Explore top smart home security systems. Find reviews, guides, and tips on choosing the right system to keep your home safe.
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 what … 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
Every Blink camera works with Alexa out of the box – Amazon owns Blink, so the integration is native. You enable the Blink skill once, link your Blink account to Alexa, and from then on you can ask Alexa to show a camera on an Echo Show, arm or disarm the system, or fire it … Read more
The Blink app gives you about a dozen camera settings worth touching, and the defaults are conservative on purpose – they prioritize battery life over usefulness. If you want fewer false alerts, sharper clips, and actually-useful AI notifications, change these settings in this order: motion sensitivity, Activity Zones, retrigger time, clip length, end clip early, … Read more
Yes, Blink cameras support local storage – but only through a Sync Module. The original Sync Module (Gen 1) doesn’t. The Sync Module 2 takes a USB flash drive. The newer Sync Module XR takes a microSD card. The cameras themselves have no card slot, no internal recording, no SD-card hack. Plug storage into the … Read more