Straight answer: we have tested Tapo, Prama and Qubo ourselves, and they work. But the brand on the camera is the wrong thing to check in general. What matters is whether the camera will hand over an RTSP stream. Most mains-powered cameras will. Most battery cameras will not, whatever the badge says.
This question comes up constantly, usually in the form "will it work with my cameras?" — asked by someone who has already spent money once and does not want to be told to spend it again. It deserves a straight technical answer rather than a sales one.
What the software actually needs
Analysis does not care what the camera looks like or who made it. It needs a video stream it can open and read, continuously.
Nearly every network camera and recorder can provide one, using a protocol called RTSP. The address looks like this:
rtsp://username:password@192.168.1.64:554/some/path
If your camera can produce a working address of that shape, it can be used. If it cannot, nothing outside the manufacturer's own app can read it — not us, not a NAS, not any other software.
That is the whole test. Everything below is just how each brand words it.
The brands people ask about
Three of these we have connected and tested ourselves — Tapo, Prama and Qubo. The rest is what the stream paths tell us, and we have marked which is which, because "we tested it" and "it should work" are not the same claim.
Prama — tested, works. It is the Hikvision line in India, so it uses the Hikvision stream path (/Streaming/Channels/101 for the first camera, main stream). This is one of the first paths a scan tries, so these are normally detected automatically — you enter the recorder's IP address and login, and the cameras appear.
Imou — not tested by us, expected to work. It is part of Dahua and uses the Dahua path (/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0), which is also tried early, so it should be equally automatic. CP Plus reuses the same scheme, which is why it behaves the same way.
Tapo (TP-Link) — tested, works. The mains-powered models support RTSP plus ONVIF Profile S, but there is a step people miss. You must create a Camera Account inside the Tapo app first:
Live View → Device Settings → Advanced Settings → Camera Account
That username and password are not your TP-Link cloud login, and the cloud login will not authenticate. Once the camera account exists, the address is rtsp://user:pass@CAMERA-IP:554/stream1 for the high-quality stream, or /stream2 for the lighter one.
The exception is the battery range. Most battery-powered Tapo models do not offer RTSP at all; only a few support it when hardwired and kept awake. If a camera sleeps between events to save its battery, there is no continuous stream for anything to read — including us.
Qubo — tested, works. Worth one check on your particular unit, though: Qubo devices are built around their own app, and not every model in the range exposes a stream. Where the model does, it behaves like any other camera. That caveat is not really about Qubo — it is true of any brand. A camera that only ever talks to its own app is not withholding the video from us in particular; there is simply nothing for any third-party software to read.
How to check your own camera in two minutes
- Open the camera or recorder's settings — its web page, or the manufacturer's app.
- Look for a section called RTSP, ONVIF, or sometimes just Network or Advanced.
- If you can enable RTSP, or you can see a stream port (usually 554), you are fine.
- If some brands require a separate stream username and password, create it there.
- If there is no such section anywhere, the camera is cloud-only.
A recorder matters more than the individual cameras, incidentally. If your cameras run into a DVR or NVR, it is the recorder that hands over the streams, and the analogue cameras plugged into it come along for the ride. In that case the brand of the individual camera is irrelevant — only the recorder's brand decides the path.
What this means in practice
Most sites we look at do not need new cameras. They need the streams they already produce to be watched by something that does not get bored.
Where a replacement is genuinely warranted, it is usually for a reason that has nothing to do with AI — a camera pointed at the wrong thing, a lens that cannot resolve a face at that distance, or a unit that has been dead for months without anyone noticing. Those are worth fixing on their own merits.
If you are buying new and want the option open, the thing to check on the box is not a feature list. It is one line in the manual confirming RTSP or ONVIF support. Cameras that lack it are choosing to be a closed system, and that is a decision you are making for years.