Media Sync is not very reliable

[fred777]

Description

This is about Homeassistant 2025.8.3 and TapoControl integration 7.0.0 and it has been bothering me for a couple of months already. It has been improved quite a bit since 6.x.x, but till today media sync is still not 100% reliable and gets stuck very often without recovering for countless hours.

I have two Tapo cameras - C211 (hw 2.0, fw 1.4.7) and C220 (hw 1.0, fw 1.3.2) - and for the latter media sync gets stuck very often - either in the midst of retrying a download or just in idle state - and no more movies will be downloaded from there on until I restart the integration.

When I browse the media files there often are dozens of unsynced movies and if I click on one of them the related download will start instantly. But after that, remaining images will not be downloaded.

The most reliable way to trigger synchronization is to restart the TapoControl integration.

This will work for a while until it get's stuck again for whatever reason and that behavior can be watched on sensors.*_recordings_synchronization.

At the time of that screenshot there were dozens of movies from past couple of days not downloaded and the system was in "idle" state for many hours until I restarted the service and it started to retrieve all pending movies immediately.

I wish there was a way to trigger this periodically, e.g. twice a day.

The media storage folder is on the same drive as Homeassistant. It's an SSD and there are several 100GB free.

Media sync interval is last 500 hours for each camera.

It works much more reliable for the C211 (but may get stuck as well, but very rarely).

Wifi connectivity to both cameras is okish - RSSI between -60 and -65dBm.

And yes: Third Party Compatibility is turned on of course.

Reproduction Steps

It happens every day 🤷‍♂️

Expected behavior

All media should be synchronized continuously. And if there is an error it should retry until it succeeds.

If applicable, add error logs.

No response

Device Firmware

1.3.2 Build 250610 Rel.61762n

Integration Version

7.0.0

Using stream component

Yes

Does camera work via official integrations?

Yes

Camera has all attributes filled out in developer tools

Yes

HASS Environment

Docker on x86 PC running 64Bit Archlinux

Search for similar issues

Yes

Additional information

No response

[fred777]

Here's another screenshot of media sync being stuck for at least 15h with a bunch of videos not synced yet, this time not stuck on "idle" but "retrying"

After reloading the integration, it finally started to sync all pending videos.

[demod-au]

I have also got this problem, but I am using the D235 doorbell.

My solution is to automate your solution by reloading the config. It will then sync for a while and get stuck again. But at least I'm getting most or all of the media copied.

`alias: reload doorbell for sync
description: sync gets stuck, reload each night
triggers:

• trigger: time
  at: "03:00:00"
  conditions: []
  actions:
• target:
  device_id: 6feb0e49e0d3246a3a9ceafbdc9c372f
  action: homeassistant.reload_config_entry
  data:
  entry_id: 01K5TFBKQ842TD9R81E9KKJKSE
  mode: single
  `

[JurajNyiri]

Could you try with https://github.com/JurajNyiri/HomeAssistant-Tapo-Control/tree/media_download_progress please.

Follow manual installation steps, make sure to completely replace, or ideally remove the tapo_control folder before copying the new one in. Do not rename it or keep the old version.

[demod-au]

I've just installed the version above. Will monitor and report back. thanks!

[demod-au]

It was running for 4 hours, and had synchronised a few weeks. It seemed to take control of the recording much better as I would receive a message that it was already being accessed. It was working the best it ever had! Syncing much longer than ever before.

Then I threw a spanner in the works. ;). I waited until it had finished grabbing a video clip, then jumped into the recordings on the app.

This tripped up the sync and crashed the whole HA.
Here's the last few lines of the log from the Docker container.

Warning: Could not calculate length from stream.

Server did not send a new chunk in 10.0 sec (sequence 4228, session 233), assuming the stream is over

could not convert string to float: b'N/A\n'

Warning: Could not calculate length from stream.

could not convert string to float: b'N/A\n'

Warning: Could not calculate length from stream.

could not convert string to float: b'N/A\n'

Warning: Could not calculate length from stream.

could not convert string to float: b'N/A\n'

Warning: Could not calculate length from stream.

could not convert string to float: b'N/A\n'

2025-12-03 10:34:35.102 ERROR (MainThread) [custom_components.tapo_control] 'user_id'

[JurajNyiri]

Thanks!

Don’t do that as that will break the sync as that is how the camera works, there is not much that can be done about that.

Ha crash is very unlikely, but I will take a look at that user_id error.

[fred777]

For me, nothing changed with 7.0.12 compared to 7.0.2.

