There are loads of reasons that you might want to change the Wi-Fi network that your Blink Mini is currently connecting to. It could be that you have reset your router or changed its name or password in order to make it more secure or that your Mini Camera is struggling to connect to its usual Wi-Fi and so it needs to be connected to another network temporarily.
Changing the WiFi on a Blink Mini is a quick process done via the Blink app but it isn’t as quite as simple as changing the WIFi network that your phone or laptop are connecting to.
And there are two slightly different situations that might require you to change your Wi-Fi and there are when you Blink Mini is offline and when it is online.
There’s not too much difference between the procedures but there’s some.
Changing your Wi-Fi when Blink Mini offline
Open the Blink app and check which camera is offline. The thumbnail should have the camera offline message in it and the camera itself should have a green flashing light on the left hand side of the lens.
Tap on the menu icon which is on top of the thumbnail, on the right hand side. It is three horizontal blue line each with a blue circle on them.
A new screen appears which is labelled camera offline with advice about how this can be fixed.
At the bottom of the screen in the left hand corner is a blue button with white writing change Wi-Fi. Tap on it and the next screen is change Wi-Fi screen where the app discovers the Mini camera.
Reset this Blink Mini by pressing the reset button until the blue and red lights flash either side of the camera lens.
When the light on the left hand side is a solid green and the light on the right is a flashing blue you can tap on the blue button at the bottom of the screen, labelled Discover Device.
After a few seconds a dialogue box should appear at the bottom of the screen which says searching for device and then another box appears saying connect to device with the name of your Blink Mini below it. Tap on the blue connect button. Another dialogue box appears with the message connecting to device. This is closely followed by a list of all the Wi-Fi networks that the Blink app is found.
Select the Wi-Fi that you want to connect to and enter the password. Tap on the blue button labelled join near the bottom of the screen. A message will appear connecting to “Blink servers this may take a minute”. Wait a few seconds and another message appears informing you that the Mini camera has been added to a Blink system. Tap in the blue done button and you will be taken back to the Blink app homepage.
Changing your Wi-Fi when Blink Mini is online
The process is a little different when it comes to changing the Wi-Fi for a Blink Mini that is online.
Open the Blink app and tap on the menu icon which sits above and to the right of the Blink Mini whose Wi-Fi you want to change.
On the screen that appears, tap on General Settings and then from the next page select Change Wi-Fi which is near the bottom of the page.
The next screen is headed change Wi-Fi and it is at this point that you reset your device by pressing the reset button until a red and a blue flashing light appear either side of the Blink Mini’s lens.
These lights will quickly change to a solid green and a flashing blue. When this happens, tap on the discover device blue button at the bottom of the page.
After a few seconds a dialogue box should appear at the bottom of the screen which says searching for device and then another box appears saying connect to device with the name of your Blink Mini below it. Tap on the blue connect button. Another dialogue box appears with the message connecting to device.
At this point either a list of all the Wi-Fi networks that the Blink app has found will appear or you will be asked to connect to the device manually. If this is the case your Wi-Fi settings will appear, select you Blink Mini and tap on the blue done button.
A dialogue box will appear on screen “looking for device” with a rotating blue circle above it.
A list of all the Wi-Fi networks that the Blink app has found appear s on screen. Select the new Wi-Fi that you want to join and type in the password. Tap on the blue join button at the bottom of the screen.
Another dialogue box appears with the messages sending Wi-Fi info to Mini camera and connecting to Blink servers. this may take a minute with a rotating blue circle above it.
Wait a few seconds and another message appears informing you that the Mini camera has been added to a Blink system. Tap in the blue done button and you will be taken back to the Blink app homepage.
Four main problems that you might encounter
Having changed the Wi-Fi on many Mini cameras I can safely say that it isn’t always easy and often you will come across little glitches that slow you down or just stop you in your tracks.
Below I have created a list of four of my favourite “errors”.
[1] Connect to device manually
The connecting to device manually message is a real pain. It only happens sometimes when I’m adding a camera and I’m not sure why it does. But it does make things more complicated because instead of the app connecting to a Mini camera and then displaying a list of Wi-Fi networks, this manual connection adds another step whereby you need to select the camera from a list of your Wi-Fi networks.
Most of this is done automatically for you but it seems to confuse my phone because in order to connect to our Mini camera we have to disconnect from the Wi-Fi network that we were on. The phone then flashes up messages about not being connected to a live Wi-Fi connection at the same time that the Blink app is trying to connect to a Mini camera.
Fortunately, this happened to me whilst I was changing the Wi-Fi of a online camera and you can see the relevant clip below.
[2] Serial already registered
Some of you might have come across this message if you were looking for a quick way of adding a new camera into the Blink app.
Serial already registered means that the camera that you are trying to change the Wi-Fi of is already registered to your Blink account or more worryingly someone else’s.
If you have bought a used Mini camera and you are looking to add it to one of your systems and this message flashes up, then this device needs to be unregistered before it can be added to your account.
Solid green and blue flashing light don’t appear
As I have said, part of the process of changing the Wi-Fi is to reset the camera. And we know that the camera has been reset when there’s a solid green and flashing blue light on the front of the Mini.
In my experience the reason that these lights don’t appear is that the camera hasn’t been reset properly. A mistake that I have made on a few occasions is not pressing the reset button down for long enough.
It needs to be held down until the blue and red lights flash on the front of the lens. At times I’m only holding the button down until a green light starts to flash!
[3] Wrong Wi-Fi password
As great as our smartphones are, I don’t think they make typing in passwords very easy. This is for three main reasons: screen size, disappearing text and complicated modern passwords.
Small screen
Typing a password on a phone isn’t the same as typing one on a laptop. The screen is smaller and the touchscreen doesn’t offer us the same tactile feedback as a laptop keyboard
Disappearing Text
Added to this is the problem that no sooner have you typed a character in, it disappears. And I know that the grey eye icon in the Blink password box means that the characters remain visible but to make that happen is another box to check!
Modern passwords
On top of this the passwords that we are having to use are more complex and don’t resemble ordinary words which makes the inputting process slower and means that we are more likely to make mistakes.
