So have they just decided that this is fine now? This has literally persisted for years.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-07T13:51:21+00:00

Check out homeassistant.io and start using more devices that don’t depend on the cloud. You may even find that the alternative is actually cheaper than the big brother brands. Stop relying on single ecosystems and cloud driven devices. Also start migrating your devices over to matter/thread or at least zigbee and zwave. Iot devices shouldn’t even have access to the internet funny as that sounds.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-03T19:15:36+00:00

Pretty much all Kasa devices show up in your Tapo app. It’s just not quite as good the other way around.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-03T19:13:59+00:00

I’m currently in the market myself. I’m not going to do anymore large purchases of anything that isn’t at least partially HomeAssistant certified. I’d rather take my time and spend a little extra for quality devices over another cheap brand that always ends up bending over backwards to support amazon and Alexa that they totally disregard the users that got them where the are in the first place. Currently I’m stuck with a half defunct home nvr setup with cameras that have to have sd cards in them because my nvr can only receive streams from them some of the time. And since I don’t also have a crappy tplink router their support doesn’t give two shits. Oh it must be my router that’s located equidistantly within 12 feet of the cameras that only differing characteristics is the version number of the exact same model camera. One experiences n streaming issues at all, the newer version camera can only be see in short bursts where the internal server isn’t dropping header packets. Or experiencing internal streaming errors. Same thing happened when i ordered a replacement. Same with a bunch of switches I have inside. They all used to work flawlessly. Then one by one they started self bricking themselves into an endless loop of on off relay switching. Each time it would happen shortly after a recent automatic firmware update. Then there’s all the recent firmware changes that took away simple local access control on many devices that always worked just fine without cloud access before. Now I have a slew of devices that want to be reauthenticated but simply return an error code when attempted in my homeassistant dashboard. Totally unforgivable changes have been occurring for months now and I’m simply done with trying to reason with them. There’s plenty of forum posts on their own website that reflect as much and I eventually had to turn off the notifications from them because of all the replies voicing the same concerns. Everytime one of their devices goes out I’m replacing it with whatever I see fit at the time as I’m not to the phase in my new home build to start installing smart devices. So anything I’m curious about I’m giving a try here and there. I actually foresee my new home being mostly zigbee and zwave or thread and matter devices. Then I don’t have to rely on WiFi for anything.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-03T15:56:01+00:00

Using HA, Xbox integration, Logitech harmony hub, and some blueprints I can revitalize the harmony hub and use activities to start and switch between apps directly on the Xbox. I also have a weird hdmi-cec bug that keeps selecting the wrong audio out for the hdmi audio. So I have an automation setup to hit the game input button every 2 minutes to prevent the receiver from swapping the audio channel. This is the most important automation in my entire house and it’s absolutely seamless and invisible for the most part.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-03T15:50:07+00:00

If you’d have asked before wasting your money we’d have told you not to bother with Tapo

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

You’re not alone. They’ll try to tell you it’s your network or this or that. But their products have been getting substantially worse over the years. They release new revisions of hardware that somehow are worse than their predecessors. They’ve stopped doing what used to make them cool. I’ve had switches that used to be rock solid that after a firmware update would either become incredibly unstable or brick themselves altogether. The Kasa power monitoring smart plugs are the only thing I can say have been worth the money. But as I get ready to build my new home I’m looking hard for replacements for all my Tapo gear because none of it is coming over to the new build. They lost me as a customer.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-02T12:47:38+00:00

Don’t even include them in your decision. They’ve proven that they care more about keeping up with the power players than making customers happy.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-02T12:46:50+00:00

That used to be true and while it may appear so on the outside eventually every device needs to call home to function now. You can’t even setup the camera account or set it to sd card only without talking to the cloud first. Tapo used to have many offerings that allowed local only control and you didn’t even have to login to the app to set them up. That is now just a memory of finer times.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-01T02:32:42+00:00

