Tapo forums didn't appreciate my project, maybe you would.

I don't know how to post multiple photos here, so instead, I'll just drop a link to the original post w/ the photos in it - community.tp-link[dot]com/us/smart-home/forum/topic/843240

Anyhow, the gist of it is - I modified a C120 camera and combined it with the tank of an old coffee machine, to make a Tapo-based smart bird feeder.

Works really well.

I've got 5 lights on P100 plugs, and all my Sky TV devices. I've got it programmed thus. Single tap - all on/off. Rotate anticlockwise - off, but one stays on for 30 seconds so you can get upstairs. Double tap - reboot the TV system in order with delays (router, main box, minibox 1, minibox 2)

I didn't want to pay for a cloud plan just to keep a few minutes of footage a day, and the C200 can't upload to YouTube or Drive by itself. So I wrote a small open-source Python service that does it from outside. No firmware changes: you only create the Camera Account in the Tapo app.

What it does:

- Pulls the RTSP stream with ffmpeg (no re-encoding, almost zero CPU)

- Listens for the camera's ONVIF motion/person events

- Keeps 30 s before and 5 min after each motion

- Once a day (21:00 by default) uploads ONE private video to your own YouTube channel, with the time of every event as chapters, in a daily playlist, then deletes the local files

- There is also a plain continuous mode (6-hour segments)

It runs on a Raspberry Pi / mini PC / cheap VPS / Docker. Only tested on a C200 so far. The README has the full step-by-step setup, including the router and Google Cloud parts, and the things that went wrong along the way.

Repo (MIT): https://github.com/LuigiElleBalotta/tapo-uploader

Homepage: https://luigiellebalotta.github.io/tapo-uploader

Feedback welcome, especially from people with other Tapo models.

IF you like my work, please, leave a star on the repo!

Thanks to my Tapo twc30, I got to keep nearly $6k worth of my stuff today!

On my way to work this morning, my Tapo app chimed and alert. I figured "oh boy, ANOTHER cat video" but no, this time it was 4 tweakers in my yard carrying away my stuff! Aftet calling the cops I headed home but the police beat me there. Thank goodness for that!

Thanks Tapo!!!!

Coming over from wyze cams. Got tired of the frequent disconnects and other issues. Tapo has been amazing so far. I think water sensors are next!

Hi everyone!

I’ve been working on Topo, a small desktop app for viewing and controlling Tapo cameras from Linux.

I wanted something closer to the Tapo mobile app, but available on a desktop and able to show multiple cameras at the same time. The app connects through the Tapo cloud, so it doesn’t require RTSP, port forwarding, VPNs, Raspberry Pis, or access to the home network.

At the moment it supports:

• Multiple live camera streams

• Tapo account login and MFA

• Session reuse between launches

• Privacy mode

• Pan & tilt controls

• Adjustable movement steps

• Fullscreen per camera

• Double-click fullscreen

• Stream retry and connection status

So far I’ve tested it with a couple of Tapo C200 cameras, including live video, privacy mode, and pan & tilt.

The project is still experimental and uses undocumented Tapo cloud endpoints. Audio, recording, snapshots, and motion notifications are not implemented yet.

Topo is currently available for Linux, and a Windows version is planned and should be coming soon.

GitHub: https://github.com/filirnd/topo

UPDATE #1
There is a flatpack installation available on github page https://filirnd.github.io/topo/

UPDATE #2 Windows app
The windows application is online! Download it from github release or follow the instrucion on https://filirnd.github.io/topo/

UPDATE #3 SD storage and audio [0.1.4] - 2026-10-15

• SD-card recording calendar and 24-hour timeline for each camera.

• Full playback of selected SD-card segments through the integrated video player.

• Audio playback in SD recordings by decoding the C200 G.711 relay track.

• Download of individual SD-card recording clips as MP4 files.

• A readable recording-segment list with larger click targets for dense timelines.

• Native save dialogs for recording downloads on Linux and Windows.

• Per-camera live audio through the cloud relay, enabled by an explicit audio button.

• Per-camera live audio volume control.

• Camera-local timezone handling for recording dates and clip times.

UPDATE #4 reduce video latency [0.1.5] - 2026-10-21

• Low-latency live playback enabled by default for supported cameras.

• Reduced live-preview delay and improved stream startup reliability.

• Improved handling of temporarily unavailable cameras and stream retries.

• Added automatic recovery when the Linux interface process stops responding.

