TL;DR:

Though both are owned by TP-LINK, between the two webcams I’d suggest the Tapo because Kasa’s cams are closed to third-party monitoring tools, which was not a very bright decision.  Unlike the Tapo, which was super easy to setup and plug into iSpy, you can only access the Kasa camera footage and controls through an Android or iPhone app, you can’t pipe its feed into whatever system you want.

Affordable Webcams

Setting up wifi cameras aren’t much of a hassle these days.  I’m not much of a product reviewer on this site, I like to provide solutionshere on tools.belchamber.us so I won’t get into camera brands too much. However, I have a few thoughts I thought I’d share in case you bought a web cam and expected it to work with the pretty awesome and free iSpy security cam footage management tool.

I needed two cameras but was overwhelmed shopping for them because there are so many choices out there.  I wanted to at least go with a brand I recognized even though inevitably it’s likely everything is from the same Chinese factories these days.

On top of that, I decided on two cameras, a Kasa Cam Outdoor and a Tapo C210. No shocker to only find out both are made by TP-LINK and basically use the same software though both require different apps.

Kasa Ignores What Their Customers Want

In trying to hook up iSpy to my Kasa camera I stumbled onto a forum on their site where many users complain of the same thing.  The fact you can only access and manage the camera and footage through their app is quite a limitation! Many customers who are happy enough with the camera itself are complaining about this.

Tapo on the other hand has updated their camera to even allow a user to control the PTZ (Pan, Title and Zoom) from a web browser through the “ONVIF” open standards.  This forum topic explains it very easily. Just use the “ONVIF” setting and NOT the Network setting of the camera and you’ll be able to have full control!  Well done, Tapo!

Between Tapo and Kasa if they were both dogs, Tapo would get a treat and Kasa…. Well, let’s just say they’re in the doghouse until they open their cameras up to ONVIF.

Customers want flexibility so we can hook them up to whatever security system we choose!

If Kasa did that, if they listened to their customers their cameras would be more useful AND they would sell more. I know that’s obvious to most readers but to have to explain this to the people at TP-LINK makes one wonder about the company’s priorities.