u/zultan3

Hi guys I need your help. I lost my wife two months ago and I´m not at my best. I can´t found a solution to this problem.

I have three tapo cams and maybe I´m going to buy another one. Yes I´m paranoid.

Two C200 are inside to check our pets when I´m not at home. One C500 is outdoor to check the gate and the cars. the cams work fine (except the c500 that sometimes gets offline and I have to repeat the setup again) and I check them in the tapo app when I´m not at home.

When I´m at home I want to push a damn button and see my cams on my pc screen just like they do in the shops and I can´t find a software that really works.

I found out I can do it via rtsp on vls but I have to open three vlc manually and insert user and password each time. no way. It must be something quick so I can see who is ringing the bell.

I have tried a bunch of programs but they don´t work. thousands of brands and tapo is never listed. the automatic search never finds the cameras and when it finds them it doesn´t work.

I have tried i spy, ip camera viewer, security eye, blue iris, they don´t work or usually the C500 works and the other c200 don´t. that drives me nuts. same settings for all.

I just want to watch. recording is a bonus honestly. The only program that worked for a while was ip camera viewer 4. I tried to set it and it was not working. I said damn. One day I started the program and it was working without any other setting. it simply worked. I said great. yesterday I tried another program (damn me) and now it doesn´t work anymore. two cams are working and one not. it detects the cams under the onfiv protocol but it deoesn set it to work. I´m sure the users and the passwords are correct. Right now c500 working, one C200 working the other C200 (same settings) no connection.

Obviously all ports open in router, static ip adress, pnp on, the cams where working until yesterday. Nobody touched anything. I´m alone here.

WTF is wrong with these cams or with the programs??

How do you guys watch them?? (if you do).

at the moment the best one is still ip camera viewer 4 but I can´t get the last cam working and I don´t get how to use the rtsp protocol manually. the manual sucks

what should I do? wait that one day is going to work randomly by itself?

I even installen an android emulator and installed the tapo app. I thought Finally!! that was genius!!

Nope. I don´t know why the images are not complete no matter the way you set the emulator and you can´t reach the cam settings. you know the ones below the screen framerate, grid, day night mode.... wtf

Please any help would be appreciated. thank you

Something easy. I can´t mess around with pyton github etc... it´s too much for me.

it´s ok even if you can tell me how to setup ip camera viewer 4 that half works...

edit: I just tried another: contacam. it should work with rtsp. again c500 perfect. the other 2 c200 authorization failed...... W T F

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Gentlemen I finally did it. It was nothing wrong on my side. I mean, network side.

https://preview.redd.it/9cr4wt1yfckh1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66a2d24c982a2731e6f87d830915faf88ad3c169

I think the problem is that these cameras are basically crap. You spend a little money and you get little value.

The C500 was always detected in all third party security softwares BUT every now and then it gets offline and no matter how many times you restart it dosn´t work anymore until you reset it. It doesn´t take long but it´s annoying. the two C200 never got offline but after a while they were never detected by security softwares. the problem was wrong user name or password. I was damn sure about the user and pass so I was like wtf...

So I thought let me reset these two pieces of crap.... BUT I didn´t even have to completely reset the cameras.

I had to go into settings and re set the user name and password. same name and same password but I had to re set it. And boom. they worked instantly. Now I bet that every software I tried would work fine.

I thought something was weird when I realized that even VLC was not working anymore. VLC never failed. So I said there must be something wrong with this crap.

And here we are. So now I give an advice to you. reset your cameras because they are working in the app but they are not working well. Second if you don´t need to record or do fancy stuff try ip camera viewer 4.

it supports only 4 cameras for free and it doesn´t record images but it starts in a second and you can see who´s rininging your damn gate bell.

Thanks to each one of you who tried to help me. I really appreciated that. you are the best

Hi. I lost my wife one month ago. (26th of June). I should be doing useful stuff but I can´t. I have no will and no power to to anything more than to eat and take care of our animals.

I´m here writing about myself to perfect strangers because I don´t have any friend and my family doesn´t reall know anything about my real self.

She got breast cancer almost 5 years ago. (I bet it was because of the covid shot but who cares anyway). it got bigger and bigger very fast. she fought hard to live. she wanted to live so much. chemio, radiotherapy, nothing really worked. she was strong and wonderful. although she was suffering she always tried to comfort other people. she was the kind of person everybody would like to have around. we´ve been together for almost 20 years. I always loved her so much. just seeing her coming back from work would ease the stress of the day. we shared the same interests.... music, books, movies.... she was anything I really wanted from life. One day she went to the hospital for a routine surgery but things went wrong... very wrong.... she got worste fast. I wasn´t able to really talk with her since then. I never left her alone. one day I went home to feed our animals and I got the call from the hospital that she was gone. as I got the call I though I would die myself.

we were bound together in a way that nobody can really understand. a month has gone by and I still cry everyday just like she was gone half an hour ago.

I´m here just because nobody would take care of our cats and dog. she loved animals so much. even her cancer never stopped her from helping a stray animal. I owe it to her.

The problem is that time is healing shit... things are getting worst and worst. whitout her I´m nothing. All my strenght couldn´t save her and can´t help myseld. I´m slipping into darkness.

I don´t want to live without her. some time ago she caught me planning how to take my own life. That was before she got cancer. Then I put my bad thoughts aside because she needed me. But she knew my will to live is very thin... she knew that I would break down without her.... and that´s why she gave me our wonderful dog. she said "so you won´t be alone when I´m gone".

The problem is I´m slowly giving up. I thought I could do it somehow but I can´t .... I´m taking my pills.... drinking too much... nothing works....

I can´t stop crying.... I don´t know what to do...... well these are probably wasted words......

sorry for bothering you with my useless life....