C211 syncs without issues

C220 gets stuck very often (daily) and only resumes sync when I manually restart the integration.

Try the branch you posted above right now.

What I can tell so far:

C211 - where nothing needs to be synced right now - is alternating between "Starting" and "Idle" every 2..3 seconds.

...pretty odd and generating unnecessary event records.

C220 is syncing right now and compared to older versions it's reporting download progress every 1 second (which is I guess what that experimental branch is about)....

[demod-au]

C211 - where nothing needs to be synced right now - is alternating between "Starting" and "Idle" every 2..3 seconds.

I am also seeing this, but ever minute. Seems to cause high load or blocking so that the activities and history graph are trying to constantly load, but never finish.

When sync is on I'm getting this in the console which is happening every 60s.

2025-12-03 20:59:28.133 WARNING (MainThread) [custom_components.tapo_control] Failed to get file from cold storage: /mnt/public/01-tapo/videos/1764507599-1764507599.mp4
2025-12-03 21:00:27.271 WARNING (MainThread) [custom_components.tapo_control] Failed to get file from cold storage: /mnt/public/01-tapo/videos/1764507599-1764507599.mp4
2025-12-03 21:01:27.440 WARNING (MainThread) [custom_components.tapo_control] Failed to get file from cold storage: /mnt/public/01-tapo/videos/1764507599-1764507599.mp4
2025-12-03 21:02:27.738 WARNING (MainThread) [custom_components.tapo_control] Failed to get file from cold storage: /mnt/public/01-tapo/videos/1764507599-1764507599.mp4

I did create a dummy file and put it in the folder which seems to have settled things down alot. Still cycles ever 60s from idle to starting.

[JurajNyiri]

Thanks for the reports.

Note: 7.0.12 does not have any changes for this.

#1068 (comment)

This does.

[fred777]

Ok, so with that experimental branch media synchronization still gets stuck (sync state is "Idle" for several hours despite new records have been made) on my C220, but not on my C211.

And it's not only media sync, also the RSSI gets stuck.

But as soon as I browse media and click on a recording that hasn't been downloaded yet, synchronization will resume, but only with the missing recording that I clicked previously. Further recordings do not get synced.

Restarting tapo integration for that C220 camera brings everything back to normal, i.e. RSSI gets updated again and it will sync all missing recordings.

[JurajNyiri]

I have one of my cameras which is unreliable as well. What I can see is that also the recordings through app fail to stream, are very slow to load, is this something you are seeing as well or do recordings work via the app with no issues?

[fred777]

I have one of my cameras which is unreliable as well. What I can see is that also the recordings through app fail to stream, are very slow to load, is this something you are seeing as well or do recordings work via the app with no issues?

Need to wait until it happens again... But I don't remember any issues in the app.

But i can imagine that this state where sync completely stalls could be triggered by short Wifi interruptions which happen sometimes during the night, don't know why, maybe radio interference, but during the day my Wifi is very stable and RSSI is < -65dB). And no - it's not my microwave - that's already been ruled out by selecting a Wifi channel far away from it. So neighbour's microwave maybe 🙈

Ah, but RSSI is stuck again for several hours on my C220 - does this happen to anyone as well?

Wanted to check in the app but C220 is shown as offline there 🤔 At the same time in HA I can still watch the stream and media sync seems to work too. Very odd 🤷‍♂️

I need to add that I blocked internet access for all tapo cameras in my router. And now I thought "lets see if there is a firmware update". And look: as soon as I enabled internet access, the camera became online again in the app et voila: there is an update shown in the app, but without any description or version number. Let's see what happens after it finishes updating...

This is the before the update, according to HA:

Firmware: 1.3.2 Build 250610 Rel.61762n
Hardware: 1.0 

After the update:

Firmware: 1.4.1 Build 250904 Rel.75330n
Hardware: 1.0 

So, according to the release notes there were some "device stability improvements":

https://www.tp-link.com/de/support/download/tapo-c220/v1/#Firmware-Release-Notes

Let's see if it helps.

[abeilprincipino]

I’m facing some issues as well on my side:
The media sync does not happen automatically whatsoever…

Do I need to try the new branch?

[fred777]

@abeilprincipino yes, the new branch is definitely an improvement and please also make sure to have latest camera firmware. I didn't any issues for quite a while now...

[demod-au]

I have to report further that my D235 doorbell, is still getting stuck. It will sit there on "starting" for days. Much better than before but still not 100%. It might take a day to get stuck now, before it was within an hour or two.