Tapo Solar Panel, Flexibly Installed and Angle Adjustment
Tapo Solar Panel, Flexibly Installed and Angle Adjustment, High-Efficiency 45min Solar Charging for Full Day Usage, IP65 Weatherproof, Works with All Tapo Battery-powered cameras (Tapo A201)
From the brand
| Weight: | 140 Grams |
| Dimensions: | 15.6 x 17.34 x 19.25 cm; 140 g |
| Model: | Tapo A201 |
| Batteries Required: | No |
| Dimensions: | 15.6 x 17.34 x 19.25 cm; 140 g |
Great product, simple to connect to the existing T420 camera that I was using and now saves the hassle of going up the ladders to change the battery. Great addition to the Tapo range.
Video Quality: The video quality is good when the hub is close to the camera.
Battery Life: The battery life is about what I expected. It’s certainly not 180 days; more like 2-3 weeks depending on the positioning, number of detections/alerts, and use of live preview.
AI Motion Detection: The AI motion detection could use some improvement. It sometimes mistakes a cat for a person and occasionally fails to detect all motion or detects motion with a delay.
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HUB ISSUES: The major issue with the hub is that, if it loses power, all recordings will be missed. This raises the question of the advantage of having a wireless and cable-less camera with external video storage.
as well if connection between HUB and CAMERA is missing no recording and worst NO ALERT on the app
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App Improvement: It would be beneficial if the TAPO team could improve the mobile app with a function to monitor the connection between the TAPO Hub and the camera. An alert system for when there is no connection or the camera is unresponsive would be very helpful.
Overall, the camera has potential but needs some improvements in detection accuracy and system reliability.
Technical Support at moment is base of the copy and past script ,no really investigation on the issues
I bought this in December 23 and only recharged it on 9th June 24 and it was still at 12%. It didn’t take long to recharge either. Excellent colour picture, easy to install and set up. Easy to set up separate detection areas for motion, people and pets. This was useful as I have it overlooking my garden put didn’t want it to be set off by every car passing just over the fence. Easy to put into privacy mode which I found useful when I had washing out on the line, so to save battery as it was recording every movement.
Highly recommend
Easy to position for anyone who can use a drill. Easy setup. Needs good wifi signal to HUB. Detection adjustments difficult between options to reduce unwanted notifications, recordings and battery power use. Subscription service expensive like all but not required. Overall happy with system at its price.
My concern is that the penultimate point of fitting instructions is to slide waterproof gasket onto the USB connect on cable. No such gasket was provided. I presume I am not supposed to make a hole in the gasket on the battery side and reuse that.
So I have concerns over the longevity of this. I hope Tapi will get in touch with a solution.
Update 15-Feb
I found the gaskets! They were in the little plastic bag containing screws and plugs. As I was using my own stainless steel screws, this bag was put aside.
Apologies Tapo (-:
The solar panel works. We’ve had two very overcast days since it was installed, but even then it manages to get a little charging done.
Already have 24/7 CCTV but wanted a ring doorbell esk solution to trigger an alarm on human detection, my current CCTV does email me but when im asleep thats not going to cut it.
Charge battery first takes about 6 hours, screw to wall and screw camera on. Mine were position in such a way they wouldn’t detect anything other than people coming through a farm gate, you can trigger an alarm on the device to sound and also trigger the lights on the device. Quality is good and detection is set to Human only and works, dogs can run into garden fine, but when i run in there it gets me.
My only negative is they communicate directly with the H200 hub also in the package they wont work with the smaller H100 thats for doorbells and light sensors. But once the Cam is triggered it can be made to trigger the internal HUB also which makes a bellowing sound…so you can get out of bed and grab your rocket launcher
The problem is for me anyway my cameras are set to activate 11pm at night till 6 in the morning, so between these times they detect and sound their own external alarms, but there is no way to make the Hub do the same. Even though the cameras are not triggering their respective alarm thru the day they still trigger the internal which can be annoying. @TPLINK make the HUB work with schedules please 🙂
Hub can connect via ethernet or Wifi and needs to be in range of Cams, mines around 25ft from both and works fine.
Down side is it is not quite as sensitive as I would like. At further distance there are occasions where it does not get triggered, so you may want to position closer.
Night vision is good, as are the lights and speaker.
