Cellular camera

[alldaysit]

Just some quick thoughts I had. I like the possible option of not accessing the camera but once every few months or so to change batteries etc. I do like Reconyx (own two older versions) and am looking forward to the reviews of there new microfire and the wifi download from a certain distance. That would seem handy.

Who on here runs a cellular trail camera?

If you have one, what type do you have?
How much was it?
How much per month via contract?
How long do the batteries last?
What region of the world do you use it in?
What months do you use it?
How does it perform for your intended purchase?

Please try not to turn this into a Ford vs. Chevy thread.

 

[lakngulf]

I have the Spartan GoCam, with AT&T cell service. I have been very happy with it. I am thinking I got it in the $379 range
Cell service is $25 every three months. That is for a certain amount of data transfer and I have not exceeded it yet.
First set of batteries were gone in a short time (five weeks I think) but the second set has lasted since late March. Usage and availability to signal I think have a lot to do with battery life. For my first couple of months of usage I had the camera over hog traps, and we got LOTS of pictures. If the hogs were caught then we had movement and pictures every minute for the rest of the night.
I bought it for security at the hunting land. I have it double locked so that a thief at least has to do some work to remove it. Hopefully, I get a picture before that.

Supposedly, Verizon was to offer a plan that was just $5 extra on existing phone plans.

EDIT: I had all five of my regular trail cameras stolen so that was the man reason to not go that route again.

 

[4wanderingeyes]

I have a few Covert Code Blacks, I have 2015, and 2016 models. I have had great battery use, 6-9 months. The old plan is $25 for 3 months with 1 gig. The 2016 is $9.99 a month for 1000 pictures. Summer months that isn't an issue, but come fall, I would be pushing that most months. I think they were about $379.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[yoderjac]

I use a higher end wireless system but I don't use the cellular component. It was and expensive upfront cost and a challenge to setup (900 MHz RF communications). My network of 11 cameras are bullet-proof and have been running 24/7/365 or well over 5 years without a single camera related failure. I have had a couple animals chew through antenna cables, user screw-ups, and SLA battery issues, but the camera run flawlessly. If you set the programming in balance with the solar panel power collection, they can go many, many months without a visit. They do have a cell base if you don't have a local facility, but I have a trailer at my farm so I use a PC base to receive pictures. There is no monthly bill. Unlike most cell based cams they don't resample the pictures to a low resolution before sending them. I get full resolution pictures. If your PC base is connected to the internet, you can have them emailed anywhere (or if you use a cell base).

This kind of investment is probably not worth it for the average hunter or on land where theft is a problem. However, I use mine for QDM decision making. If reliability and longevity are important for your application, I've found no better option.

I'm running an old BEC Orion series. BuckeyCam came out with a new less expensive system with lower powered radios a couple years ago called the X7D and then provided an upgrade path to a somewhat higher powered radio in the X80 camera. I only have one of these I'm using for testing. There is a long but good and detailed thread on these on the QDMA trail camera section: https://www.qdma.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48318 I'm not sure how long that thread will be around. There is lots of end user feedback on that thread and you get to see the growing pains associated with the new X-series.

It is not a good fit for everyone but perfect for my application.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

FYI, I transferred that X7D thread over here so it won't be lost. If the link in the previous post stops working try this one: http://habitat-talk.com/index.php?threads/x7ds-are-in-transferred-from-qdma-forums.5724/

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Bill]

Also a BEC user. I started later than Jack so I have the (eh-hem, less expensive ones) frankly, there friggin expensive!
I just placed a $600 order for a repeater, soler panel and 4 replacement batteries. I'm running an 8 camera network as a non resident owner miles from my farm. It has 2 benifits in this case.

First it's RF. No cell charges but I do have to pay for the Internet at the farm. I use splashtop streamer to connect to an old laptop that runs the system. Cameras easily transmit via RF for a mile. (Line of sight). I just ordered the repeater because I have one camera 2 miles from the base. It has always been intermittent in service. The repeater will allow me to add more cams far away from the base.

The second and what I feel is the best benifits to this system is the email feature. I'm miles from the farm. Yet when it triggers I get an emailed pic in seconds to minutes. I have a few locals that I let trap, coon hunt, fish etc. in the off season.
Nothing spreads down the telegraph quite like calling one of them to say I see you're doing XYZ while thier still doing it.

One over stepped his bounds this spring and took a horse ride across my place. When he saw a camera, he called me. I answered and said yea I see your in field XYZ with a friend. His presents was harmless but his talking about the experience at the local watering hole is priceless.

I'm all in for high tech redneck.

 

[yoderjac]

Bill,

You know you can use a camera as a repeater right? Is the repeater that much less expensive than a camera? By the way, I always buy my batteries locally. They are expensive to ship because of the weight. I use my local batteries plus. I was able to find higher aH batteries that fit the BEC battery case than came with my X-series.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Bill]

Bill,

You know you can use a camera as a repeater right? Is the repeater that much less expensive than a camera? By the way, I always buy my batteries locally. They are expensive to ship because of the weight. I use my local batteries plus. I was able to find higher aH batteries that fit the BEC battery case than came with my X-series.

