Wanted to spy on my dog, ended up spying on TP-Link

I tried and failed at enough suggestions I found on the internet and via AI to cobble together a frigate configuration that eventually worked with the Tapo cameras.

RTC setup section:

  go2rtc:
    streams:
      <Camera RTC name>:
        - rtsp://tapoadmin:<local camera account password>@<camera IP address>:554/stream1
        - ffmpeg:<Camera RTC name>#audio=opus
        - tapo://<Tapo cloud password>@<camera IP address>
      <Camera RTC name>_sub:
        - rtsp://tapoadmin:<local camera account password>@<camera IP address>:554/stream2
        - ffmpeg:<Camera RTC name>_sub#audio=opus
        - tapo://<Tapo cloud password>@<camera IP address>

Main section:

  <Camera name>:
    ffmpeg:
      output_args:
        record: preset-record-generic-audio-aac
      inputs:
        - path: rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/<Camera RTC name>_sub
          input_args: preset-rtsp-restream
          roles:
            - detect
        - path: rtsp://127.0.0.1:8554/<Camera RTC name>
          input_args: preset-rtsp-restream
          roles:
            - record
            - audio
    detect:
      enabled: true
      width: 640
      height: 360
      fps: 7
    live:
      streams:
        <Camera RTC name>: <Camera RTC name>
    record:
      enabled: true
      retain:
        days: 0
        mode: all

Where:

* <Camera RTC name> is just any old short name you want to assign to the camera.

* <Camera name> is the main name for the camera that will be shown in the frigate UI

* <local camera account password> is something set individually on each camera (settings > Advanced > Camera Account, set it to On and setup username/password > Account Information)

* <Tapo cloud password> is the password setup for the Tapo app (I'm not sure how necessary this is, since there's nowhere that the username is specified... this is the only bit I'm fuzzy on)

This is the basics that works for me for the Tapo cameras. There are a boatload of other settings specific to Frigate (but not specific to Tapo cameras).

This is nowhere near as cool hack as the article, however.

Do you use an outdoor camera with this? I'm trying to find one and my c402 does not appear to have that support.

Hello, as I alluded to in my blog post you should use tapo:// as the main stream source to get two-way audio. You can then optionally use rtsp://.../stream2 as a lower resolution sub stream source for detections. Defining both tapo:// and rtsp:// in a single stream is redundant as go2rtc only picks one or the other. My own configuration is here for reference https://github.com/kennedn/frigate/blob/7c56604e819d2cb1da28...

Sorry no.

I use Reolink's for outdoor. The Tapo's are all indoor C210/C211 (cheap, but do the job just fine).

Looks like the C402 has two different hardware versions[0] so maybe the old one doesn't work but the new one does? A firmware upgrade might also be worth trying. This reddit page suggests trying ONVIF as the go2RTC connection[1].

Good luck!

[0]: https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/download/tapo-c402/

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/frigate_nvr/comments/1liosei/tapo_c...

Aaaah, I should have specified above that I don't use (or care about) the two-way audio in the frigate config.

Thanks for the info, I just hacked away at various config suggestions until one combination worked.

Cheers!