@TP-Link
I think @Tonybee have the same problem and reviews from Amazon from a guy called Ryan, ohan, Ryan C and rustybell11 (have marked with bold text)
@Tonybee wrote
My C310 picks up traffic and people walking across the end of our road at over 20m away.
Triggers alerts and records every one of them. And every rain drop that falls in front of the lens at night :(
Ryan Wrote
Overly sensitive despite being on the lowest setting
The picture quality is great when set to 3MP rather than the default 1080p however even on the lowest sensitivity setting the camera is constantly being activated by every little thing including rain, even a very light shower triggers the motion detection constantly and frankly ruins the usability of the camera.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews//B08K3KKNBY/ref=acr_dpComparsion_hist_1?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=all_reviews#reviews-filter-bar
ohan wrote
good cam but...
To clarify, the cam is positioned upstairs looking out of window down into the garden on a quiet street with IR lights turned off and recording on micro SD.
Am sure the cam could have been made smaller but has good picture quality, specially in low light.
Unfortunately thats where things grind to a halt because:
Over sensitive even at its lowest setting, gets triggered by distant car headlights.
Activity zone adjustment is a gimmick not functional- if it sees it, it will get recorded basically.
No way to set duration for clips recorded after each trigger, it carries on recording way too long.
No preview image of what triggered the cam, could have been a cars headlight, fox or an
uninvited visitor fly tipping by your fence. - my older cams app had this facility.
If notifications are ON- be prepared to get bombarded but at a delayed rate.
So at the end you are stuck wasting a good hour each day going through clips recorded at various playback speeds to see what triggered the cam.
Am sure if used indoors in the pitch dark or for monitoring children or pets it would be perfect.
Ryan C wrote
We bought this camera as a security device for a temporarily unoccupied property. Overall it's very easy to set up and control from the app, and the video feed provides us with peace of mind.
After we first set this camera up and left, it would randomly send motion detection alerts to my phone several times an hour. Unless our flat is somehow haunted without our knowing, these alerts must be bogus. After reducing the motion detection sensitivity to its lowest level and reducing the field of view used to detect motion, the alerts are now less frequent but still occur for no apparent reason.
Another issue is that there seems to be no option to upload recorded footage to a cloud storage provider. The only way to record footage is to store it locally on an SD card, which is not included. Not being able to record footage significantly reduces the usefullness of this camera - ideally it would start recording whenever motion is detected and show those recordings in the app.
rustybelle11 wrote
For a cheap camera it’s really good. The camera is controlled through the Tapo Camera App which lets you customise the camera, set alerts, detection zones, recording schedule, view the camera in live mode with sound on, watch recorded footage, change settings like having night vision on or off and turning led light off etc.
The camera is not compatible with the Kasa app.
The SD card is basically at the base of the black camera unit which has to be panned to the top to insert it. If someone was in a rush they wouldn’t find the slot as it is concealed unless the camera is literally pointing at the roof.
I have a 64gb memory card and have it continuous recording. I am so far up to 7days and it hasn’t recorded over itself yet so potentially has a long record time.
You can watch back footage and record bits you want or take still pictures which have then saved into my camera roll on the phone which could be sent to other people if needed.
The detection settings are a bit too sensitive it picks up dust passing the camera which has then given a notification. I have turned these to the lowest settings which work well but get the odd false alarm.
You can set detection zones which can be a bit fiddly to set up but you basically need to drag the box over the area you want and then resize the other part of the box to make it fit the area you want. This will make sense when you try it.
The camera I found really easy to set up and use from the app. I used my iPhone. The camera needs to connect to wifi. This is done by turning it on and going to the Wi-fi list on the actual phone not the app and the camera appears on that list. The app then guides you through the actual set up then.
The picture quality I have found to be really good night or day if used indoors. I don’t know how good it would be if you pointed it through a window but is good over short distances.
I have used the camera several times whilst in another location and found the app works well live viewing and playing back footage.
Privacy mode stops the camera recording video and sound.