Blink Binding, 2026 [5.1.0.0,6.0.0.0)

dashrb · January 15, 2026, 5:51pm

Connects your blink account to openhab so that you have access to the cameras and their events. Additional documentation is available on GitHub.

This version should work for openhab 5.1.x and newer installations.

Changelog

Version 5.2.0.202602072213

On startup, the most recent motion thumbnail is published to the motion thumbnail channel (even if it’s old; this is not a motion event!)
Implemented Blink Recorded Clips web page: a swimlane viewer for thumbnails & videos (see screenshot below)
Implemented 11 new properties (camera details) & 8 new channels (motion thumbnail, batt voltage, RSSI, etc)

Camera Detail Properties

Firmware Version
Power Source (usb or batteries)
First Boot date / time
Color (black or white)
MAC Address (useful for your advanced firewall / DHCP rules)
Camera Model (Gen 1 XT, Gen 2 XT2, Gen 3 Catalina, Gen 4 Sedona, White (gen 2 indoor), lotus (doorbell), owl (mini), etc)
Last Battery Voltage Check date / time
IP Address
Date Added to Blink Network (if you delete a camera in Blink, and readd it, this date changes)
Network Error Count (cameras with weak wifi or sync module connectivity will show errors here)
Serial Number

New Camera Channels

Battery Voltage (a measured voltage number like 1.65v)
Motion Thumbnail (the thumbnail of your most recent motion event)
Last Communication (Advanced)
High Usage Rate (Advanced)
WiFi Signal Strength (Advanced)
WiFi RSSI (Advanced)
Sync Module Signal Strength (Advanced)
Sync Module RSSI (Advanced)

Version 5.2.0.202601151552

fixed: authentication works again; Blink had modified their authentication method in mid 2025, which broke previous versions of this binding
fixed: motion trigger events are now delivered to the camera’s Motion Triggered channel

Version 4.2

This version supported blink authentication changes during 2024. This had been posted on a google drive (not in the Marketplace)

Version 0.1

initial release by @matthias

Resources

Binary JAR file: org.openhab.binding.blink-5.2.0.202602072213.jar

Source code for this release: dashrb/openhab-addons, on GitHub, branch blink-5.2.0.202602072213

Screenshot of built-in Recorded Videos:

weymann · January 16, 2026, 5:47pm

Great! Just setting up a new system based on OH5.1. Didn’t pay attention for blink so far but did a short smoke test with your jar. Works out of the box!

Thanks!

ulrgaer · January 18, 2026, 5:31pm

Great implementation, Works out of the box! Will you keep updating the API every 6 month. Directory After the update from Amazon?

dashrb · January 18, 2026, 11:48pm

I’ll try! It’ll help if people buy me a coffee (ko-fi link in my profile). lol

Glad it’s working for you (so far)!

ulrgaer · January 20, 2026, 6:43am

hi, still one more question. As written previously a great binding. Question:

How/Where do I get the information about motion happened ?
How do I get the update of the picture/video ?

Do you have any example for that ?

dashrb · January 20, 2026, 9:52pm

Hi!

Question 1: Information about what motion happened:

There’s a somewhat lengthy delay (as short as tens of seconds, to as long as minutes) from when you walk in front of your camera, and when the Blink Binding reports it. So the events aren’t great for immediate actions like turning lights on. Someday I’ll explore how to reverse engineer a more immediate notification method that the Blink app uses internally.

For now, though, assuming you understand the delay, you can set up a Rule to trigger on a Thing Event. Normally I would make an Item, and write my rules about Item state changes, but this binding was originally written to trigger the THING channel. So you don’t need an Item. If you have multiple cameras, maybe a FrontDoor, and a BackDoor, you could have a rule that looks for the channel FrontDoor.motionTriggered channel to be triggered, and take your action at that point. A different rule could look for BackDoor.motionTriggered, and take a different action (“RELEASE THE HOUNDS!”).

Since these aren’t Item state changes, there’s no way to look back over the past week (for example) to see all of the events which occurred. That’s kind of a shame, and something I’d like to look into as well.

Question 2: the update of the picture/video?

Today, only the Blink App will show you the motion videos. I am potentially interested in exploring a way to provide these videos through a web page popup, but this is more of a long term desire.

I will say that newer blink cameras (gen3 and gen4) have a setting in the Blink App, “Auto-Update Thumbnail”, which, if enabled, will replace the Home Screen thumbnail for the camera whenever it detects motion. I guess so you can see, on the Home Screen, the person who last approached the camera. I don’t use that feature (I like my thumbnails to be daytime, sunny views), but this is potentially a way to see the latest motion event inside openhab (just an image, not a video). The thumbnail can be seen from a web URL which you can find in the camera Thing, under Properties → Thumbnail. The URL isn’t directly clickable but you can copy/paste it into a browser and see the image appear.