Thanks,

Jack

Never thought of batteries plus. I've heard them advertised on the radio. I'll have to look up how close one is. Other batteries I've gotten from radio shack or Home Depot are not as good as BEC's.

Yes I use a few cams as repeaters now. Going to be setting this one up in an area near the road so there is a chance for theft/vandalism. Figure I'd rather loose a half price repeater than a full camera.

 

[yoderjac]

I setup a commercial account with Batteries Plus that gives me a discount off the retail price. My home depot doesn't even sell SLA batteries. These batteries are the same general type use in UPS for computer power outages, so another place to check is any place that sells UPS. I found those places to be more expensive than Batteries Plus. Most all SLA batteries are sourced from China regardless of the label. I scan all my receipts from Batteries Plus. Occasionally I have batteries go bad in less than a year. This is usually because of some issue like new growth shading a solar panel and the battery gets and stays low for a while before I notice and correct the problem. This reduces battery life significantly. But sometimes the batteries were just in storage and drained over time when I got them and thus have a short life. Batteries plus has been great at testing and replacing bad batteries for me.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[John-W-WI]

I have a question for the BEC users - I'm building a shed on my property and intend to move my base antenna near the shed. As this will give me much more elevation than the current location and hopefully allow me to reach more of the property with cameras.

The shed will have metal walls/roof. How should I position my antenna? Well above the peak of the roof, centered on the roof? Hoping the roof could become a big reflector for the antenna ;)

I know wireless transmission and antennas is a complicated matter. I was hoping someone here could give me some suggestions?

Thanks,

-John

 

[yoderjac]

John,

How you position the antenna an the type of antenna will depend on your topography, vegetation, and camera setup. The roof won't act as a reflector. What you are trying to do with placement is to minimize the obstructions between the antennas of the camera and the base. At 900 MHz water is a big attenuator. Pine trees are essentially standing water. Hardwoods are not quite as bad.

So, if you are on flat land in general and your base antenna is high, the camera antennas only need to transmit through a small section of vegetation before the signal gets above the trees into free space. So in general higher is better. This is especially true if you can elevate both antennas above the trees. However, terrain can come into play. If you are transmitting from one hillside across a valley to another, adding height might actually make you go through more blockage depending on how steep the terrain.

There are basically two types of antennas that apply to these cameras, yagi and Omni. A yagi directs the energy from one side of the antenna (left/right) to the other. The higher the gain (db), the more directional and the tighter the angle. An Omni directional antenna transmits equally in all lateral dirctions. I produces kind of a donut pattern around the antenna. Higher gain Omni antennas direct more power from above and below the antenna to the sides making for a thinner wider donut.

If your base is near the middle of your coverage area, a high gain Omni antenna works best for the base. If all of your cameras are in the same general direction from the base (ie; the base is in the corner of your property, a yagi works better. You want to point the base yagi at the centroid of your distribution of cameras.

Unless a camera is also being used as a repeater, it is best to use a yagi so it can be pointed at the base antenna. If you can provide more detail and maps of the setup I can probable offer more guidance.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[John-W-WI]

Thanks Jack....

The shed will be relatively centrally located on the property. The site is the highest point on the property (or nearly so). I have some very steep terrain, but the cameras should all be able to "see" the top of the hill that I intend to put the antenna on. My base antenna is an omni directional model and I have the big yagi for each camera if necessary.

So should I just get the omni directional up as high on the site as possible?

-John

 

[yoderjac]

John,

Think about drawing a straight line from each camera to the base antenna. You want to position the antenna such that you minimize the amount of vegetation between the two along that line. In most cases a higher base antenna is better but not always.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

We've talked about antennas and I happened to be changing something in my network and I thought I show some pics. I have one camera and was using a 9 db yagi to point at another camera with an 8 db Omni that relayed pictures to the base station. I had another camera not far from it but down over the hill just enough it could not see that repeating camera. It was transmitting to another repeating camera in another direction. The signal was weak but it had been working. Finally this year, the pines grew enough that the signal level got really spotty between that camera and its repeater. There was enough packet loss that it was draining the battery and the camera often lost all communication. So, I decided to reconfigure.

I first replaced the 9 db yagi with an 8 db Omni. A loss of one db is pretty small. Keep in mind how yagi and Omni antennas work. Yagi antennas move the power horizontally from one side of the antenna to the other. The higher the gain, the more the power is transferred into a narrow beam. So, even though that 9 db yagi was only a short distance from the problematic camera, I could not use it in the path because it was pointed at its repeater in completely the opposite direction. So, by changing it to an 8 db Omni, the pattern is the same in all horizontal directions around the antenna.

