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Published 20 hours ago • verified publisher icon colinbendell

Should disabled = no preview?

Open crowston opened this issue 4 years ago • 6 comments

I have three Blink cameras, one that I leave always armed (in the garage) and two that I only arm when I go out (in various rooms of the house). In a previous version of the plugin (only a few days ago, the project is moving fast!) I could preview all three cameras in the Home app, even the two that aren't armed. Now it seems that I can only see the preview for the one cameras that is enabled. Given that there's a privacy switch to turn camera previews off, it doesn't seem necessary to tie that functionality to the camera's being enabled.

crowston avatar Nov 10 '20 19:11 crowston

Can you confirm that you have the camera 'enabled' but disarmed? Or is it that you have the camera both disabled and disarmed?

I added the disabled screen because there was confusion why the thumbnails were not being refreshed (and motion not being captured when armed) and the root was because the cameras were actual disabled. This interstitial was to bring this state change to the forefront.

colinbendell avatar Nov 10 '20 21:11 colinbendell

In the Home app, for a camera I have only one switch: Enabled (on/off). I don't see a switch to arm/disarm the camera.

crowston avatar Nov 10 '20 21:11 crowston

But having clarity about the camera status is definitely welcome.

crowston avatar Nov 10 '20 21:11 crowston

The arm / disarm is at the security system level. Arming tracks motion activity. Is the system armed but then you disable the camera separately? What is the expected flow?

colinbendell avatar Nov 10 '20 22:11 colinbendell

I would like one camera (in the garage) to always be armed for motion detection and to be able to turn it on and off on the others (in the house), e.g., motion detection only when we're out.

But even when motion detection is not turned on on a camera, I still would like to see the view in Home, e.g., if we're upstairs to be able to see if something is happening downstairs. And it seems that the privacy setting should control whether the camera is visible.

crowston avatar Nov 10 '20 23:11 crowston

I think this is going to be a useful insight for the v4 overhaul of the UI. My take is that you ultimately want:

  • sets of cameras that you enable and disable motion detection on. This is a different take on the blink architecture (which is ok) and probably more natural use.
  • different sets of cameras would want thumbnail refreshes
  • different sets of cameras that disable liveview (usually for privacy reasons)

colinbendell avatar Feb 21 '21 21:02 colinbendell