A Blink camera spots motion with a passive infrared sensor, wakes up, records a short clip, and beams that clip over your home Wi-Fi to Amazon’s cloud (or to a USB stick plugged into a Sync Module, if you’d rather keep things local). Battery-powered Blinks talk to a Sync Module over a proprietary 900 MHz … Read more
For most Blink cameras, a sensitivity of 5 is the right starting point – that’s the default, and it’s roughly where the engineers calibrated the rest of the system to work. The Outdoor 4 ships at 6. The slider runs from 1 (low, ignores most motion) to 9 (high, fires on a moth’s eyelash). Bump … Read more
No. New SimpliSafe hardware is not backward compatible with older generations. Sensors, keypads, and base stations from the Original SimpliSafe will not work with Gen 3 – and the reverse is equally true. If you’re upgrading, you’re replacing almost everything except your cameras. SimpliSafe only recognizes two hardware generations, not three – there’s no official … Read more
Yes, SimpliSafe works with Google Home – and by extension, the Google Nest Hub (what Google used to call the Google Home Hub). You can arm your system and check its status with a voice command. That’s about it. Disarming by voice is not supported, and SimpliSafe has confirmed it’s not in development. Here’s the … Read more
A green light on a Blink camera almost always points to one specific model family – the Blink Mini line – and almost always means one of two things: the camera is in pairing mode (solid green plus blinking blue), or it fell offline and is trying to crawl back onto your Wi-Fi (blinking green). … Read more
Setting up a Blink Mini is one of the simpler smart-camera jobs: install the app, scan the QR code on the bottom of the camera, type your Wi-Fi password, wait for a solid blue LED. The whole flow takes about three minutes if your Wi-Fi cooperates, and the same steps apply across the Mini 2, … Read more
Resetting a Blink camera takes one button press and about 10 seconds, but the exact procedure depends on which camera you own. The reset button location, the hold duration, and whether you need to pull batteries first all change between the Mini lineup, the AA-powered Outdoor cameras, the Doorbells, and the Wired Floodlight. Here’s the … Read more
Blink cameras only work on 2.4GHz WiFi. Not 5GHz. If you try to connect to a 5GHz network during setup, it won’t work – and the app won’t tell you why. That’s the number one reason people get stuck. Get on the right band first, then set up the camera. Once you’re on 2.4GHz, the … Read more