Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Privacy Zones will block out entire areas from being recorded by your Blink Mini 2
We’re big fans of the Blink Mini 2 camera here. The cute little device doesn’t just offer decent video footage, keeping an eye on your home in a remarkably inconspicuous way, but it has a number of clever features on board too.
Read: Blink Mini 2 vs Blink Mini
You can do a range of things, from two-way audio to activity zones, but there is also something called Privacy Zones. Similar to the Blackout Zones on the Philips Hue Secure Cam, the Privacy Zones on Blink Mini 2 allow you to block out an entire section within your camera’s field of view from being recorded. Here’s a step by step on how to set them up and what they mean.
What you’ll need
- The Blink app
- Your smartphone or tablet
The short version
- Open the Blink app.
- Tap on the three dots in the corner of the Blink Mini 2 camera feed.
- Tap on Device Settings.
- Select Motion Settings.
- Choose Motion Zones.
- Choose the Privacy Zone tab at the top.
- Drag your finger across the area you want to create as a Privacy Zone.
Blink’s Privacy Zones and activity zones are somewhat connected so that’s worth keeping in mind. After you create an activity zone, you will see the inactive grayed out squares in the Privacy Zone grid. Meanwhile, after you create a Privacy Zone, there will be a blacked out grid in the activity zone grid. You can reset either if you want to create one without the other but if you have one, that will be applied to the other and vice versa.
You have a little more control when it comes to the Privacy Zone aspect compared to activity zones in that you drag to select your zone. This enables you to select half a rectangle, a third, a quarter or whatever you want. The rectangles are there but they don’t define what you can select as such. With activity zones, you specifically select the rectangles, as we take you through in our separate feature on them.
Privacy Zones also act slightly differently to Activity Zones. If you have setup a Privacy Zone for your Blink 2 camera, it will not record anything that happens in that area at all. The video feed will have a grey section over the zone you have created so you’ll never be able to see what happened in that zone. For Activity Zones, the zones are inactive in that you won’t get notified if motion occurs in them, but you will still be able to see what happened in them if you go back through the video feed.
That’s it! You should have finished creating your Privacy Zone and that area won’t be recorded when your Blink Mini 2 is on.
FAQs
If you have setup a Privacy Zone, the Blink Mini 2 won’t record anything that happens in that area and you will see a grayed out area when you view any video footage. For activity zones, these are inactive so you don’t receive motion alerts but you can see what happens in them in video feeds.