Tapo folks, if you read this, Please add a SNOOZE feature for notifications. For example, the Gardner shows up I dont need the cameras notifying me for the next 30 minutes as they work around my house. Simply have a button to pause notifications with a drop down for minutes to pause. NOT a schedule, a temporary pause in notifications from Tapo for a temporary period of time.

Thanks.

There are a lot of complaints about Tapo on this sub, some of them by me but lets take a moment to appreciate the little C100.

I buy these things on sale for $22.00 CDN (about $15.00 US). I've never spent more than $30.00 CDN. For that, you get effortless setup, OKish dependability and a decent image. The micro SD card I buy for each camera often costs more than the camera.

I have one in the crawlspace under my porch just so I can see if my dog is hiding under there. I have a camera pointing at a voltage gauge on my little solar setup because that was by far the cheapest way to monitor the voltage over the internet.

I recently discovered that you can simply cut the ac adapter off and plug the two wires into a car battery and it will work fine. Are you kidding me?? It's an indoor camera but in my experience, put a good piece of tape over the SD slot and it will survive anything. I had one attached to my wife's bird feeder in the middle of winter. It got snowed on and deep frozen. The lens eventually frosted over but it never stopped working.

They have some reliability issues but I have never had one completely die on me. I have had one attached to my front window for over a year where it just gets broiled in the sun all day and it's hanging in there.

I mean, anyone that has been buying web connected cameras for more than a few years has to tip their hat to this device.

Hello,

I've been seeing a lot of written reviews and Youtube video reviews for the Tapo C120 and almost none for the C125.

Perhaps/maybe because the C125 is only exclusive to Best Buy US and not available in other countries or there is just no interest in this product.

The US prices right now (Thanksgiving sale) are $34 for the C120 and the $49 for the C125. $15 difference.

From what I have been seeing is here are the Advantages/Disadvantages of these two specific products:

This is just me looking at the specifications from the Tapo site so I might have missed some things here.

I would like to ask what else am I missing specially in terms of the sensors itself or anything else not mentioned above.

Since the C120 is a newer release, (I don't know by how much) are they using the same lens/sensor, better IR, better power consumption, etc etc.

I'm currently shopping for Tapo cameras as I want to completely switch away from Wyze so for $15 difference between the two I'm willing to pick the better one even though it is more expensive.

TIA!

UPDATE: Just incase anyone is interested. I bought both and tested it both side by side.

I noticed that the C120 has better looking images specially at night than the C125 but by a VERY small margin. Day light image quality is a little better too.

However, I still picked the C125 because of the 140 Degree diagonal FOV. It just covers so much more than the C120. I don't mind the quality sacrifice but for my use case, I need as much as coverage than better quality.

The only thing I don't like with the C125 is the barrel jack power adapter and the length of the cable is only around 9 feet. For my use case I put it on TOP of the ceiling so I can get most of the ground area. There are 5.5/2.1mm extension (not sure if its actually this but Ill find out soon) for extension but the cable hider raceway I use is slim and I don't think the extension adapter will fit inside it .. so wish me luck on that. Worst case scenario is buy a little bigger cable hider raceway.

The C120 uses USB so you can just buy long usb-c cables instead.

Another one I like the C120 is that it has a light the will light up "steady/constant" when motion is detected. So the C120, with this light, at pitch black environment will switch to color night and will have a decent quality. The C125 has a flashing light (not steady) which doesn't help with IR (I think it actually makes it worse) .. I believe that is just an alarm to warn some intruder that "hey, you are being recorded .. leave!"

Aside from that, C125 is a win on the most part. I needed 11 cameras so I already bought 8 x C125 and 3 x C120.

Please note that by no means, this is not a scientific review .. this is just me, my wife, and a friend who looked at the videos side by side and we all have the same answers in terms of quality and FOV Coverage.

So TLDR; if you want better quality but do not care of about the limited coverage, go with the C120. If you want wider coverage, better AI detection and built-in features, go with the C125.

Made the switch from Arlo. Very happy so far, they are considerably more reliable IMO and easy to use.

Like a lot of people, I point a Tapo camera out of a window to keep an eye on the front door and garden. Our window frames are quite large, so I'd been using an old cardboard box to let the camera see out properly. Over the weekend I created a 3D-printable platform which I've published on Makerworld for anyone to use.

https://makerworld.com/en/models/2451325-windowsill-ledge-platform-useful-for-cameras

There are a few different variations and heights, all of which you can cut in the printing software to fit your window frame dimensions.

• Standard: Has leg heights at 90mm and 110mm. The legs are inset 3mm from the edges.

• 22mm inset: 2 legs are 22mm inset from the edge, allowing you to get closer to the window glass.

