Can't get IP-Camera (Tapo C200) to work, although its thing is online

[Ursusprimus (Holger)]

I installed the IP-camera-binding and installed a Tapo C200 which is supposed to support onvif. After some struggling, I managed to create the thing and it’s shown as online (settings: 1st screenshot). Then I added items for all channels that were available. However only very few of them show something other than NULL (2nd screenshot). At least RTSP URL shows the correct address. I know it’s correct because I it works with VLC where the stream is shown.
However, when I try to use this address or the item in a ‘video card’, no stream is shown (3rd screenshot).
My questions:

• How to get the stream working?
• Can I get the other items filled with data too? Or are they not supported by my camera and the channels/items are shown for every camera anyway, no matter if they support them or not?
• What are the FFMPEG-settings good for? If they’re of any use, what should I enter there? (4th screenshot shows FFMPEG settings from iSpy, but I haven’t changed them yet)

[Ursusprimus (Holger)]

The problem was that I hadn’t installed ffmpeg. For others with similar problems:

• A good video (the one that helped me) is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kBakyre3WA
• I needed to reboot the system before any URLs were shown, so maybe that’s always useful with this binding if it doesn’t work as expected

[digitalgeek.me (Allan)]

I got a Tapo TC70 and can get the rtsp stream working fine. But really stuck on getting the pan/tilt working. Would you be able to offer some advice? thanks.

My config

cctv.things

Thing ipcamera:onvif:cameraLounge [
    ipAddress="192.168.1.67",
    username="camera",
    password="camera",
    onvifPort=2020, 
    ffmpegInput="rtsp://192.168.1.67:554/stream1"
]

cctv.items

Dimmer CameraLoungePan "Pan [%d] left/right" { channel="ipcamera:onvif:cameraLounge:pan" }
Dimmer CameraLoungeTilt "Tilt [%d] up/down" { channel="ipcamera:onvif:cameraLounge:tilt" }

default.sitemap

Video url="http://192.168.1.10:8080/ipcamera/cameraLounge/autofps.mjpeg" encoding="mjpeg" 
Switch item=CameraLoungePan mappings=[INCREASE="Left",OFF="STOP",DECREASE="Right"]
Switch item=CameraLoungeTilt mappings=[INCREASE="Down",OFF="STOP",DECREASE="Up"]

[matt1 (Skinah)]

@digitalgeek.me

But really stuck on getting the pan/tilt working. Would you be able to offer some advice?

ONVIF offer 3 methods to move a camera plus a 4th way with PRESETS. Not all cameras support all of these 4 ways, so you should first test what you camera can do with the software called onvif device manager which can also be used to create the onvif preset locations with.

If you are on OH3, then there is a widget in the marketplace to make moving the camera easy, but you still need to know if the camera works with continuous move, absolute move or one of the other ways to tell the widget what method to use that your camera supports.

[kngced]

Need help please! I got this message when installing a Tapo C200 camera. I got this message “Status: OFFLINE - CONFIGURATION_ERROR Camera failed to report a valid Snaphot and/or RTSP URL. See readme on how to use the SNAPSHOT_URL_OVERRIDE feature.”
Also the camera that is installed and says online (Tapo C200 Camera), I cannot access the stream.

[nw378 (Nico)]

Does it need to be ONVIF?

I installed my C200 as RSTP, pls find parameters below.
(According to your screenshots, your openHAB version seems to be very outdated, you may also update OH…?)

You also need to install ffmpeg:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ffmpeg

[matt1 (Skinah)]

@nw378

Does it need to be ONVIF?

It needs to be onvif if you want events like motion detection and other features that are explained here:

IpCamera: New IP Camera Binding

This binding is now merged into openHAB 2.5.9 and newer. See below for more details on what each brand of camera has working as often choosing the right camera will save you from needing to purchase an extra video server (both the cost to purchase the server, plus the ongoing electricity costs) to process the video feeds. Features for Generic cameras with only RTSP (no snapshot url): Snapshots (jpg) can be created from RTSP with low CPU overhead but requires non stop network traffic to keep a…

@kngced

Status: OFFLINE - CONFIGURATION_ERROR Camera failed to report a valid Snaphot and/or RTSP URL. See readme on how to use the SNAPSHOT_URL_OVERRIDE feature

That is explaining the situation very clearly to me, does this not make sense? If so how can it be re-worded so it is clear?
Test the camera in another program like ‘onvif device manager’ and does it auto detect the snapshot and RTSP urls? If a second program does not then contact your camera support for an updated firmware.