Hardware Smart Home

What does the light on the TP-Link Tapo C200 camera mean?

light TP-Link Tapo C200

Smart home automation is very popular at the moment and TP-Link has joined the fray with their Tapo range of products. One of these, the TP-Link Tapo C200, is a WiFi connected security camera, which features a blinking light on the front.

If you own one of these, you’d be forgiven for wondering, “what does that light actually mean?” Unless you’ve kept (or can now find) the paper manual that came with it, you may be out of luck, as their website doesn’t provide this information. But, don’t worry, we can tell you everything you need to know!

LED colourMeaning
Solid redThe Tapo is starting up
Flashing redThe camera is resetting itself
Solid greenA connection to WiFi has been made
Flashing green (slowly)It’s connecting to WiFi
Flashing green (quickly)The camera is updating
Flashing red and greenThe Tapo is ready to be set up

As a reader of The Big Tech Question pointed out, this is pretty terrible for people who have the most popular variation of colour blindness, which is between red and green. How big of an issue is this? Well, 6% of males won’t be able to tell what the status light is indicating.

It’s also worth mentioning that TP-Link make no reference to how you can tell the difference between the green light flashing slowly and quickly on the Tapo C200. How slow is slow? Until you’ve seen both, you won’t know. Ideally, they should specify the time difference – e.g. slow is one flash per second, fast is three times a second.

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About the author

David Artiss

Works for Automattic Inc., the company behind WordPress.com and Tumblr. Tech geek, international speaker and occasional PC Pro podcaster. Lover of Lego and video games.

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