for all the ones I have tried the reality never lives up to the hype sadly. Let us know if its any good if you get it.
The 2 year battery life for wireless connection and constant monitoring? The skeptic hat made an appearance and sure enough with real world use:
"After having the Blink XT less than a month and with settings as follows...Re-trigger set to 10 secs, Sensitivity 4, clip length 10 seconds, End clips early if motion stops ENABLED, IR control set to Auto, and IR intensity set to LOW, and Mic enabled ...the batteries are DEAD!!!!! How do I know. well at 2am in morning it recorded on last clip during clip IR was blinking off/on then nothing worked after that. Funny thing was before I went to bed that night checked the settings and battery read "OK". So XT DOES NOT live up to 2 year battery life that Blink Hyped! Maybe with Min setting and if the camera was in a closet and NEVER was triggered and it sits idle in a "controlled" lab batteries might last 2 years. If you plan to use this cam OUTSIDE or in area of high activity the batteries will DIE fast so expect to spend a lot on batteries or, if an option, ( was not an option in my case) plug it to an outlet so batteries are not an issue. however this again is problem as it now REDUCES your mounting option as you will need to be near outlet"
"Based on the reviews, I was very excited to get this camera but unfortunately the camera has gone through 2 sets of batteries in 2 weeks and has frozen 3 times!! My first thought was that the batteries were faulty but it appears that the camera is draining them really fast"
"This camera concept is great. There are two major issues. One the battery is said to last 2 years! Well mine only lasted 10 days!! The camera is pointed at a street with lots of traffic"
A good idea, but you really need a constant power input or deal with changing batteries every few weeks, which frankly would get annoying after a while.
"After having the Blink XT less than a month and with settings as follows...Re-trigger set to 10 secs, Sensitivity 4, clip length 10 seconds, End clips early if motion stops ENABLED, IR control set to Auto, and IR intensity set to LOW, and Mic enabled ...the batteries are DEAD!!!!! How do I know. well at 2am in morning it recorded on last clip during clip IR was blinking off/on then nothing worked after that. Funny thing was before I went to bed that night checked the settings and battery read "OK". So XT DOES NOT live up to 2 year battery life that Blink Hyped! Maybe with Min setting and if the camera was in a closet and NEVER was triggered and it sits idle in a "controlled" lab batteries might last 2 years. If you plan to use this cam OUTSIDE or in area of high activity the batteries will DIE fast so expect to spend a lot on batteries or, if an option, ( was not an option in my case) plug it to an outlet so batteries are not an issue. however this again is problem as it now REDUCES your mounting option as you will need to be near outlet"
"Based on the reviews, I was very excited to get this camera but unfortunately the camera has gone through 2 sets of batteries in 2 weeks and has frozen 3 times!! My first thought was that the batteries were faulty but it appears that the camera is draining them really fast"
"This camera concept is great. There are two major issues. One the battery is said to last 2 years! Well mine only lasted 10 days!! The camera is pointed at a street with lots of traffic"
A good idea, but you really need a constant power input or deal with changing batteries every few weeks, which frankly would get annoying after a while.
Brother D said:
The 2 year battery life for wireless connection and constant monitoring? The skeptic hat made an appearance and sure enough with real world use:
<snip>
<snip>
"This camera concept is great. There are two major issues. One the battery is said to last 2 years! Well mine only lasted 10 days!! The camera is pointed at a street with lots of traffic"
<snip>
When I read up on these earlier today, I figured that they worked by being constantly in standby, with just the IR detector being used to turn the camera & wireless on when triggered.<snip>
<snip>
"This camera concept is great. There are two major issues. One the battery is said to last 2 years! Well mine only lasted 10 days!! The camera is pointed at a street with lots of traffic"
<snip>
I note that the situation cited in the quote above is "The camera is pointed at a busy main road" so I guess it was permanently on.
It's a great concept, but fundamentally flawed if you want to use them in an area where they will be triggered constantly.
