Tapo 2K Pan/Tilt Home Security Wi-Fi Camera, 360°
Tapo 2K Pan/Tilt Home Security Wi-Fi Camera, 360° horizontal and 114° vertical range,AI&Baby Cry Detection, 2way audio, Cloud &SD Card Storage up to 256 GB,work with Amazon Alexa&Google (Tapo C210P2)
From the brand
| Dimensions: | 8.5 x 8.7 x 11.8 centimetres |
| Brand: | Tapo |
| Model: | Tapo C210P2 |
| Colour: | White |
| Dimensions: | 8.5 x 8.7 x 11.8 centimetres |
Impressed with the image quality and also the minimal lag when panning the camera, even from 10,000 miles away! Fairly easy to setup and to share with other members of the family. Haven’t used the local storage or identification functions, so cannot comment on these.
We are two elderly people ( in body only) we decided we needed some added security in our area we purchased the indoor cameras boy are they brilliant so much so we bought another set for our daughter & son-in – laws joint birthday gift they are over moon with them as we are, they are easy to set up & sit anywhere in the house
Easy to set up. Picture v good plus sound. I bought when my husband was unwell. I could leave him & just use the camera at intervals. Total reassurance. It’s small and discreet. Wish I’d bought it earlie
I love how this mini indoor camera works. I have bought two and placed one in our living room and one in the kitchen so that I can keep an eye on my baby while I am at work. The quality is excellent, and you can zoom in and out to see objects. I would definitely recommend this to everyone as it is very affordable and works well. I am planning to buy more to place in different rooms.
Originally purchased because we want to give our Dachshund more freedom in the house when we go out and monitor him. The fact that we can shout at him is great too. Remote authority is fun.
However, this camera is just so good at so much more.
Children. When you first install it – don’t tell anyone. Really, don’t say a thing and try and put it somewhere it’s not going to be easily noticeable. Get it setup (extremely quick and easy by the way, took me like, 10 mins).
Now hide like you’re 6 and it’s a serious game of hide and seek. Actually, just go in a different room, I hid under the stairs in a cupboard with the lights off, seems a bit unnecessary now but kind of worked at the time. When the kids arrive, sitting down, watching some TV, picking their nose and wiping it on your expensive sofa – start making gentle noises using the microphone.
Gradually get louder.
Start using their names.
The mental scarring and post traumatic stress you will create is fantastic! Best bit is, they don’t get access to the camera, so they can’t ‘get you back’.
Wife. Now, you can share access. They just use the QR code, add the app, and connect to the device, again, super easy, but why do that? Why would you do that when there is so much fun to be had?
I travel a bit for work. So, while away on business, of an evening, kids are in bed, dog is chilling, the wife is watching that TV program that makes your eyelids twitch and drives an overwhelming need to find sharp objects, you know the ones, get the app out. Take a look, zoom in (easy to do by pinching the screen and the resolution is good enough to see things up close).
Then pick something out. It could be something on the floor, something she’s wearing, something that has been brought into the room. Then let the games begin.
You know, it’s debateable as to which way is the best way here, but I thought the best impact was to make it simple. Simple is sometimes best. So, dinner, something preferably runny, like beans or something that’s not too friendly with gravity, a drink maybe. Just as the drink or spoonful reaches her mouth … BOOM! Shout as loudly as possible into the microphone. Man, that was fun. I laughed for so long and there was nothing heavy she could throw that would hit me this time.
Yep, you’re welcome. It’s a good camera, you should get it.
I was skeptical about the price of this camera considering the features claimed but I was thoroughly surprised by this product.
I have a home assistant server with a motionEye integration which has multiple wireless cctv cameras attached. This allows me to store video locally and I do not need to use any external apps nor pay subscriptions. To be able to configure this setup I use the RTSP protocol which serves up a live video feed but not all manufacturers allow this. The reason for this is to force you into using their proprietary app to store video in the cloud. This is usually through a costly subscription and renders the camera almost useless (other than as a live camera feed) if you don’t pay monthly. I find this practice extremely wasteful as it’s a soft lock they’ve decided to add with no technical reason for the limitation and likely causes a lot of these devices to end up being thrown away. It is therefore a somewhat unique and most welcomed feature that Tapo have provided:
Full RTSP video feed support as standard.
The cameras plastic case itself feels a little cheap but it doesn’t matter too much as it will just be sitting on a shelf in the corner. The stand is adequate with a rotating ball joint. The power is unfortunately via a barrel connector which is by far the biggest let down of this product. This should be a USBC port and there are no excuses for it not being one. The power cord is not long enough and as it’s a proprietary power adaptor you can’t just swap out for a longer cable like you would with usb. A bit of a hit and a miss.
To setup the camera you have to download the Tapo app on your phone and follow the process. Very simple to go through and it’ll be accessible in no time. From here you can enable RTSP in the config and the stream will be available via a specific address. It requires you to provide a username and password to connect to the stream for extra security. The app doesn’t state the name of the stream (rtsp://IP Address/stream1) so I had to look it up but it was quick to find. Once completed I was able to configure my server to work with the camera no problem.
