@Wayne-TP Thank you for your reply.

I agree that -62 dB is not exactly superb, but it seems with these cameras that you have to have the camera on top of the router to get signal strengths that are considered very good. That is not at all representative of real world use and my camera is only about 15 feet away from the router. Granted, it is outside the house and potentially the signal has to make it through the house wall (although there are also two large windows roughly in line between router and camera).

I have pinged the camera and apart from the very first ping which took 300ms, each one after that was less than 5ms, so there is very low latency in the connection.

I only have the one Eero device, so no mesh setup.

In comparison to the previous camera, the Tapo camera wifi antennas are very small and I do wonder whether this is part of the reason that it does not have a "good "connection. However, even if that were the case surely once it disconnects it should be trying to reconnect. Instead, it seems to just sit there (as I mentioned, a previous situation happened where IIRC it was still responding to detections and tracking movement, but not connecting to the wifi - however, this latest situation was a result of what appeared to be a complete firmware lock-up since it did nothing and was simply sitting there with a blinking red light). I would expect the camera to have a watchdog function that will reboot it if the main OS crashes. If these cameras are indeed a serious attempt at a security device, that would be an appropriate inclusion within the camera. Otherwise they are really not security cameras since they cannot be relied on. Mine in particular seems to be very unreliable.

  @Wayne-TP 

Thanks for the reply. It seems odd to me that that flashing red light indicates it is trying to connect to wifi when it sits there for hours not connecting, whereas immediately it is rebooted by switching off power and then on, it connects with no difficulty. I am sure that there is more going on here and whilst the flashing red light might ordinarily be associated with it connecting to the wifi, I am sure that it cannot be the only thing happening since otherwise why would it not connect? The wifi router is present and operating and the camera and router are still in the same places, so no reason I can think of why it would not connect, apart from there being something else that is at play.

I have now found that I can enable a reboot every day and so I have done that. It might help prevent something creeping in that then kills it. I have also enabled the logging, but I am very disappointed that the only way to access the logs is to take out the SD card! and read that on a computer!! Why not make it easier for people and allow the logs to be accessed over the network? I really don't understand why it should be necessary to access the device (fixed up on a wall and needing steps and a screwdriver to get to the card) and take out the SD card, just to access logs. This is similar to the issue I have experienced already of having to reset the entire device just to change the wifi network, with a reset also only being possible via accessing the device and pressing the reset button. Hence, no possibility to change the wifi network via the app interface and even resetting it (which would then allow one to go through the setup wizard and change the wifi network) not possible without a physical reset of the device at the device. It all makes working with this camera much more difficult than it really should be. I wonder whether the camera/software designers have really thought through the use scenarios and put the customer first. 

Nick

Well, the regular reboot appears not to have helped, since at 03:11 this morning (as determined by when the streamed video stopped being recorded by my NVR that takes the video stream and records it) it died again and at 7am I found it with the white night-time lights on and the red blinking light. It is set to reboot around 03:00 each day (why it says "around" and not a particular time is a mystery). I wonder whether the act of trying to reboot itself jammed it up. I had turned the logging on after the previous issue, but turned it back off because it said not to keep it on and, anyway, I cannot easily get to the camera to take the SD card out to see the logs (again, why on earth does TP-Link not allow you to access logs via the app? Surely some simple use-case analysis would have shown that getting to the camera to access the logs via removing the SD card is likely to be a real pain in the backside for most people, making remote log access an important feature. Even for things like internet routers (which are typically easy to access) it is possible to see the log information through the web interface. Shows a real lack of thought). Words can hardly express how disappointed I am with this camera. I wish I had never bought the damned thing. It has been nothing but trouble.

  @Wayne-TP Thank you for the reply. In particular, I thank you for offering to take the matter of log access method to your software team. I am sure many people would benefit from an easier method. The current method for obtaining logging information is quite frankly ridiculous. I do agree with the log being stored on the SD card, since in the worst case scenario of the camera becoming totally non-functional, at least the log can be recovered from the SD card. However, it should not be necessary to access the camera and remove the SD card just to retrieve the log file if the camera is online.

You mention the local support team. Could you please let me know how to contact them? When the camera falls over again it would be useful to have their details to send the log to (assuming I can get up the ladder to access it).

Best wishes,

Nick

 Hello @Wayne-TP, the camera has dropped off the network again this morning (at 03:00 when it tried to do its regular restart). I can tell this because that is when the recorded stream from the camera stopped and did not come back. I found it later in the morning with the red light flashing. I power cycled it and (as expected) it then connected to the network.

I have gone to the trouble of pulling out the SD card and copying the log file in the hope that it would tell me something. From what I have read online, the file is supposed to be able to be read using any text viewing application (although it has no file extension, so my computer OS does not know what to do with it). When I do open it with a text editing application, I see that it is full of Chinese characters. I thought that it was supposed to provide useful information. I don't read Chinese and to be honest, from the look of it, I suspect that even if I could read it the log contents would be unintelligible. I do get the feeling that it will be of absolutely no use in diagnosing what the issue is though, so would appreciate some assistance with why the log is full of garbage.

I have sent an email to the local support team as per your previous post. I am just adding the post here to update the thread.

Thank you,

Nick