Hope that helps. If I misunderstood, let me know!

-rb

dashrb · January 21, 2026, 4:14am

I’m preparing a new release with a handful of new camera properties:

serial number
firmware version
Date added to network
model (xt, xt2, white(indoor), gen3/catalina, gen4/sedona, lotus/doorbell, owl/mini)
camera [hardware] revision
color
Power Source (USB or Internal Batteries)
MAC address
Last Battery Voltage Check
First Boot Date/Time
IP Address
Network Error Count

and a handful of new Channels (some considered “Advanced”) :

Motion Thumbnail (separate from the last saved thumbnail on the Blink Home Screen, this is the thumbnail from the most recent recording event)
Battery Voltage: Batteries seem to start in the 1.6-1.72v range (depending on brand), and the cameras appear to work down to about 1.35v (probably depends on signal strength). For cameras on USB power, I’m seeing values typically in the 1.69-1.72v range.
Last Communication (date when the camera last communicated with Blink)
High Usage Rate Detected (on/off): is this camera experiencing a lot of recording activity?
WiFi Level : 1-5 rating of the wifi signal strength. 2 is weak but usually works
WiFi RSSI: the Received Signal Strength Indicator of messages from your wifi router.
Sync Module Level: 1-5 rating of the signal strength from the camera’s sync module. I have one camera showing a level 1, and it works most of the time.
Sync Modules RSSI: the Received Signal Strength Indicator of messages from this camera’s sync module

And I would like to humbly request a German translation for the following fields:

channel-type.blink.batteryVoltage.label=Battery Voltage
channel-type.blink.batteryVoltage.description=Retrieves the current voltage for this camera's power source (i.e. batteries or USB power)
channel-type.blink.motionThumbnail.label=Recent Motion Thumbnail
channel-type.blink.motionThumbnail.description=Retrieves the thumbnail from the most recent motion recording by this camera
channel-type.blink.lastUpdated.label=Last Communication
channel-type.blink.lastUpdated.description=The date & time when this camera last communicated with the Blink Servers
channel-type.blink.highUsageRate.label=High Usage Rate
channel-type.blink.highUsageRate.description=Is this camera experiencing a high rate of usage?
channel-type.blink.wifiLevel.label=WiFi Signal Strength Level
channel-type.blink.wifiLevel.description=A 1-5 level rating of the signal strength for data sent from your WiFi router
channel-type.blink.wifiRssi.label=WiFi RSSI
channel-type.blink.wifiRssi.description=Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) for data sent from your Wifi router, in dBm
channel-type.blink.lfrLevel.label=Sync Module Signal Strength Level
channel-type.blink.lfrLevel.description=A 1-5 level rating of the signal strength for data sent from your sync module
channel-type.blink.lfrRssi.label=Sync Module RSSI
channel-type.blink.lfrRssi.description=Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) for data sent from your sync module, in dBm

Wikibear · January 21, 2026, 8:38pm

channel-type.blink.batteryVoltage.label=Batteriespannung
channel-type.blink.batteryVoltage.description=Ruft die aktuelle Spannung der Stromquelle dieser Kamera ab (z. B. Batterien oder USB-Stromversorgung)

channel-type.blink.motionThumbnail.label=Aktuelles Bewegungsvorschaubild
channel-type.blink.motionThumbnail.description=Ruft das Vorschaubild der zuletzt aufgezeichneten Bewegung dieser Kamera ab

channel-type.blink.lastUpdated.label=Letzte Aktualisierung
channel-type.blink.lastUpdated.description=Datum und Uhrzeit der letzten Aktualisierung der Kamera mit den Blink‑Servern

channel-type.blink.highUsageRate.label=Hohe Nutzungsrate
channel-type.blink.highUsageRate.description=Hat diese Kamera derzeit eine hohe Nutzungsrate?

channel-type.blink.wifiLevel.label=WLAN‑Signalstärke (Stufe)
channel-type.blink.wifiLevel.description=Eine Bewertung der Signalstärke von 1–5 für die vom WLAN‑Router gesendeten Daten

channel-type.blink.wifiRssi.label=WLAN‑RSSI
channel-type.blink.wifiRssi.description=Empfangene Signalstärke (RSSI) der vom WLAN‑Router gesendeten Daten, in dBm

channel-type.blink.lfrLevel.label=Signalstärke des Sync‑Moduls (Stufe)
channel-type.blink.lfrLevel.description=Eine Bewertung der Signalstärke von 1–5 für die vom Sync‑Modul gesendeten Daten

channel-type.blink.lfrRssi.label=RSSI des Sync‑Moduls
channel-type.blink.lfrRssi.description=Empfangene Signalstärke (RSSI) der vom Sync‑Modul gesendeten Daten, in dBm

hmerk · January 21, 2026, 9:08pm

Translations are done in Crowdin…

dashrb · January 22, 2026, 4:51am

Oh! I’m sorry. I’ll start reading more about that. At first glance there’s talk about translations being applied during the pull request, but my add-on isn’t pull requested into openhab-addons yet. Maybe crowdin will pull request into my own GitHub hosted repo? I guess I’ll find out!

