I bought a Ring doorbell several years ago before Amazon bought them. And then about 2 years ago I needed a cheap camera and bought a Blink. I never needed recording on the Blink camera until recently, just live views, and now I’m paying $30/year for each service. I’d like to go either all Ring or all Blink, and I see that both are supported under the Community Drivers page. Does one or the other service work particularly better with Hubitat than the other?
I know they’re both Amazon, and that Amazon could very well decide to consolidate them at any time. But if all else is equal, I’d rather go with Blink. They’ve made kind of a bad name with Ring with allowing police access and their feature that lets neighbors see your cameras (which I don’t use).
I realize this is kind of a non-answer (sorry) but it really depends on your use-case...
The Ring has a wider range of devices and services (security monitoring) available that can be added at any time. A lot of their devices are powered vs battery
Battery life on Blink cameras is really good - like 2 years or so and you can have local storage which is nice.. also Blink devices are a lot less expensive.
I use the Ring - have a doorbell, floodlights etc.. Also use some Ring devices in my HE setup.
One thing I would be careful about is the community HE integrations - would read up on the appropriate threads to see if they offer the features that you need.
There are other options if you are not adverse to doing a little bit of tinkering and you are into Apple stuff - "Homebridge" software runs on a separate computer or vm and talks to HE via some very good community "bridge" apps. The apps act as an intermediary between HE and Apple Homekit. This would allow you to set up automations/dashboard using Apple Home. You do need a Homekit hub though - like an HomePodMini or AppleTV..
All I have is just the one Ring doorbell and the one (indoors-only) Blink camera. The doorbell is wired and Blink also offers wired doorbells. I might eventually add one more outdoor camera. The Ring mailbox alerter is the only other tempting thing but the wifi signal sometimes has trouble reaching the doorbell, there is no way it’s ever going to reach my mailbox all the way down the end of the driveway and across the street.
I do have an iPhone and an iPad Pro (but Windows PCs) and an Apple TV 4K that can act as a hub. Part of the reason I wanted to get a Hubitat in the first place is that it seems like Homebridge might be a bit over my head.
If you go the Homebridge + HE route then the Homebridge setup is very straightforward..
Here are instructions for the Raspberry PI but feel free to PM me if you need different instructions etc..
What kinds of things are you interested in doing with these? Motion Detection? Doorbell Detection?
With your Apple devices you could absolutely use Apple Home to do the bulk of your automations.. might be worth exploring a little further. The advantage to Homebridge + HE is being able to use a wide variety of devices outside the Apple ecosystem.
I don’t know yet. I’m trying to sort of future proof myself so that I don’t have to go buy a whole new system if I change my mind.
The one thing I’m certain about doing is getting door sensors, for the interior and exterior (person-sized, not overhead) garage doors. My dad lives with us and goes out to get his newspaper every morning around 6am and I want to get an alert if he doesn’t come back in within 5 minutes. Especially since it’s winter. (He is able-bodied and doesn’t have dementia or anything like that so I’m not placing a life or death situation on this. This is more like in case he were to fall on ice or something.) My door faces the side of the house and so the Ring doorbell can’t see all the way to the end of the driveway though. So bringing up the live video feed would be cool but if it doesn’t work it’s not a big deal.
I do not work for Hubitat, Inc so cannot say why exactly but the focus of HE seems to be in "home automation" rather than "home control".. also keeping things as extensible and flexible as possible. Cameras seem to be more of a home control / dashboard thing which is important does not seem to be the primary focus yet.
Of course there are a ton of different ways people in this community have incorporated video etc. It is kind of overwhelming... The HE->HomeBridge->Apple approach works well and is relatively easy to set up..
There are several things to unpack here... first off HE works really well in controlling devices - so motion sensors, contact sensors (doors etc), light switches etc. By default everything runs locally so as long as you have power to the hub and devices then you have automation. No internet required and will run as long as your hardware holds out. Because of the flexible design (Hub Mesh, custom apps/drivers) you can add on things as needed - like HomeBridge or other systems.
The Ring and Blink both have cloud requirements so are subject to possible change in the future.. They are great for security etc but do not offer the fined grained control via rules etc that HE has..
As far as "Dad" detection - that requires some thought as to how you want to detect - door open at a certain time in the AM then wait for another within a given time, maybe based on mode (away or home). Contact sensor for the door, motion sensor maybe.. You might be able to stick a Z-wave motion sensor in the newspaper cubby (if it's plastic) to get an alert when the paper is delivered.. Z-Wave device communicates on a lower frequency so should go further than Zigbee but it depends on where your hub is in your house etc etc.
Well he always opens the interior door then the exterior door, and then when he comes back he does that in reverse. So if that doesn’t happen in reverse within 5 minutes a push notification.
I would think because of the difficulty of the motion sensing systems in them. For myself I use Foscam cameras (cheap, reliable) and display them on a dashboard. I have an old PC running NVR software with 30 day rotation on 24 hour video... In the pic below Left and Middle are foscam (middle one is off at the moment because I'm moving it and I have another 4 not incorporated yet) and the right is my ring doorbell. Integration isn't difficulty in this respect. It's simply a cgi path.
