[jyl]

Report after using these Blink cameras for a little while.

They work well. My camera at the front door was alerting at passing cars and waving leaves, so I turned the sensitivity down and now it only alerts when someone is actually at the door. The cameras inside don't seem to be alerting to the cat, but do alert to people walking into the house. The video clips are good enough, if there is a light on in the room. If it is a dark room, you can set the camera to shine a light, but of course that makes the camera very obvious. The cameras are easily concealed, I simply took some artsy postcards, cut a 1/4" hole for the camera and a 1/2" hole for the motion detector, and used double sided tape to fasten the card to the face of the camera. Not going to fool the CIA but good enough. The cameras have a blue LED that shines when they are filming, this is an intentional part of the design so that you can't use them to secretly spy on the babysitter. The blue glow is still faintly visible despite the covering postcard, not enough that a hurrying burglar would notice, but you still can't use them as spycams, people would eventually notice.

So, after all this preparation for our vacation, the cameras and putting lights on timers and stopping the mail and newspaper, turns out my wife arranged for a friend to house sit. I'll turn the cameras off - not just because it is the right thing to do, but also because otherwise I'd be getting alerts every 10 seconds on my phone. But I'm still glad I installed these because we're often gone on the weekends and during the day.