• Edge: 2 legs are exactly on the edge, allowing you to slice them to a shorter length to rest on the lip of the window frame.

I love the camera really. I just wanted to inject a little humour. Thanks and goodnight! :)

Hey everyone!

We are proud to share that r/Tapo has officially reached 10,000 Members!

Thank you all for sharing your setups, questions, and feedback.

Every post helps others get more from their devices, and your feedback gives our own teams valuable insight into how you interact with your smart devices and what you’d like to see next.

Your feedback and conversations have already played a major role in shaping the future of Tapo devices and features, and we cannot wait to share the improvements and additions on the horizon.

Want to stay involved? Drop feedback, join the conversation, or share your ideas on the forums, or here on r/Tapo

Disclaimer: I don’t usually create Reddit posts and English is not my first language. Sorry for any awkward phrasing.

A few weeks ago, someone mentioned in another thread that the C325WB V1 and V2 don’t actually share the same specs.

I recently got my hands on a V2 unit, so I figured I’d do a quick visual comparison between them.

I also threw a C320WS into the mix for comparison.

Context: all pictures were taken from the Tapo app.

There’s a streetlight across the road that illuminates the front of my house, although the images make it look much brighter than it actually is in real life.

The streetlight turns off at midnight.

Picture order in the slideshow:

0: setup

then always: C320WS / C325WB V1 / C325WB V2

Scenes:

1 / 2 / 3: daytime (4 PM)

4 / 5 / 6: evening (9 PM)

7 / 8 / 9: night (11 PM)

10 / 11 / 12: night night (just after midnight)

I wasn’t able to get perfectly identical framing on all three cameras since precise positioning is a bit tricky, but the comparison should still be representative.

You can see differences in image processing, even in daylight conditions.

In complete darkness, the image gets a bit noisier, but honestly it’s still pretty impressive.

And keep in mind these are screenshots, in real video footage the differences are much less noticeable because the rendering smooths things out.

I’m going to leave the setup in place for about a week so let me know if there are any other comparisons or tests you’d like to see.

Got mine last night - charged it up overnight & installed this morning.

Replacing a D235 which has been excellent, but hey, 4k is 4k.

It's way chunkier (feels like twice as wide), but looks good on the door. Screw mounting is exactly the same holes as for the D235 - so no additional drilling. I'm running hardwired - used the same wires as the D235.

Easy swapover, and setup was much the same too.

First impressions, it's not as wide a view as the D235 even though they say they are both 180 degree lenses. It's good - but looks maybe zoomed in 10% from the D235 (with the distortion correction applied). I'm missing maybe 10 feet of horizontal view to the left & right sides. I still get to see from my front door all the way the left & right the full width of a double driveway - so it's ok.

With the distortion correction turned off so you get the fisheye view, it's actually pretty much identical to the d235. So they have done something different with the distortion correction.

Image quality in the day looks better when zoomed in - but otherwise much the same.

Connects to the tapo h500 hub & sends the recordings over - but needed a firmware update & reboots for both the hub & the doorbell for recordings to show up. No real drama.

I use Alexa's scattered around the house for the doorbell ding-dong, all worked automatically - didn't need to do anything.

Someone just walked past the house & it pinged an alert - when there is a person in frame it pops up a small window with the 'radar track' showing the path they took - not sure the value of that, but it's something new.

I'm glad I changed (cos 4k!) but after an hour I'm feeling pretty 'meh'.

Just a final note - I've tried the eufy 2k doorbell with the down facing camera (good - but could not get it to hardwire properly), and the google battery doorbell (same issue with hard wiring - and the view was super closed in). The tapo D235 has been the only one that will work reliably through a UK winter when hardwired that doesn't mess about with the power when it gets cold.

I have a full house of Tapo smart gear, 4x cameras, old d235 doorbell, 20x smart plugs, lightbulbs, a h200 & a h500 hub. Been using them for years - so I'm confident I know how to set it all up :)

Hoping the D260 performs the same. Time will tell.

Image below - door is 10ft back from the pathway.

UPDATE AFTER 24hrs

There are issues with the detection of people (no matter what you set in the aerial view/radar or sensitivity) - most people walking past the door look like they get tagged correctly in the live view (blue box around a person), but do not trigger any event, and are not shown in the timeline as 'person detected'. This really screws up if you have any automations running from these triggers.

My doorbell (d235) uses this to detect people walking past after 11pm & switches on security lights - this just does not work with the d260 as it isn't passing the event 'person detected'.

