Blink Cameras and their batteries: Functional abnormalities and consumer liabilities

Quite possibly the single biggest thing that drives me nuts about consumer electronics products is when their implementation doesn’t grasp the technical comprehension limitations of consumers. I can’t count the number of products I’ve personally tried out over the years, far from the far greater number of products that I’ve only heard about—which is probably still only a fraction of the total number of products for which what I’m about to say qualifies—that underperformed in the market, if not flat-out failed, primarily-to-completely because the target audience couldn’t figure out how to get them to work properly. Great ideas, many of them…just poorly implemented.

Today’s case study is, I think, a perfect example of this implementation-induced undershoot. Regular readers with long-term memories may recall a four-part series that EDN published on my behalf back in 2019 on my five-camera Blink outdoor security camera system acquired and set up in May of that year:

Overview
Camera teardown

(I was apparently using U.S. quarters for size-comparison scale purposes back then, versus the pennies I now employ in my photos)

Sync network module teardown

and installation and impressions

Here’s a reminder of how the system works, from the original writeup in the series:

A Blink system consists of one or multiple tiny cameras, each connected both directly to a common router or to an access point intermediary (and from there to the Internet) via Wi-Fi, and to a common (and equally diminutive) Sync Module control point (which itself then connects to that same router or access point intermediary via Wi-Fi) via a proprietary “LFR” long-range 900 MHz channel.

The purpose of the Sync Module may be non-intuitive to those of you who (like me) have used standalone cameras before…until you realize that each camera is claimed to be capable of running for up to two years on a single set of two AA lithium cells. Perhaps obviously, this power stinginess precludes continuous video broadcast from each camera, a “constraint” which also neatly preserves both available LAN and WAN bandwidth. Instead, the Android or iOS smartphone or tablet app first communicates with the Sync Module and uses it to initiate subsequent transmission from a network-connected camera (generic web browser access to the cameras is unfortunately not available, although you can also view the cameras’ outputs from either a standalone Echo Show or Spot, or a Kindle Fire tablet in Echo Show mode).

I want to requote something I said in the previous paragraph for emphasis: “Each camera is claimed to be capable of running for up to two years on a single set of two AA lithium cells.” Now do the math; I’ve owned and operated the Blink camera system for more than 4.5 years as I write these words in early December 2023. And finally, here’s the kicker: until the other day, they still had the same original two-AA lithium cell sets in them. That’s downright impressive, qualified only by the clarification that except initially and briefly (when all the subsequent alerts drive me to rapidly reconsider my stance) they haven’t been “armed”, i.e., poised to respond to perceived motion in their fields of view. That particular configuration decision means several things: first off, the cameras aren’t perpetually in a partially powered up state, poised to react to the motion-triggered outputs of their PIR sensors. Plus, of course, they aren’t then fully powering up to capture, encode and transmit audio and video streams to the “cloud” via Wi-Fi.

So why the “downer” tone of this writeup’s title? The “downside” to long battery life, if I can mentally stretch to come up with one, is that after so long without cell swaps one forgets when he or she last did such the battery-exchange procedure, or maybe even cease to remember that the cameras run on batteries at all. I admittedly didn’t realize how long it’d been in my case until I went back and figured out when I’d bought them in the first place. As winter approached this year, the “neighbors” were as usual getting more active as they prepped for hibernation:

and so, for this and other security-reassurance reasons, my wife started manually checking all the cameras via the Blink app on her phone each night before retiring to bed. After a few days, she began complaining to me that they were acting erratically. Sometimes, for example, one or a few of them would respond slowly. Or it’d take a few tries before they’d respond. Or the audio and/or video streams would prematurely cease. Or they’d not respond at all.

The next day, when she’d relay these observations to me, I’d try to look at them myself via my various mobile devices (Android phones and iPads) and they’d all work fine each time. And the cameras were mounted in inconvenient-access locations that necessitated tall ladders and such:

Plus, replacement lithium AA batteries are pricey. And, anyway, all the cameras reported both to her (at the time) and me (the next day) that their existing batteries were still “OK”:

So, since she’d recently migrated to a new smartphone, my first suggestion was for her to delete and then reinstall the Blink app. Which seemingly worked at first, but then didn’t. Step two: unplug and plug back in the Sync Module. Same inconsistent and ultimately unsatisfying outcome.

Finally, I “swallowed the bitter pill”, climbed up on the tall wobbly ladder, and swapped out all the batteries in all the cameras. Voila, everything now works fine again. What’s now obvious, as well as I admittedly strongly suspected at the time (ignorance and avoidance are bliss, don’cha know), is that:

It’s generally colder outside now than it was earlier this year when the cameras were working reliably.
It’s particularly cold at night, when my wife was checking them, versus the next day, when I was debugging them.
And colder temperatures, while they may be ideal (to a point) for long-term storage of batteries, are sub-optimal when trying to use them.

We’re techie folks. We already understand such things. But the average consumer doesn’t. All they know is that their cameras aren’t working any more, although they still report that their batteries are “OK”. So, what do these users conclude? Their expensive gear has broken and is destined only for the landfill. They’re never going to buy anything that says “Blink” on it ever again. And they’re going to tell all their friends, family members and colleagues about their negative experiences, too.

On the one hand, putting myself in Blink’s engineers’ shoes, I get it. Again, lithium cells are expensive. You don’t want to prematurely report battery failure, because excessively frequent replacements are a “negative” in their own right. But I’d suggest that the company’s counterbalanced too far in the opposite direction here. Agree or disagree, readers? Let me know in the comments.

—Brian Dipert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edge AI and Vision Alliance, and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, the company’s online newsletter.

VIDEO AD

–><!–

div-gpt-ad-inread

–>

<!–
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-native’); });
–>

The post Blink Cameras and their batteries: Functional abnormalities and consumer liabilities appeared first on EDN.

Blink Cameras and their batteries: Functional abnormalities and consumer liabilities

Become a member

Become a member

Become a subscriber

Become a sponsor