The cameras picture quality is better than my older cams and is very sharp. It is only 1080p but I’m impressed with the definition. For the price you cannot complain at all.
As an alternative to the RTSP feed, Tapo do offer a cloud storage service. If you want to use it instead then it is available via their app which feels better than other manufacturers I’ve come across. I don’t know if it’s value for money but seeing as they allow RTSP it doesn’t hurt shouting out their cloud service.
I am quite conscious about privacy with network cameras and I like to turn off all remote access. To do this, once you’ve confirmed everything is working you can then add a firewall rule on your networks router to allow all LAN access but block all internet requests by the camera except for port 123 which is used to update the cameras internal clock. If you ever need to change the config you can enable the camera briefly to make the changes via the app. As your using RTSP via your local network it doesn’t need to connect to the manufacturers server to continue working.
In summary, a highly configurable versatile camera for a great price that offers a sharp picture. Due to Tapo allowing RTSP as standard I will be buying many of their products in the future. Highly recommended.
Bought this camera due to a recent spate of burglaries and people targeting back garden sheds. I wasn’t too clued up on what to buy, so I was reluctant to spend a lot of money, and 21 seemed like a good place to start. I’m still impressed with how good this camera is. Set up was very straight forward and connected to our w-fi straight away. It requires a mains connection as it doesn’t take batteries. The device requires the Tapo app to be installed on your phone or tablet and we have it installed on each of our phones and tablet. I have it set up to view out one of the rear bedroom windows just by placing it on the window ledge. Picture quality, which can be set at 720p or 1080P, is very good, even at night. You can view the video live, even away from home, and when it detects movement, it can be saved to an SD card or the cloud, but that requires a subscription. Overall, very pleased as it does exactly what we need.
I wanted a camera for a nursery. After buying a Ring Doorbell & Echo Show 5 looked for a compatible camera and chose the Blink Mini. This wouldn’t connect to the network (or if it did, it wasn’t stable). This was replaced with a Yi Dome camera and I encountered similar problems. That also went back.
Roll on a year and I purchased this camera (Tapo C100) in Black Friday week for under 20.
After unboxing, I followed the instructions on the small card included in the box. Scanning the QR code launced a webpage to download the Tapo App.
After powering on the camera – I waited for the flashing red/green LED indicating the camera was in setup mode.
First problem was that the Tapo App said that “Local Network Permission Needed” in iOS 14 and a button to go to Settings on my iPhone to do this. No obvious place as to where to grant permission.
I again link to the camera’s WiFi network then click “I’ve already given Local Network permission”.
Then after I think I’ve got that sorted, I have to create a Tapo account.
Enter email address and password in order to create an account and get the message that there is an error “Network is unstable. Please try again later.” WTF does that even mean?!
I then get a sign-in page where it looks like my account has been created and I try to log in and get another error which simply says ‘Error. Please try again later’.
So, because I can’t seem to go back to the start in the App, I delete the App and reinstall by scanning the QR code again.
Now I get the error message ‘Safari cannot open the page because the server cannot be found’.
Okay – so that was because I’d linked to the camera’s WiFi network. I had to reconnect to my router’s WiFi network and in order to try again.
Finally manage to get the camera and App working – now to get it working with Alexa
I’m told to open the Alexa App, got to ‘Skills & Games’, search for Tapo (although the image in the Tapo App shows ‘Tapo Smart Home’) and tap – however the Alexa Search turns up 3 results (image below) ‘tapo’, ‘tapo smart home’ and ‘tapo app’. Nothing appears to work first time, or second time either. Third time I get the app showing as per the instructions.
I go through the setup with Alexa – however Alexa doesn’t discover any new device.
I go to ‘Cameras’ in the Alexa app and find the Tapo camera listed but it says ‘Live view not supported’.
Okay, so I can live view through the Tapo app on my phone but not through Alexa on my Show 5??
So I go to the Show 5 and ask Alexa to “Show Office” to see what would happen and I get the live feed from the Tapo camera!
So, the hardware seems great it is just the instructions and/or software that is iffy.
So far, setup has taken around an hour of fiddling about (and I’m not a computer novice at all) however it now seems to be working with both the Tapo App on my phone and with the Alexa Show 5 and gives a great picture in daylight and a nice sharp picture uder IR lighting at night (see picture).
I’m using the camera as a nursery cam and to that end, I installed the Tapo app on my iPad. This worked faultlessly first-time and I now have the option of viewing the bedroom on the Show 5 or on the iPad (but not at the same time).
The iPad app gives around 5 mins of viewing time before it asks if you want to continue viewing.
I can’t give the camera 5 stars (quality-wise it deserves 5) simply because of the faff of getting the camera to work in the first place and the poorly-written software.
Given the quality of the image in both daylight and under IR I’ll give it 4 stars.