Use Your Tapo or ONVIF Camera as a Baby Monitor

Already have a Wi-Fi camera such as a TP-Link Tapo C210, or another camera that supports ONVIF? Baby Zzz's can show it next to your phone cameras. The video goes straight from the camera to your phone over your home Wi-Fi, without passing through the camera maker's cloud or ours.

What works with Wi‑Fi cameras today

• Finding cameras: the app searches your Wi-Fi for ONVIF cameras, or you enter the camera's address yourself.
• Live video and sound in the Monitor tab, next to your phone cameras: full screen, mute, pause and pinch to zoom.
• Pan, tilt and zoom on cameras that offer PTZ over ONVIF.
• Online status: a dot shows whether the camera answers on the network you are on.
• Family members: for each camera you choose whether the people in your account can watch it too (off by default).
• Two-way audio and sleep sounds through the camera's speaker on cameras with the ONVIF audio backchannel and on TP-Link Tapo cameras (see below).
• Away from home: through Baby Zzz's Desktop on a computer at home (Premium, see below).

Wi‑Fi cameras are in the Baby Zzz's app for Android. The iOS app is coming soon and supports Wi‑Fi cameras as well; talking through the camera's speaker comes to iOS later.

Do I need Premium?

No. Watching a Wi‑Fi camera on its own Wi-Fi network works on the free plan. Your phone talks to the camera directly, so it has to be on the camera's network (or connected to it through a VPN to your home).

Away from home, Baby Zzz's Desktop, an app for a Mac or Windows computer that stays on at home, shares your Wi‑Fi cameras with your phone over encrypted WebRTC. The app switches by itself: straight from the camera while you are on its Wi‑Fi, through Baby Zzz's Desktop elsewhere, with pan and tilt, push to talk and sleep sounds where the camera supports them. Sharing away from home needs Premium on the camera's account; without it, the camera shows as offline when you are away.

Your camera login stays on your devices

The camera's user name and password never go to our servers. Each phone keeps them encrypted (Android Keystore, iOS Keychain). When you make a camera available to family members, their devices receive the login end-to-end encrypted from yours: our server only passes on a sealed envelope it cannot open. Baby Zzz's Desktop gets the login the same way when it shares a camera. A phone without the login simply asks for it.

What you need

• An ONVIF camera with an RTSP stream. Many brands support ONVIF, including TP-Link Tapo, Amcrest, Reolink and Hikvision; look for "ONVIF" in your model's specifications.
• An Android phone with Baby Zzz's, on the same Wi-Fi network as the camera.
• The camera's own login for ONVIF and RTSP (for Tapo: the camera account from step 1).

Step 1: Create a camera account (Tapo)

Tapo cameras only answer ONVIF and RTSP with a camera account, a user name and password of the camera itself. It is not your TP-Link ID.

1. Open the Tapo app and select the camera.
2. Open its settings (the gear icon), then Advanced Settings and Camera Account.
3. Choose a user name and a strong password, and keep them for step 3.

Other brands: turn on ONVIF (sometimes called "Open Network Video Interface") and RTSP in the camera's app or web page, and create a user for it. Menu names differ between brands and firmware versions.

Step 2: Put the phone on the camera's Wi-Fi

Connect your phone to the same home network as the camera. We also recommend reserving the camera's IP address in your router (often called "DHCP reservation"), so the camera keeps the same address and Baby Zzz's always finds it there.

Step 3: Add the Wi‑Fi camera in Baby Zzz's

1. Open the Cameras tab, tap + (Add camera) and then choose A Wi‑Fi camera.
2. Choose your camera under Wi‑Fi cameras on this network, or tap Enter address. Tapo cameras use port 2020 for ONVIF, so enter for example 192.168.1.50:2020.
3. Type the camera account's user name and password and tap Test connection.
4. Tapo only: you can also enter your TP-Link account password (optional), which talking and sleep sounds through the camera need (see "Tapo two-way audio" below). You can enter it later too.
5. Pick the stream (the app suggests the sharpest H.264 stream up to Full HD) and a name.
6. Tick Make available to account members if your family should see this camera, then save.

Step 4: Watch it from the Monitor tab

Open the Monitor tab: Wi‑Fi cameras are listed after your phone cameras, with a green dot when they are online. Check the camera and tap View Camera(s). You can watch it together with your phone cameras.

Talking through the camera: ONVIF two-way audio

Many cameras with a speaker accept sound over ONVIF's audio backchannel (part of ONVIF Profile T, and offered by other cameras too). The app checks this by itself the first time a camera plays. When the camera takes sound from the app:

• Hold to talk: a push-to-talk button on the camera's tile sends your voice to the camera's speaker while you hold it.
• Sleep sounds: the music note plays noise or lullabies through the camera's speaker, and the volume slider sets the camera's speaker level.

This is in the Android app today.

Tapo two-way audio

Tapo cameras do not take sound over the ONVIF backchannel; their speaker uses TP-Link's own protocol, which the Baby Zzz's app for Android and Baby Zzz's Desktop speak too. For push to talk and sleep sounds on a Tapo camera:

• Turn on Third-Party Compatibility for the camera in the Tapo app.
• Enter the password of your TP-Link account (the one you sign in to the Tapo app with) when you add the camera, or when the app asks for it the first time you hold to talk or play a sleep sound.
• The password itself stays on your phone: only two hashes of it are kept, and they reach your family's devices and Baby Zzz's Desktop only end-to-end encrypted. If the camera refuses it, the app asks you again instead of retrying, because Tapo locks the account after repeated failures.

If something doesn't work

• The camera isn't found: tap Enter address and type its IP address (Tapo: with :2020). Your router's app lists the addresses of connected devices.
• Wrong user name or password: use the camera account (step 1), not the login of the camera maker's app.
• "Offline · not on this camera's network": connect the phone to the camera's Wi-Fi, or share the camera through Baby Zzz's Desktop (Premium).
• No push to talk on a Tapo: check that Third-Party Compatibility is on in the Tapo app and that you entered your TP-Link account password, not the camera account.
• Other connection problems: see Wi-Fi and network troubleshooting.

For developers

The ONVIF, RTSP and two-way audio code behind this feature is open source: see kotlin2rtc and swift2rtc.