Be aware this does not constantly record and it Pir triggered, not triggered by visual movement.
Camera needs to be installed out of reach as they are easy to detach and tamper with or run off with.
There are a couple of buts…firstly the installation of the camera mount requires drilling and screwing the mount in place, which can be a little tricky, dependent on Camera positioning. Although it does mean the mount is securely fixed in place. One other thing that surprised me was that its not possible to set the camera video settings to 1080HD as is only possible select 2K and 720p, as I would have expected more options here.
Final point I interacted with TP-Link Customer Services, firstly requesting info about products including this camera, then another matter and the support offered was excellent.
The battery for the camera comes uncharged and will take around 3 hours or so to fully charge.
The camera itself is managed via the TAPO app which you install on your phone.
You will need a decent wifi signal for the camera to get it to work outside the house, your mileage will vary here of course depending on size of house etc. I use a TP-Link AX75 router which does the job for me even through thick walls and around 50ft from the router.
The little management hub will need an ethernet connection rather than wifi so you’ll need a cabled ethernet point for it where you want to place it, perhaps consider an ethernet over power adapter for this job if you don’t have a cabled setup.
The management hub is also what makes a loud alarm if you so choose to set one- eg if it detects a human shape during specific hours. The app will only sound a notification on your mobile phone the same as receiving a text which is unlikely to wake you up for example.
It can be setup to record to sd-card, I used the 256GB from integral, ASIN Number B07FC7W2G5.
It can also be set to only record during specific hours and only if it detects activity so you won’t have issue with disk space.
The night image capture is actually very good and there is the facility to even speak using the phone app out of the camera though the volume isn’t very loud.
All said, I’m impressed for the price. Only 4* as it could do with some kind of facility to create a loud warning on a mobile phone somehow rather than the management hub which might not be possible to locate in a convenient location to wake you due to only being ethernet rather than wifi.
As the solution is just under 100 if you buy the 256GB storage too then it’s well worth it imho.
You can also share the camera view with other users but they are restricted to just viewing the camera with the app, no extra management options…again this is something that could be improved upon.
There are better options available but you’ll be paying a lot more for them.
The only issue i have is with the motion setting. It picks up a plant blowing in the wind in the garden as a person detected and this is really annoying as every few seconds it send through a notification, yes you can turn that off but the issue is it depletes the battery every time its picks something up that is just simply blowing. I only re- charged the battery 25 days ago and it already needs re-charging due to this. So i think they need to look at that and improve it.
Otherwise not too bad- i’m looking to see if they do a solar panel to fit as if its going to continuously pick ip a small ant blowing in the wind i will spend more time getting the camera down and re-charging it than i will actually using it for purpose! Of course that is going to increase the total cost of it all!
The next camera pack was set up extremely quickly with no problems. I have to say that Tapo have got the user friendly set up procedure perfect. I have one camera at the front outside of the house and the second at the rear outside. The cameras are completely wireless and very easy to mount. I have had no problem with signal strength and camera connections. The quality of the colour video is extremely good. There are plenty of options for setting alarms and motion detection, including screening for people, pets or vehicles using the inbuilt AI algorithms. I have been playing with the cameras and settings a lot but the batteries seem to be holding up very well and after approximately 6 days they are still at 96%.
Notifications are sent promptly to my email address. Overall, these cameras are superb and very affordable.
The only downsides at the moment are: you cannot buy spare batteries for the cameras although I am advised by Tapo that these will be available for sale very shortly. Also, you cannot buy a separate individual camera. You can only buy them in the Twin Pack at the moment. Again, I am led to believe that you will be able to buy individual cameras soon. I am so pleased with the cameras that I am considering buying a second twin pack to locate in ‘blind spots’ around my house.
31/03/2023: Bought a second twin pack and these worked perfectly out of the box. They were set up in no time with one camera connected to my existing H200 Hub and the second camera connected to the new H200 Hub. Battery life is fantastic. Obviously to get the best battery life I have played with all the settings to optimise the performance for my needs versus battery life. I have always been sceptical about the battery life of such cameras but I have to say that these are brilliant. I have to say that I have found the video recording to the MicroSD cards that I have installed into the H200 Hubs is more than adequate making it unnecessary to subscribe to the Tapo Cloud recording option. As a result of my experience so far I have upgraded my Review to 5 Stars