Is your Blink Mini misbehaving? Does it not seem to be working as it should or are the constant notifications doing your head in?
The good news is that it is a simple task to switch your Mini camera off. And it is nearly as simple to play around with some of the settings and turn off some of the most annoying features- eight of them in fact.
[1] From the electric socket
The Blink Mini is only powered by a cord, it doesn’t use any batteries.
The easiest and most powerful way of turning off your Mini camera is just by unplugging it from the electrical socket- our off you live in the UK then you can just flip the switch by the socket to off.
You might try turning it off by unplugging the cord from the back of the camera but if it is still plugged into the electrical socket then that isn’t the most sensible thing to do. Besides, where the cable fits into the back of the Mini camera is a snug fit and so it might be harder than you think!
If you do turn off your Blink Mini like this then the good news is that as soon as you plug it back in, it will automatically start to work again as long as it can connect to the same Wi-Fi network.
[2] By deleting it from the app
A more permanent way of turning it off is by deleting it from the app.
Open the Blink app and find the Mini camera that you want to delete.
Above its thumbnail in the top right hand corner tap on the menu button (three horizontal blue lines.)
On the next screen tap on general settings. At the bottom of the next screen is an icon of a red trash can labelled delete device.
On the next screen tap on the red delete device button and you will return to the homepage of the Blink app.
By doing this, you are also unregistering it which is exactly what you need to do if you are thinking of reselling it.
[3] By disarming it
Another way that you might want to turn your Blink camera off is to disarm it.
Arming and disarming only happens at a system level. Individual cameras cannot be disarmed unless they are the only camera in a Blink system.
The disarmed/armed toggle switch is found on the homepage of the Blink app. If the setting is enabled it is blue and if it is disabled it is grey.
There’s a scheduling option which you can set up to arm and disarm a system of cameras depending on the time and day.
[4] Turn off motion detection
Perhaps all you really want to do is to turn off your Mini camera’s ability to detect motion. If that’s the case you need to go into the device settings and turn something off from the motion settings menu.
Watching the first 20 seconds of this video will show you how to do that.
Open the Blink app and find the Mini camera that you want to turn off motion detection.
Above the camera’s thumbnail in the top right hand corner tap on the menu button (three horizontal blue lines.) From the device screen, tap on motion settings. From this sub menu find enable motion detection and tap the blue round circle which will turn grey to highlight that it has been disabled. Your Blink Mini will no longer detect motion.
[5] Turn off infrared
The Mini camera has a great night vision feature that uses an infrared sensor but this too can be switched off completely.
The controls that you need are found in the video and photo options which is a submenu of the Device settings menu.
From the video and photo menu, on the control option tap on off to turn the infrared sensor off. Your Blink camera won’t have any night vision by selecting this option.
[6] Turn off audio
Although your Blink Mini has two way audio with the built in microphone and speaker, it can be turned into a machine that doesn’t hear or make any sounds by the flip of a switch.
Once again these controls can be found within the device settings. Select audio settings at the bottom of the list and then tap on the blue circle button next to enable audio in order to turn the speaker and the microphone off on your camera
[7] Turn off status LEDs
The status LEDs on the Blink Mini are the two lights either side of the lens on the front of the camera. The light on the left hand side of the lens is coloured red and green, whilst the light to the right of the lens is coloured blue.
These lights indicate different states or faults with our Blink Mini depending on whether they are solid or flashing. For instance, a flashing green light indicates that the camera isn’t connected to the Internet.
The options to manage when these lights are on display are found in a sub menu of Device Settings. Device settings are accessed via the three horizontal line icon positioned on top of the camera’s thumbnail.
Once it opens up, select General Settings and then one of the options in this menu is status LED. Tap on this option to reveal three choices: always on, always off or when recording.
The default choice is “when recording”. But if you want to turn these LEDs off, choose always off. Tap on Save in the top right corner of the screen.
[8] Turn off motion clips
The final feature that we can turn off on our Mini camera is the motion clips. I think this Blink camera is primarily a motion activated camera and so by turning off this feature we really are limiting one of its main features.
Switching off motion clips doesn’t stop your Mini from detecting motion. You will still be sent notifications when the camera detects motion. It’s just that the camera won’t record any clips, which is a bit like using a Blink Mini without a subscription.
Watching the first 20 seconds of this video will help you.
Open the Blink app and find the Mini camera that you want to turn off motion clips.
Above the camera’s thumbnail in the top right hand corner tap on the menu button (three horizontal blue lines.) From the device screen, tap on motion settings. From this sub menu find enable motion detection and tap the blue round circle which will turn grey to highlight that it has been disabled. Your Blink Mini will no longer detect motion.