And of course, they also depend on getting a dependable WiFi connection first time, every time (unless of course there is some storage capacity within the camera to buffer any captured data).
Edited by TonyRPH on Monday 14th August 20:51
As always, it depends on your use case. I live in the middle of nowhere. No passing cars. No passing people. If there are people on my drive at night it's because they shouldn't be. I have no cause for worry though because people just don't wander around here without justifiable cause... any people in my vicinity are 99% likely to already live around here.
But, since my conventional alarm is useless to me when I'm not in the house (it screams, pissing off the neighbours but not alerting me because I'm not in earshot), I want some sort of phone-based notification. The Blink internal cameras and XT externals may just give me the last 5% of peace of mind I'm looking for... the other 95% being covered by my having chosen this out-of-the-way location in the first place.
I still fancy updating my conventional alarm system which works off a number of hardwired PIRs inside the house and mag contact breakers on the doors but as a quick-and-dirty solution which conveniently allows for us to watch our killer dog (jesting - he's as dangerous as pillow) if we have to leave him for half a day while we go to work, then Blink seems to be a low-cost, relatively flexible option.
As for the perpetual storage... look, if it gives 5 years then that would be good. There are plenty of people offering free storage these days not-least Google Mail, Arlo cameras and Blink. It's not unprecedented but there are no guarantees - who can guarantee the future? However, Blink is priced such that you could say "easy come, easy go" if there were costs presented for the storage in 5 years time. Hell, in 5 years time there might be a system so much better than Blink that it's worth ditching Blink in favour of buying something else anyway. 5 years in technology is a looooong time. I'll have changed my phone twice in that time, to the tune of ~£400 a pop (and I buy cheap phones).
It looks like I'll be able to buy a 5 camera package of internal Blinks initially, then when the XT becomes available in the UK, I can buy them for about £120 each. I reckon I'll buy 3 of those, giving me a total investment of 1/3rd of the cost I was quoted for upgrading my current alarm to give me phone-based notifications (but still no pictures).
And when I have 5 mins, 50 quid will arm me with an Arduino board that I might be able to integrate into my old-world alarm system to give me even greater coverage however when that day comes there will no doubt be robot dog sentries available which will monitor my property and keep my real dog company.
But, since my conventional alarm is useless to me when I'm not in the house (it screams, pissing off the neighbours but not alerting me because I'm not in earshot), I want some sort of phone-based notification. The Blink internal cameras and XT externals may just give me the last 5% of peace of mind I'm looking for... the other 95% being covered by my having chosen this out-of-the-way location in the first place.
I still fancy updating my conventional alarm system which works off a number of hardwired PIRs inside the house and mag contact breakers on the doors but as a quick-and-dirty solution which conveniently allows for us to watch our killer dog (jesting - he's as dangerous as pillow) if we have to leave him for half a day while we go to work, then Blink seems to be a low-cost, relatively flexible option.
As for the perpetual storage... look, if it gives 5 years then that would be good. There are plenty of people offering free storage these days not-least Google Mail, Arlo cameras and Blink. It's not unprecedented but there are no guarantees - who can guarantee the future? However, Blink is priced such that you could say "easy come, easy go" if there were costs presented for the storage in 5 years time. Hell, in 5 years time there might be a system so much better than Blink that it's worth ditching Blink in favour of buying something else anyway. 5 years in technology is a looooong time. I'll have changed my phone twice in that time, to the tune of ~£400 a pop (and I buy cheap phones).
It looks like I'll be able to buy a 5 camera package of internal Blinks initially, then when the XT becomes available in the UK, I can buy them for about £120 each. I reckon I'll buy 3 of those, giving me a total investment of 1/3rd of the cost I was quoted for upgrading my current alarm to give me phone-based notifications (but still no pictures).
And when I have 5 mins, 50 quid will arm me with an Arduino board that I might be able to integrate into my old-world alarm system to give me even greater coverage however when that day comes there will no doubt be robot dog sentries available which will monitor my property and keep my real dog company.
Edited by Watchman on Tuesday 15th August 09:10
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