Here is the 9 db yag1 before I made the chage:

Here is the 8 db Omni I used to replace it:

The next step was to simply reorient the little 6 db yagi on the problematic camera to point at the antenna shown above. I got a great signal but it is 2 hops now. We will see how this affects the overall system over time.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Updated Picture Links

 

[nwmn]

I use a higher end wireless system but I don't use the cellular component. It was and expensive upfront cost and a challenge to setup (900 MHz RF communications). My network of 11 cameras are bullet-proof and have been running 24/7/365 or well over 5 years without a single camera related failure. I have had a couple animals chew through antenna cables, user screw-ups, and SLA battery issues, but the camera run flawlessly. If you set the programming in balance with the solar panel power collection, they can go many, many months without a visit. They do have a cell base if you don't have a local facility, but I have a trailer at my farm so I use a PC base to receive pictures. There is no monthly bill. Unlike most cell based cams they don't resample the pictures to a low resolution before sending them. I get full resolution pictures. If your PC base is connected to the internet, you can have them emailed anywhere (or if you use a cell base).

This kind of investment is probably not worth it for the average hunter or on land where theft is a problem. However, I use mine for QDM decision making. If reliability and longevity are important for your application, I've found no better option.

I'm running an old BEC Orion series. BuckeyCam came out with a new less expensive system with lower powered radios a couple years ago called the X7D and then provided an upgrade path to a somewhat higher powered radio in the X80 camera. I only have one of these I'm using for testing. There is a long but good and detailed thread on these on the QDMA trail camera section: https://www.qdma.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48318 I'm not sure how long that thread will be around. There is lots of end user feedback on that thread and you get to see the growing pains associated with the new X-series.

It is not a good fit for everyone but perfect for my application.

Thanks,

Jack

Are you for hire? Lol, I don't understand any of that network stuff. Do you have a system of cameras and they work off a relay system and sent to a main hub? Such as a dvr?

 

[yoderjac]

I'm not for hire, but am happy to provide what advise I can via this forum. The way the buckeye camera system works is that individual cameras receive commands from and transmit pictures to a base using free spectrum (900 MHz same as the old cordless phones used to use). So, transmitting pictures to the base is free. The distance the cameras can be from the base depends on the radio in the camera, the antennas used, the vegetation or other blockage in between, and the distance from the base.

There are 3 possible bases. Another camera can be used as a base, but there are few applications where that is useful. The other two types are a PC base and a Cell base. The PC base connects to a PC via USB. This is the least expensive option and works well when your cameras are near your house or cabin where you can keep a PC running 24/7. Once the pictures are received at your PC, they can be sent anywhere if you have an internet connection.

If you don't have the facilities nearby for a PC base, you can use a cell base. With that, the pictures are received from the cameras at the cell base and then forwarded to you computer at home via the cell system and the internet.

If you have flat ground without thick vegetation like pines, these cameras are fairly plug-n-play. If you need to install high powered antennas like I did, it can be a much bigger job.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Bszweda]

I am running a Moultrie mobile modem and A30. I've been running it since the last week April . Its 10 dollars a month for like 1000 low/compressed photos (with the option of requesting high definition if you see a picture of interest). I tweaked my camera to upload twice a day and so far battery life has been good. Setup was extremely easy and with this setup I have the ability to upgrade my camera. I plan on upgrading to the A40i because the A30 trigger seems to be poor. However I might end up getting another Celluar trail camera (HCO spartan) as viewing photos remote is quite addicting =)

 

[yoderjac]

I am running a Moultrie mobile modem and A30. I've been running it since the last week April . Its 10 dollars a month for like 1000 low/compressed photos (with the option of requesting high definition if you see a picture of interest). I tweaked my camera to upload twice a day and so far battery life has been good. Setup was extremely easy and with this setup I have the ability to upgrade my camera. I plan on upgrading to the A40i because the A30 trigger seems to be poor. However I might end up getting another Celluar trail camera (HCO spartan) as viewing photos remote is quite addicting =)

For hunting purposes, the low end cell cams can work well. I use mine for deer management. Reliability is the top concern for me. When a camera goes down trending data can be significantly biased. I also need every picture in high resolution. BEC is one of the few with this. This is less important with the lower end cams. Most use a short range wide PIR so you don't get animals trigger the camera from a long distance but you often get only heads or tails with the wide angle and slower trigger speeds. Full resolution becomes less important since zooming in on a more distant rack occurs less often.

The cameras I use don't fit most folks. For me, they are workhorses that provide important data. They have a high initial setup cost and frankly are not a great choice where theft and vandalism are concerns. However, with the lifespan of these cameras compared to the low end of the market, my initial setup cost is amortized over many more years.

I have heard some fairly good things about the Spartan at that end of the market.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Peplin Creek]

I have Spartan cams over my food plots, they work well. I wish they would get better battery life though. I seem to get 1 1/2 months out of them on the 6v with a small solar panel and batteries in the cam. Other than that though. They really seem to be pretty solid.