C500 Bugs And Suggestions
C500 Bugs And Suggestions
I have something which annoys me with the C500 Tapo Camera.
Note: I have motion tracking enabled
Bugs:
When it's night and it's raining, the camera follows the rain droplets all around, creating another issue which is the camera becoming uncalibrated as when I try to return it to a marker, it doesn't return to the spot it should (for example in my case it was tilting significantly more down.
Markers have pictures, but the pictures are only visible on your device and not on family member devices who have the app.
Suggestions:
There should be a home marker feature, this means the camera will return to a chosen marker after the user has played around with the pan/tilt features (for example return to home position after 20 seconds of control inactivity.
If possible I would like the camera to prioritise camera tracking people who are closer to the camera, or set tracking zones, so for example the camera will not track someone after 90 degrees to the right.
The camera has person detection great, it should have car detection and pet detection, this will allow you to disable motion tracking as motion tracking is not great since it tracks useless things sometimes like rain, or moving umbrella, or some fly on the screen.
Thank you.
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The Motion Tracking feature of the Tapo C500 will return to the home position after a certain period of no movement.
In your case, are you referring to the situation where the camera's angle deviated from the home position due to the external force of raindrops impacting it significantly? for example, as you mentioned, it was tilting significantly more down, but it's still on the last position, correct?
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@Wayne-TP Hey.
Yes indeed the motion tracking feature returns to original home spot after 20 seconds, however you should be allowed to select only one of the markers and give one of them a home marker, this means the camera will return to this position if they have changed the angle with the controller and left. In my case I want it to point back at the front of the garden. This means the camera will always be recording what I want, and track the right things. For example, if my family member used the camera and decided to point it at just a brick wall behind it, then I would have to go back into the app and fix it to point in the right direction as they have left the app and not fixed it after using it or having fun with it.
About the rain droplets, I have clicked on the front view marker as illustrated by the blue arrow, and it is significantly lower after a rough night of rain, well I don't know if it's the force of the rain, or the constant tracking, but the microphone does get impacted during the rain creating a horrible loud sound of the motors, but seems to get fixed up when the camera dries up.
As stated the camera view only fixed when calibrated in the settings.
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I don't think it's even just rain which uncalibrates it, it's just general usage of the tracking feature which seems to make it point slightly in the wrong direction after a while.
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Any idea if this is being worked on? The biggest issue is the camera uncalibrating itself constantly, I believe it has links to do with motion tracking, I have to calibrate it multiple times a day for it to point in the right marker direction. Thanks.
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Thank you for the update. Clarification: The camera will return to the last position when the movement ends.
The viewpoints in the Pan & Tilt function are all at the same level, and there is no specific "home position", so it can only return to the last position after the motion tracking.
Regarding your request, you can submit a separate Feature Request, our team will regularly review and assess the feedback received.
As for the issue of the lens angle shifting during heavy rain but returning to normal after the water dries, could you provide us with some video clips? We would like to analyze the cause of this issue.
Indeed, it is possible that raindrops are triggering motion tracking, causing the lens angle to shift during rainfall. Please double-check and confirm when exactly the lens returns to the correct angle. Is it after the rain stops (with no obvious movement in the footage), or is it after the water dries up?
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@Wayne-TP Hey,
I think I have figured out the issue with the lens not returning to the right position, I don't think this is an issue with just the rain but also markers, and controlling it, as it seems like the camera doesn't 100% always know it's correct position on a certain factor.
VIDEO (upload keeps failing to tp link site) samsung link
https:/ /quickshare.samsungcloud.com/uJoBHSI4wXDt
As you can see in the video at first the FRONT marker is in the right positiom, as it's just slightly above the bin's lid on the top video of the preview, this is where I had originally put saved the marker.
However, if I tilt all the way down, and try to return to this FRONT position afterwards we can see that that the lens drops below bin.
This is only fixed afterwards if I tilt all the way up and then press the FRONT marker, then it's in the right position.
But with the rain I think this increases the tilt for it to be more incorrect, since its constantly moving around and maybe somehow losing its callibration.
During heavy rain the camera angles 100% never return to the correct angle, I don't have a video to try to find the moment this happens as the app video time line is extremely annoying to use since there is 0% precision, and no thumbnail previews whilst trying to look through the footage quickly, but the issue is just presented in the camera not knowing always where it is as seen in the video.
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Thank you for sharing your findings. I'll report it to the R&D team and let them try to reproduce the problem.
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Interesting what you are saying about rain drops triggering the motion. I've just got a 510W and suffering badly at the moment with bugs at night triggering the detection and I've had read things about rain doing the same, but not experienced any rain yet
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Here the exact same thing... What are your motoindetection settings? Because my C500 has recorded almost the whole night because of some rain en mostly bugs which the camera tries to follow.... Even some AI person detection which obviously aren't persons...
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I've got mine motion sensitivity turned right down to 2 because otherwise it seems to ignore my activity zones and picks up our neighbours driveway and activity as well as cars on the main road above. I still get it picking up at night but I think it's down to light reflections although I might try a level of 1 but that just seems crazy.
With regards to the bugs, they do appear to have stopped now although I did get a nice silhouette of a spide crawling over it the other day. I don't seem to be affected by rain either.
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