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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 colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Solid red | The Tapo is starting up |
| Flashing red | The camera is resetting itself |
| Solid green | A connection to WiFi has been made |
| Flashing green (slowly) | It’s connecting to WiFi |
| Flashing green (quickly) | The camera is updating |
| Flashing red and green | The 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, and fast is three times a second.
Related reading: TP-Link TL-PA7017P Powerline Starter Kit review: better than Wi-Fi?