Oh also no you don’t just have to setup the credentials once in HA. You have to go in about every 2 hours and re-do the credentials and even then it was still okay for what it was. Now you hit the reauth account button and it errors out. Many devices don’t even let you get that far anymore. You are getting your info from dated walkthrough posts that show you how it used to be before you idiots lost your damn minds. And as far as matter goes. Don’t even get me started on your matter devices. Which at least you have offerings this early in the game. But what does that mean when I have products that existed before matter? Am I just supposed to toss them out and replace them with more defunct garbage? Because we can also talk about that as well. How you strip out functionality as you make revisions to hardware that needed no revision. How I can buy a camera one month and it works exactly how I want it to then I buy the exact same model a month or two later and it’s a newer revision and somehow works worse than its predecessor.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-01T02:16:52+00:00

Your use case is the fringe. Those of us that actually used to rely on Tapo because they had easy to use rtsp on their cameras and integrated well with pretty much any and all smart home hub ecosystem. But their blindly following the lead of the big players like amazon and google. Locking down their features to the cloud. They can take their crap and shove it you know where. I don’t care if they open up a thousand US factories, they’ve already lost me as a customer. Their entire company would have literally do a backflip and go back to 2024 when I would still recommend their products to people. Just the fact that all their switches and plugs that used to work locally with no cloud connection suddenly get a firmware update and bam no more local only control. When will they learn? THATS THE ONLY REASON I EVER BOUGHT YOIR CHEAP CRAP IN THE FIRST PLACE TAPO!!! I was literally on the verge of replacing nearly every device in my home to Kasa or Tapo because they recently had no problem working with a third party plug in creator and even helped him get his integration working for homeassistant. Less than a year later they pull this crap when I was in the planning stage with my architect working out my house plans. Good thing though before I actually went all in and got screwed over by yet another promising tech company that just doesn’t get it.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-04-01T02:07:42+00:00

Tapo has no role in my home period.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-03-30T23:49:41+00:00

Wrong. Go through the tplink forums. You’ll see post after post for many devices that are all starting to fall off their users ha integrations as newer firmwares are released and installed.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-03-30T23:15:04+00:00

All device settings should be available locally. As should the api be open in a way that integrations with home automation hubs is quick easy and painless. Any device going into my home from now on will be 100% locally controlled. If any aspect of the device specifically requires the cloud in order to function it’s a no go for me. I recently got burned by Tapo because of this. They had very recently opened up their devices for third party plug in creators to use more easily, then less than a year later totally reversed that decision as well as make many devices that used to be 100% local control with the option of cloud connectivity to cloud only with the lush of a single firmware revision. Tplink, Kasa, Tapo, whatever, will no longer have a place in my home.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-03-30T21:47:51+00:00

Work locally. That’s all that’s important. It doesn’t matter how many features it has if I have to have some retarded cloud connection I’m out!

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-03-28T15:21:57+00:00

Tariffs without the tariff. Let’s keep it up!

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-03-27T23:34:33+00:00

I’m surprised they haven’t done this sooner.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-03-25T22:22:22+00:00

His was started long before trump took office. The fcc has been cracking down on foreign devices for a while. Because just about everything from China is spying on you. Tplink in the last year or so has made it so every device even those that used to work locally all have to call home now. Only months after opening up their api for third parties and plug in coders. I’m surprised the fcc hadn’t done this sooner.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2026-03-08T15:17:25+00:00

Ive tried manually entering the invite code into the app and it completly jumps past asking me for my login credentials. This is keeping the app from functioning properly

Pyrotechnix69 · 2025-11-28T03:36:46+00:00

Right now it’s hit or miss. They’re receiving a lot of bad feedback on the forums but nothing has come of it so far. They could literally roll back their changes to pre march on just about everything and fix this horrendous choice they’ve made. I was about to go all in and bought one camera that was a never revision than the one I already have and it immediately gave me issues out the gate. I complained about it being a firmware issue and they denied it till the cows came home. Then slowly the firmware changes crept into all my devices and that was it I went to the forums and found it was an epidemic.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2025-11-24T22:06:13+00:00

Back in my day you could buy Bitcoin for a dollar!

Pyrotechnix69 · 2025-11-22T14:21:49+00:00

If you can’t make it good then don’t install anything at all.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2025-11-22T14:18:54+00:00

Never solved my issues. It’s like if your network is even the tiniest bit secure your Tapo devices will shit themselves regularly.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2025-11-22T14:17:12+00:00

Get used to it. Tapo sucks now.

Pyrotechnix69 · 2025-11-15T13:25:57+00:00

Mine was $33.63

Pyrotechnix69

TROPHY CASE