HomeAssistant - Tapo: Cameras Control
Custom component - Tapo: Cameras Control - to add Tapo cameras into Home Assistant
Installation
Copy contents of custom_components/tapo_control/ to custom_components/tapo_control/ in your Home Assistant config folder.
Installation using HACS
HACS is a community store for Home Assistant. You can install HACS and then install Tapo: Camera Control from the HACS store.
Requirements
Network
Following target TCP (v)LAN ports must be open in firewall for the camera to access your Tapo Camera from Home Assistant:
- 443 - HTTPS for control of the camera (services)
- 554 - RTSP to fetch video stream from the camera
- 2020 - ONVIF to track detected movement via a binary sensor
These are not WAN ports, DO NOT OPEN WAN PORTS VIA PORT FORWARDING. You might need to open (v)lan ports only if you know what all of this means.
Usage
Add cameras via Integrations (search for Tapo) in Home Assistant UI. You can also simply click the button below if you have MyHomeAssistant redirects set up.
Cameras are also automatically discovered when they are (re)connected to WIFI.
To add multiple cameras, add integration multiple times.
See examples for lovelace cards.
Quick Start
This custom component creates:
- Camera entities, one for HD and one for SD stream
- Binary sensor for motion after the motion is detected for the first time
- Light entity, if the camera supports a floodlight switch
- Buttons for Calibrate, Format, Manual Alarm start & stop, Moving the camera, Reboot and syncing time
- Switch entities for auto track, Flip setting, LED Indicator, Lens Distortion Correction and Privacy mode
- Select entities for Automatic Alarm, Light Frequency, Motion Detection, Night Vision and Move to Preset
- Number entity for Movement Angle
- And finally 2 tapo_control.* services to control a camera
Use these services in following service calls.
tapo_control.save_preset
Saves the current PTZ position to a preset
- name Required: Name of the preset. Cannot be empty or a number
tapo_control.delete_preset
Deletes a preset
- preset Required: PTZ preset ID or a Name. See possible presets in entity attributes
Sound Detection
Integration is capable of analysing sound from camera microphone and expose noise detected via binary_sensor.
You need to enable this feature in integration options by checking "Enable sound threshold detection". After enabling it, you can also set any other options starting with [Sound Detection]. You will need to restart Home Asssistant after doing any changes.
For more information and troubleshooting see Home Assistant ffmpeg documentation on which this feature is based on.
Troubleshooting | FAQ
Binary sensor for motion doesn't show up or work
Motion sensor is added only after a motion is detected for the first time.
- Make sure the camera has motion detection turned on
- Make sure the camera has privacy mode turned off
- Make sure the camera can see you and your movement
- If you have webhooks enabled, and your Home Assistant internal URL is reachable on HTTP, make sure camera can reach it.
- Make sure you have correct IP set for Home Assistant. Turn on Advanced Mode under
/profile
. Go to/config/network
and underNetwork Adapter
verify correct IP is shown for the device. If it is not correct, underHome Assistant URL
uncheckAutomatic
next toLocal Network
and set it tohttp://<some IP address>:8123
. DO NOT USE HTTPS. - Certain camera firmwares have pullpoint broken, with only webhooks working. If you are not able to run webhooks because of above (https, or vlan setup), binary sensor will never show up.
- Try walking in front of the camera
- If above didn't work, restart the camera and try again
Also make sure that:
- binary sensor is not disabled via entity, check .storage/core.entity_registry for disabled entities, look for "disabled_by": "user" on platform "tapo_control". If it is, remove the whole entity or change to "disabled_by": null, and restart HASS.
- binary sensor is enabled in tapo integration options
- onvif port 2020 on camera is opened
Big delay in camera stream
This is a known issue of Home Assistant.
There is an ability to disable usage of Home Assistant Stream component for the camera, which might lower the delay very significantly at cost of higher CPU usage.
You can choose to disable stream component when adding the camera, or via Options when camera has already been added. This change requires a restart of Home Assistant.
There might be some disadvantages to doing this, like losing option to control playback and a higher CPU usage. Results depend on your hardware and future Home Assistant updates.
If you disable stream and your hardware is not up to the task, you will get artifacts, bigger delay and freezes.
If you wish, try it out and see what works best for you.
Another possibility is using WebRTC Camera by AlexxIT.
Example working configuration:
type: custom:webrtc-camera
entity: camera.bedroom_hd
No audio in camera stream
Supported audio codecs in Home Assistant are "aac", "ac3" and "mp3".
Tapo Cameras use PCM ALAW (alaw) which is not supported.
You can get sound working using WebRTC Camera by AlexxIT.
Example working configuration:
type: custom:webrtc-camera
entity: camera.bedroom_hd
Supported models
Users reported full functionality with following Tapo Cameras:
- TC60
- TC70
- C100
- C110
- C200
- C210
- C225
- C310
- C320WS
The integration should work with any other non-battery Tapo Cameras.
Battery cameras controlled via HUB are working only for control:
- C420S2
If you had success with some other model, please report it via a new issue.
What is webhook when referred to on camera?
Camera uses ONVIF standard to communicate motion events. This communication can work with 2 ways:
- Pullpoint: Client opens connection to the camera and waits until the camera responds. Camera responds only when there is some event to communicate. After camera responds, client reopens the connection and waits again.
- Webhook: Client tells the camera its URL to receive events at. When an event happens, camera communicates this to the URL client defined.
Webhooks are the preffered method of communication as they are faster and lighter. That being said;
- Webhooks require an HTTP only HA setup because Tapo cameras do not support HTTPS webhooks
- Webhooks require a proper base_url to be defined in HA, so that the URL communicated is correct (you can check URL sent by enabling debug logs for homeassistant.onvif)
Points above are automatically determined by this integration and if the HA does not meet the criteria, webhooks are disabled. That being said;
- There are camera (and/or firmwares) which freeze when both webhooks and pullpoint connection is created, which happens at the start to see if webhooks is supported at all so that communication can fallback back to pullpoint.
- There are camera firmwares which have pullpoint broken (1.3.6 C200) and only webhooks work
For webhooks to work, all the user needs to do is make sure he is using HA on HTTP and that the HA is available on the URL communicated.
Have a comment or a suggestion?
Please open a new issue, or discuss on Home Assistant: Community Forum.
Join discussion on Discord.
Thank you
- Dale Pavey from NCC Group for the initial research on the Tapo C200
- likaci and his github repository for the research on the Mercury camera on which tapo is based
- Tim Zhang for additional research for Mercury camera on his github repository
- Gábor Szabados for doing research and gathering all the information above in Home Assistant Community forum
- Davide Depau for additional research of the cameras and work on pytapo library
- Joe Bebo for documenting the communication protocol for cameras which use a hub
Disclaimer
This integration is using python module Pytapo which is an unofficial module for achieving interoperability with Tapo cameras.
Author is in no way affiliated with Tp-Link or Tapo.
All the api requests used within the pytapo library are available and published on the internet (examples linked above) and the pytapo module is purely just a wrapper around those https requests.
Author does not guarantee functionality of this integration and is not responsible for any damage.
All product names, trademarks and registered trademarks in this repository, are property of their respective owners.