C100 Ability to Turn Off IR LEDs
So, I already know that there is no functionality to turn off the IR LEDs on the C100 at the moment. However, I have two C100 cameras mounted to exterior windows at the front and rear of my house.
There is sufficient light on one side for the camera to stay in day mode and be of good quality.
However the side is darker but will be fine in night mode, however when the IR LEDs kick in these reflect off the window making it useless. Is there any chance the engineers can the functionality for us to choose night mode but turn the LEDs off if required??
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BubbaHepi wrote
Day setting suits my need but for those who would like to run their cameras in night mode with the IR LEDs turned off:
Set to night vision > put pieces of electrical tape > apply over lights.
Problem solved.8)
Haven't tried it but seems like it would work.
@BubbaHepi You don't think we tried that? I tried electrical and duct tape but gave up after the LED glare was still visible after 6 layers.
The plastic on the camera face also defuses the IR light so had to cover the whole face, as well as try to get some tape wedged between the lens and body plastic components.
Seems like it would work and actually working are 2 different things.
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I also tried tape on my TC60, no good behind glass because I got sufficient IR leakage through the case to cause too much camera pickup of IR reflection with layers of black PVC tape all over the front of the camera - and even if you managed to block all the front IR spill with many layers of tape, it also spills out the camera back and side.
Problem not solved, unfortunately.
Appears this limitation can't be solved in software either due to the hardware implementation - so the only way would be to open the case somehow and disconnect the IR LEDs. I would have tried that but could not even pry my TC60 camera case open despite applying as much force as I reckoned the plastic case could take before breaking. There must be a way I guess...
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@SMARTER The problem, as stated by others, is the need to turn off the IR lights while the camera is in IR mode, so we won't get a reflection off a window we are trying to look through at night. My Yi Home camera can do this and worked great with an $8 IR lamp shining on the porch through another window. I could monitor my front porch quite well. I decided to replace the Yi camera with a higher resolution, higher image quality KC411S, but alas I am stuck in day/color mode when I turn the IR lights off. I tried to pry off the cover over the IR lights but I can't get it to budge. So I taped over the IR lights by applying black electrical tape and trimming with an exacto knife. It looks very neat, but now I get a strange ring of light reflecting on the window. I can see everything not obscured by the ring reflection on the window, including my whole living room, just fine, in grayscale. So I set it in front of the Yi camera in IR mode, and I see that the whole Kasa cam is glowing with IR light except the part covered with black tape. I'm not going to try to cover the whole camera dome and everything with black tape. Could the top of the dome be pried off to access the inside? Maybe later.
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I'0m facing the same problem but for a different reason.
I'm using a C100 to monitor my baby at night. The problem is that she stands looking at the IR LEDs and don't sleep, so I just put an IR floodlight in the bedroom that is enough to light the whole room. I was using an Ezviz camera, which lets you use AUTO night mode, and independently turn on or off the IR LEDs.
Was working great, but now I want to replace it with the C100, as I have other TAPO cameras, and want to use only one app.
With this problem, I might easily replace my other TAPO cameras with Ezviz cameras and just trash the TAPO for good...as the support here seems awful.
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Mama_mia wrote
I'm using a C100 to monitor my baby at night. The problem is that she stands looking at the IR LEDs and don't sleep, so I just put an IR floodlight in the bedroom that is enough to light the whole room. I was using an Ezviz camera, which lets you use AUTO night mode, and independently turn on or off the IR LEDs.
Was working great, but now I want to replace it with the C100, as I have other TAPO cameras, and want to use only one app.
With this problem, I might easily replace my other TAPO cameras with Ezviz cameras and just trash the TAPO for good...as the support here seems awful.
It seems probable that Tapo camera hardware does not have independently switchable IR mode and IR lights. If correct, there will be no possible way to fix this in a software update.
I use my camera behind a window and tried the black tape approach but there was too much IR spill. But... I would expect that if the visible light glow from the IR lights is keeping your baby awake, some black tape over the lights might be sufficient to obscure the IR enough to not be a problem?
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@SMARTER
Yes, that's what I did last night, and it worked.
But this is just an ugly workaround, I don't want it to be like this as the camera is pretty visible inside the room and the tape is visible (there is a wife at home ;-).
I also found another problem with the C100 camera, the support cannot hold it in place, and it keeps going down after I point the camera to where I want it.
The magnetic support of the Ezviz camera works much better, once again...
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