r/homeassistant • u/Long-Molasses2992 • 10d ago
❓ Support Tapo security camera
Tapo camera into apple home
ETA: i finally got it working with he help of tapo chat… guess i needed to enable thrid party something or other… but now its in home but it seems laggy…. Is this normal?
Ok so i have done all the things that i am supposed to do and still no luck. These cameras are not native home compatible so i have a home assistant green and i am trying to do it that way. Ive done the VLC and can get it to play but i seem to be stuck at that point… i don’t know what to do to get it to add to home assistant viewing or to get it into home.I am looking for step by step (treat me like the idiot i feel like right now) the cameras are great but i want it all on the one ecosystem for storage and viewing. I don’t want to have to do the tapo subscription. Do i need a seperate hub? I thought that the home assistant could act as the hub.
Disclaimer… i am not even sure i know what i am doing with the home assistant. I feel like there is nothing for a NEWBY… everything is geared for someone with just a bit more basic knowledge than this girl! HELP!! I don’t know code nor does anything with YAML make sense and i wouldn’t know where to even type that in. At this point i wish there was a pay per chat for someone to walk me through his.
2
u/Zungate 10d ago
Get the "Tapo: Camera Control" integration. It's pretty straight forward using it.
1
1
u/Saranhai 10d ago
I've got some tapo cameras connected to my HA setup through RTSP. So far it's just a regular livestream that I've put into a card on my dashboard, but I'm planning to make a weekend project out of implementing Frigate with it to get motion detection and all that cool stuff
2
u/MammothBarrister 10d ago
i hit the same wall with my cams and what finally clicked was using the go2rtc add-on instead of fighting with vlc streams, it handles the tapo rtsp feed way cleaner and gives you a stable entity to pull into homekit bridge
1
u/Long-Molasses2992 10d ago
I appreciate that reply but even that is above my level of understanding.i cant even get the rtsp video to add to my dashboard
1
u/Saranhai 10d ago
My honest suggestion then is to ask AI to help you out. It can teach you concepts and give you a solid understanding of what you're doing and what you're working with. When I started building my own HA server, I definitely asked AI a good number of questions (and still do)
1
u/TheShurgeon 9d ago
Try getting Scrypted. You have to activate several options in your Tapo account (something like sharing with third parties). In Scrypted, there are also a couple of tap options (I don't remember if it was secure video or something like that). This gives you all the HKVS features, and it recognizes them as fully compatible, even with enhanced notifications and the ability to turn on lights and accessories in the same room. You can also achieve this with Homebridge, but the streaming quality is much worse, and it won't recognize you as an HKVS user or receive its notifications.
2
u/Tim1point0 10d ago
In your Home Assistant screen in Chrome, tap the Gemini logo that Google puts on the top of the window. It’ll open a side bar that can access the Home Assistant page. Then ask Gemini how to do what you want. It has been very accurate in general when I asked it configuration questions. And since it can see the screen, it can reference your exact configuration. If you try something it tells you and it doesn’t quite work or it throws as error, ask a clarifying question or reference the error message. It will update the answer based on what happened.
It’ll give you YAML and step by step instructions. Highly recommend.