blink-data

Interact with blink camera servers in javascript

This will allow you to interact with blink cameras. You can use it in node, electron, or a browser (with CORS security disabled.)

install

npm i blink-data

usage

basics

import { Blink } from 'blink-data'

async function run () {
  const blink = new Blink()
  await blink.login('me@demo.com', 'mypassword')

  // get current user-info
  const user = await blink.user()
  console.log(user)

  // get list of current user's networks
  const networks = await blink.networks()
  console.log(networks)

  // get details about a network
  const network = await blink.network(networks[0].id)
  console.log(network)

  // get a list of videos
  const videos = await blink.videos()
  console.log(videos)

  // get details about a camera
  const camera = await blink.camera(networks[0].network_id, networks[0].cameras[0].id)
  console.log(camera)
}

run()

I haven't setup API-docs yet, but you can see usage examples iun the unit-test.

browser

You will need to disable CORS security for this to work directly from blink servers, in a browser:

Close all instances of Chrome browser (open taskmanager and kill any resilient Chrome process). Execute

Windows

C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --disable-web-security --user-data-dir=<path to viewer>. 

MacOS

open -a /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --args --disable-web-security --user-data-dir=<path to viewer>

You can also do this in your own electron app:

const win = new BrowserWindow({
  webPreferences: { webSecurity: false }
})

Alternatively, if you want to do it all in IPC-space, you can:

const Blink = require('electron').remote.require('blink-data')

And CORS-security should be disabled for just blink.

rehydrate

If you are using this on a webserver, or just want to login via a token (instead of email/password), you can rehydrate them to work with their session:

const blink = new Blink()
blink.hydrate (token, account, region)
blink.user().then(console.log)

You can get token, account, and region from the output of blink.login(), so store this, and send it via a cookie/session/header.

Here is a client-side example using localStorage:

// at login time
const blink = new Blink()
const { authtoken, account, region } = await blink.login(email, password)
localStorage.user = JSON.stringify({ token: authtoken.authtoken, id: account.id, region: Object.keys(region)[0] })

// later
const blink = new Blink()
const { token, id, region } = JSON.parse(localStorage.user)
blink.hydrate(token, id, region)
blink.user().then(console.log)

TODO

• Still need to support programs
• There are a lot of other API endpoints to wrap
• need to use commandPolling to check for things finishing and resolve/reject when finished
• need to work out video proxy for rtsps://. this should help.
• Better cross-platform (browser vs node) binary support for images & videos

related

• Here is my desktop-client, using electron.

credit

Big shout-out to MattTW's BlinkMonitorProtocol. This is totally generated from that. bling-viewer is also great, and helped work out some parts.