For now, if you have a minute, can you explain why doesn’t my logo (the first image link in the first post) appear in the marketplace? I’m sure I did something wrong, so I appreciate the extra set of eyes!

hmerk · January 22, 2026, 7:12am

No, only after the PR gets merged.

I need to see the raw link to the image, please post it in code fences….

Edit: Think I found the issue.

You need to host the image on a github repo, not on a special branch with. ref/head reference.

dashrb · January 22, 2026, 9:16pm

Thank you for looking!

Are you saying I need to push my content from a side branch of my git repo, onto the main branch of my (same) git repo, and publish the image URL from the path to main, rather than the path to the side branch blink-5.2.0.202601151552?

My logic was that I’m posting the source code, the binary, and the image logo for a specific version, so I should use the specific version paths for all of those things, to keep them aligned and permanent from a version control perspective.

Why does the branch matter? Is the marketplace script coded with some special URL-parsing logic to determine if the image is valid?
Sorry for the questions–just want to understand why (I don’t mean to sound accusatory).

hmerk · January 22, 2026, 9:27pm

Sorry, I don’t know how the script works, just compared with one of my published widgets, where the limage is shown correct.

Even with my widgets, I never use any branches for publishing.

weymann · February 2, 2026, 12:49am

Your image link in the top post needs to look like that - the logo keyword makes the difference!

![logo|150x150](upload://xyz.jpeg)

Don’t mix up too many things

Marketplace

the logo for Marketplace will work with my comment before, I’m sure
dont’t put the jar into your branch!
I do it the following way - create e.g. a Blink-Drops repo, put readme and jar inside. Check exmaple from my working project. Now you link the jar and readme into your top post.
just note: your branch has nothing to do with the Marketplace versioning. It’s just mandatory to link to your source code so others can have a look!

Now you can handle Marketplace updates with the drops repo!

Offiicial Contribution

as @hmerk said don’t put translations in. You only create the english version via mvn i18n:generate-default-translations. Translations are handled with separate updates
after succesful Blink contribution you can add the logo to the official openhab-docs repo. Then it will appear on the website and in the official addon store.

So keep your branch clean - no jar, no logo, no translations!

dashrb · February 4, 2026, 12:04am

Thank you so much for the clarifications! I will incorporate these suggestions, much appreciated!

dashrb · February 4, 2026, 3:39am

I have been implementing video playback, and I went looking for other camera systems to see what those bindings provide. If you’re so inclined to give advice on functionality, consider visiting Camera System Bindings: Viewing, and downloading videos to user’s network and chime in (pun intended) with your suggestions!

dashrb · February 7, 2026, 11:14pm

All, I published a new update, v5.2.0.202602072213. It contains the video playback web page, please check it out and send feedback. (Updated post at the top of this thread).

I believe if you delete the blink add on and reinstall from the marketplace it will pick up the correct version. Do not delete your Account or Camera things–although if you want access to the new channels you have to delete your camera thing and re-add it from the inbox.

Keep any scripts or rules though, as the re-added cameras will have the same Thing UIDs as your old ones.

The version number is shown in the Blink Account thing’s Properties, along with the URL to your web page viewer.

Moriarty · February 8, 2026, 8:00am

Hello, I’m very grateful that you took over the binding. I have installed the latest version, deleted the cameras, and added them again. I can see the new channels, and the video playback web page is also visible. However, videos are not displayed and the motion thumbnail is also not being updated. I am using Sync Module 2 with Outdoor Cameras version 3. I am running openHAB version 5.1.1, and I do not have a Blink subscription.

dheneghan · February 8, 2026, 11:40am

I’m a little confused. Market place only shows Blink Binding, 2026 [5.1.0.0,6.0.0.0), so have downloaded the .jar from the first post [ Binary JAR file: org.openhab.binding.blink-5.2.0.202602072213.jar]

Have removed a couple of the cameras and readded, found without any issues and added without any issue. I can see that there is now an additional additional channel “Recent Motion Thumbnail”. This is a great addition.

I am confused, though, how I should access the web page for the swim lane video playback.

Moriarty · February 8, 2026, 12:08pm

Please look at the bridge in the UI and click on Thing Properties.

I have also installed the JAR. Nevertheless, the motion thumbnail is still not displayed, and videos are also not shown.