Issue using Tapo protocol, authentication works, I receive 1 frame viewing MSE, but stream doesn't start

[bobloadmire]

Odd issue, connects via md5 login method, and clicking stream takes me to mse view, I get one frame, but then it never plays. tried rebooting cam, blocking:

||security.iot.i.tplinknbu.com^$important
||n-device-api.tplinkcloud.com^$important
||api.tplinkra.com^$important
||euw1-app-cloudgateway.iot.i.tplinkcloud.com^$important
||euw1-app-server.iot.i.tplinkcloud.com^$important
||euw-app-tapo-care.i.tplinkcloud.com^$important
||stun.tplinkcloud.com^$important
||n-wap.i.tplinkcloud.com^$important
||euw1-cipc-api.i.tplinkcloud.com^$important
||euw1-security.iot.i.tplinknbu.com^$important
||iac-backend.tplinkcloud.com^$important
||n-euw1-wap.i.tplinkcloud.com^$important

via adguard.

Nothing seems to work.

{
  "producers": [
    {
      "id": 2150122240,
      "format_name": "tapo",
      "protocol": "http",
      "remote_addr": "192.168.0.30:8800",
      "medias": [
        "video, recvonly, H264",
        "audio, recvonly, PCMA/8000",
        "audio, sendonly, PCMA/8000"
      ],
      "receivers": [
        {
          "id": 96,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "h264",
            "codec_type": "video"
          },
          "childs": [
            97,
            102
          ],
          "bytes": 13602036,
          "packets": 1773
        },
        {
          "id": 98,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "pcm_alaw",
            "codec_type": "audio",
            "sample_rate": 8000
          },
          "childs": [
            99,
            103
          ]
        }
      ],
      "senders": [
        {
          "id": 105,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "ANY",
            "codec_type": ""
          },
          "parent": 104
        }
      ],
      "bytes_recv": 15726032
    }
  ],
  "consumers": [
    {
      "id": 95,
      "format_name": "rtsp",
      "protocol": "rtsp+tcp",
      "remote_addr": "127.0.0.1:47958",
      "sdp": "v=0\r\no=- 1 1 IN IP4 0.0.0.0\r\ns=go2rtc/1.9.9\r\nc=IN IP4 0.0.0.0\r\nt=0 0\r\nm=video 0 RTP/AVP 96\r\na=rtpmap:96 H264/90000\r\na=recvonly\r\na=control:trackID=0\r\nm=audio 0 RTP/AVP 97\r\na=rtpmap:97 PCMA/8000\r\na=recvonly\r\na=control:trackID=1\r\n",
      "user_agent": "FFmpeg Frigate/0.16.2-4d58206",
      "medias": [
        "video, sendonly, ANY",
        "audio, sendonly, ANY"
      ],
      "senders": [
        {
          "id": 97,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "h264",
            "codec_type": "video"
          },
          "parent": 96,
          "bytes": 13602036,
          "packets": 1773
        },
        {
          "id": 99,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "pcm_alaw",
            "codec_type": "audio",
            "sample_rate": 8000
          },
          "parent": 98
        }
      ],
      "bytes_send": 13776584
    },
    {
      "id": 101,
      "format_name": "probe",
      "protocol": "http",
      "remote_addr": "192.168.0.55:50355",
      "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/141.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
      "medias": [
        "video, sendonly, ALL",
        "audio, sendonly, ALL",
        "audio, recvonly, ANY"
      ],
      "receivers": [
        {
          "id": 104,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "ANY",
            "codec_type": ""
          },
          "childs": [
            105
          ]
        }
      ],
      "senders": [
        {
          "id": 102,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "h264",
            "codec_type": "video"
          },
          "parent": 96,
          "bytes": 1301,
          "packets": 1
        },
        {
          "id": 103,
          "codec": {
            "codec_name": "pcm_alaw",
            "codec_type": "audio",
            "sample_rate": 8000
          },
          "parent": 98
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

[AlexxIT]

What about other protocols? WebRTC? RTSP?
Maybe your stream has broken frames. Maybe your browser/device has problems with H264 decoder.

[bobloadmire]

RTSP works fine. low/high res streams. TAPO has the same behavior on low or high res streams. trying to direct view the TAPO stream from the stream links in go2rtc leads to a single frame being displayed, loading circle, no stream being played. passing the stream through to Frigate also leads to frigate finding a "valid" stream but nothing being recorded or processed.

