Bought a "Tapo C210" security camera, requires a ridiculous "pay to get notifications" plan. Do not buy.

MS-DOS · May 24

Oh ffs. I bought this thing, in principle it looks nice, it seems handy, but guess what, you have to SUBSCRIBE TO A PAID PLAN in order to enable notifications for detections. Are you f*cking kidding me? There is a free mode, but it's useless. There isn't even a list of previous notifications, it's just a Whatsapp type notification, if you are not looking at the phone it's gone in seconds. Insane. And I think there was a way to look at a list of notifications, but I cannot find it now, it wouldn't surprise me if they removed it after I updated the firmware. Just nuts. I hate modern peripheals, modern everything so much it's unreal. They give you this cheap, handy chinese stuff, then you just find out there's subscriptions for everything, you have to keep paying for obvious shit that was always assumed to be included in the once-payment after your purchase your device/game/whatever. Now everything requires a paid plan, even a notification next to a picture, which is like the most basic thing you are looking for on a security camera. I have been scammed. F*ck this.

MS-DOS · May 24

I cannot even find a way to record

MS-DOS · May 24

I was finally able to make it record all the time but guess what, you cannot review the recordings on your computer, they get saved in some weird nomenclature like this:

xxxxxxxx_000000_tp00007.mp4
xxxxxxxx_000000_tp00008.mp4

xxxxxxxx_000000_tp00009.mp4

And these files wouldn't even open.

You can only "download" from the app into a normal mp4 readable file the different detected motion events, not the entire recording, so you have to lose your eyesight looking for things on a phone screen. I bought this to monitor insect activity on my kitchen because I don't know where they are entering and this is being useless. Another waste of money.