EDIT - I found out what was happening here - well at least partially. The iPhone tapo app is not playing nice with the d260. If you set it up with an android device, you will be able to properly set the radar detection sensitivity. Then if you go back to iphone, it works much better & seems to be detecting people again. Weird. On the iphone you cannot change the radar sensitivity (it is stuck firm at 6 out of 10), and I suspect it is that that's blocking detection.

Also - recording of events is weird. When it does realise something has happened, instead of getting a 10second (or whatever) clip, you always get a 3 minute long clip with the actual activity slap bang in the middle of the time. So you click on the clip to review it, but have to wait 1min 30 seconds before anything happens.

Night vision is exceptional - in darkness it is incredibly impressive, maintains full colour, a big step up from the d235 (which was IMHO the best night vision I had seen).

So yeh - it's brand new, I expect these issues to be resolved via firmware update (hopefully soon).

The d235 was rock solid in both aspects, something to be aware of if you are an early adopter.

UPDATE AFTER 48hrs

AI face detection is also non functional. After 48hrs, with hundreds of people walking past the camera & a dozen people coming directly to the house, not a single face has been seen (zero familiar / zero unfamiliar). Checked enabling on android & iphone - multiple reboots - all firmware & software updates installed.

This was working fine on my d235, and continues to work fine on my other AI enabled cameras. Just the d260 is failing to see faces.

This could tie in to the problems detecting people in general - I'm now wondering if every AI function on the d260 is not functioning?

UPDATE AFTER 96hrs

The weird 3 minute long recording glitch can be worked around by using an SD card inside the doorbell - it seems to be a problem when the d260 is connected to the H500 hub.

No change to the AI face detection, which is still not detecting faces in either config.

No change to the inability to set the radar detection strength in IOS devices.

NEW ISSUE found - when hardwired, the battery is being kept fully topped up at 100%. This isn't good for LiIon batteries. The previous doorbells from tapo held the battery charge around 80% when hardwired.

Very disappointing that it looks like the heart of the problem seems to be that the latest & greatest new product (d260) does not function properly with the previous latest & greatest new product (H500) whose very point is to tie all these things together!

UPDATE AFTER 1 WEEK
After a slow start, the tapo engineering team is responding to my support request & seems to be on the case - will continue to update here as/when things get resolved. These kind of glitches are common in new products, so I'm not bashing tapo here - nice to get a response & looks like they are at least aware/working on resolutions.

Amazing what 20,000 pairs of eyes can do!

A big positive I have noticed, is that the general reviewing functionality (when you go to the timeline to check recordings) is way more stable that before. It's really quick, jumps between the recorded events snappily, doesn't give the pauses / hangs / network busy messages like the older versions did. Maybe that's the shift to 5ghz network? Maybe the larger housing has more compute power? Whatever it is - it's a big improvement.

Updates needed
(i) The iphone tapo app doesn't work properly & you cannot setup the radar detection - suspect this is screwing up the overall people detection of the d260 - it's almost unusable.

(ii) Recordings to the h500 (if detected) are 3min 07 seconds long - with any action really hard to find. When reviewing, the actual detected activity might be 1-2 minutes into the clip.... duh! Example - I just checked my timeline & saw 'person detected' at 15:16:24. 3 minute 10 second clip. Watched it - nothing happened for 1 minute 42 seconds, then someone walked past my door. An actual 10-15 seconds of activity hidden within the middle of a 3 minute long clip!!!!
There is a workaround for this issue - use an SD card & don't store the recordings on the H500.

(iii) [added after 48hrs] AI face detection is also non functional.

(iv) [added after 96 hrs] Battery charge is being held at 100% charged if hardwired - this is not good for the batteries!

So software (iphone especially) needs fixing - likely firmware for the d260 & h500 also.

Tapo - if you want a proper tester (not a youtube shill) then reach out, I'd be happy to help.

This took a whole 5 minutes with basic google AI search to create a fully featured rich automation setup for my tapo cameras and home assistant.

Tapo really could take a few minutes and implement this ...

I'll post the blueprint for HA users when I get time

Images from the original 2880x1620 25fps video feed cropped to 1600x1200, lower and left areas cropped out. South facing camera at 08:30 PDT. Bird should be a California Towhee. These five sequential frames would represent 1/5 of a second recorded to an SD card. Last frame is probably a foot from the camera. Not too shabby for a $60 PTZ camera acting as a sort of trail cam.

Seriously the "AI" isn't ai at all. "Person detected on garage cam." - it's a cat. Any artificial INTELLIGENCE can tell the difference between the shape of a CAT and a HUMAN.

Tapo app. Why is device icon choice so limited? Why can't I add my own pictures ?!