Okay, so I spent some time recently trying to figure out this whole Blink camera and Google Home thing. Got a few Blink cams around the house, mostly the little Blink Minis and an outdoor one, and I’m pretty invested in the Google Home ecosystem with speakers and a Hub display. Naturally, I thought, “Hey, let’s get these talking to each other.”
My First Go At It
The first thing I did, like probably everyone, was just try the obvious. I opened up my Google Home app, went to ‘Set up device’, then ‘Works with Google’. I scrolled through that massive list of brands, looking for Blink. Searched for it too. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. That was my first clue this might not be straightforward.
Then I tried talking to my Google Assistant. “Hey Google, show me the front door camera.” It just came back saying it couldn’t find that device or something similar. Tried different phrasing, “Sync my devices,” all the usual stuff. Still no luck connecting directly.
Digging Around a Bit
Alright, so direct connection was a bust. My next step was hitting the web. Did a bunch of searches like “connect Blink to Google Home,” “Blink camera Google Assistant,” you know the drill. What I found pretty quickly was a lot of people asking the same question, and the general answer floating around was… nope. Officially, Blink doesn’t support Google Home.
It kinda makes sense when you stop and think about it. Blink is owned by Amazon. Google Home is, well, Google. They’re direct competitors in the smart home space with Alexa and Google Assistant. It’s like trying to get your Coke machine to accept Pepsi points. Usually doesn’t happen.
Exploring Workarounds – The IFTTT Route
Now, I’m not one to give up easily. I saw mentions of using IFTTT (If This Then That) as a sort of bridge. I’d used IFTTT before for little things, so I thought, okay, let’s give this a shot.
I logged into my IFTTT account and started looking for Blink and Google Assistant services. Here’s what I found:
- You can connect both Blink and Google Assistant to IFTTT.
- You can use Google Assistant as a trigger. For example, saying a specific phrase like “Hey Google, arm the cameras.”
- You can have that phrase trigger an action on Blink, like arming the system.
So, I set up an applet. My trigger was saying “Hey Google, activate Blink.” The action was to arm my Blink system. It took a bit of fiddling, making sure the services were linked correctly in IFTTT. And you know what? It worked! Saying the phrase to my Google speaker did arm the Blink cameras. Felt pretty clever for a minute there.
The Big Limitations
But here’s the catch, and it’s a big one. While I could use Google Assistant via IFTTT to arm or disarm the Blink system, that was pretty much it. What I really wanted, and what I think most people want, is to say “Hey Google, show me the backyard camera” and see the live feed pop up on my Google Nest Hub.
That doesn’t work. IFTTT can’t bridge that gap. It’s mostly for simple on/off or trigger-type commands. You cannot stream the Blink camera feed to a Google display using this method, or any official method I could find.
So, Where Did I Land?
Basically, after messing around with it, searching online, and trying the IFTTT workaround, the answer to “does Blink camera work with Google Home” is… kinda, but not really in the way you probably want.
You can get some super basic integration going using IFTTT for arming/disarming. But viewing the cameras? Forget about it on your Google displays. You still need the Blink app on your phone or an Amazon Echo Show device for that.
It really just comes down to the Amazon vs. Google thing. They want you locked into their own ecosystems. So, while I got a tiny victory with IFTTT, it wasn’t the seamless integration I was hoping for. Just gotta accept that sometimes, things aren’t built to play nice together, especially when big companies are involved.