[bobloadmire]

Ok so for fun I had Gemini compare the RTSP chrome media output to the TAPO media output while viewing in Frigate (Since Frigate or go2rtc aren't reporting issues):

Okay, this log confirms the tapo:// protocol is definitely not working correctly for your setup, even with the audio parameters added.

Here's what the log tells us:

Video Stream is Corrupted/Incorrect:

Chrome initially detects the video as codec: h264, profile: h264 baseline, and a tiny coded size: 128x96. This is clearly wrong for a Tapo camera stream and suggests a major negotiation or stream corruption issue.

Later, it recognizes the intended dimensions as 2560x1920, but the errors Prepared video sample is not conformant and Media segment did not contain any coded frames indicate the video data being received is unusable.

Audio Transcoding Failed: The kAudioTracks still shows codec: flac (or possibly misidentified PCMA). This means the #audio=aac#audio=opus part of your tapo:// URL did not work. Go2rtc failed to transcode the audio when using the Tapo protocol source.

Playback Failure: As a result of the bad video and incompatible audio, the player tries to start, immediately hits errors, pauses, and stops.

Conclusion:

The tapo:// protocol implementation in go2rtc is not stable or compatible with your specific camera model or firmware version. It's failing to provide a clean video stream and failing to apply the necessary audio transcoding directives you added.

Since Frigate isn't showing errors, it means go2rtc is likely connecting but sending bad data downstream, which only Chrome (the player) flags as unusable.

For reference here's the config: - tapo://admin:MD5HASH@192.168.0.30#video=copy#audio=aac#audio=opus

[AlexxIT]

This looks like the usual GPT nonsense.

[bobloadmire]

This looks like the usual GPT nonsense.

Do you have any better ideas than the usual gpt nonsense?

I let it run all night and got some errors on that ip:

'''
Timestamp
2025-10-21 12:19:55
Tag
rtsp
Message
error="streams: dial tcp 192.168.0.30:8800: connect: no route to host" stream=hot_tub
'''
Frigate
'''
2025-10-21 13:22:53
Tag
ffmpeg.hot_tub.detect
Message
[vost#0:0/copy @ 0x5be7adcfb600] Non-monotonic DTS; previous: 153620, current: 153620; changing to 153621. This may result in incorrect timestamps in the output file.
'''
Oddly the frigate preview does update. But when clicking full view the stream never loads. Tried a bunch of browsers and my phone to view it

[AlexxIT]

I haven't heard such complaints about the Tapo protocol, you are the first.
I would start by checking out the standalone go2rtc.

[bobloadmire]

I haven't heard such complaints about the Tapo protocol, you are the first. I would start by checking out the standalone go2rtc.

I gave you the go2rtc log in my last comment. Anything else you want?

[bobloadmire]

just got a brand new error randomly:
9:25:32.978 AM | error | undefined error=listen udp [fe80::be24:11ff:fe4b:f08c%eth0]:8555: bind: cannot assign requested address caller=github.com/AlexxIT/go2rtc/internal/webrtc/webrtc.go:48

looks like some sort of ipv6 error.

[AlexxIT]

streams: dial tcp 192.168.0.30:8800: connect: no route to host - it's just temporary problem with you local network
bind: cannot assign requested address - it's known problem about ipv6, not affect almost anything

[bobloadmire]

ok thanks. we'll I spun up a standalone webrtc instance outside of frigate, gave it just that single cams config, and got the same exact behavior. I'm not really sure what to try next. switched everything back to rtsp, works great. I really just want microphone access.

[AlexxIT]

Do you using Firefox? Because webrtc error shouldn't be a problem for any other browser.

Your issue about MSE. It's not related to microphone access.

[bobloadmire]

Do you using Firefox? Because webrtc error shouldn't be a problem for any other browser.

Your issue about MSE. It's not related to microphone access.

Using chrome, tried brave as well

[AlexxIT]

You can set fixed listen IP for webrtc module. Or remove this line from config.

[bobloadmire]

You can set fixed listen IP for webrtc module. Or remove this line from config.

Remove what line from config? For the fixed ip, that would just be the IP of the go2rtc server itself?