john volkman
5 year old buck +
The first batch of home plus units have also arrived for those waiting.
Cuddeback's Cuddelink
- Thread starter Peplin Creek
- Start date
Ed Brodt
5 year old buck +
- Location
- Central Kentucky
FYI. Just bought two of the Solar Panel Kits to use on G-Series cameras. On the box it clearly states it can be used on a G-Series camera with a AA battery pack. Thing is you cannot find a AA battery pack anywhere, even on Cuddeback web site. A call to customer service revealed that they are not available. Go figure.
john volkman
5 year old buck +
there may be a check box on the box that denotes whether the kit is for g series or j series. That said, you will be able to use it with a g camera but the AA battery packs arent scheduled to arrive until mid august. The first solar kits are sold out already so i would hang on to what you have if you want to use them with your G cams when the adapters are available.
davidhelmly
5 year old buck +
- Location
- Zone 8a West Central Georgia
I'm excited to see on the cell plan that you can send thumbnail images or full resolution 5MP images, that should help for people that need more detail.
john volkman
5 year old buck +
any image on a linked network will still be thumbnails, to get 5mp you would need to run a cuddeback cell cam as a stand alone unit.
davidhelmly
5 year old buck +
- Location
- Zone 8a West Central Georgia
Oh ok, that makes sense and after reading closer I see that now.
ACCMan
5 year old buck +
- Location
- Virginia Zone 8A
John, When using the HomeCell, how often does it send pics, and can the time be adjusted? I assume they are sent in a file just like the home camera, with each camera broken down into its own pics.
john volkman
5 year old buck +
you can set it it to send when it recieves a set number of pics or by time, the most efficient way to set it is in batches of 30, I.E. it will transmit an email each time it has 30 images in the que ready to be sent. . It also transmits a report each day showing status of all the cameras and it will also transmit at least once per day regardless of the amount of images its recieves. You can set it to send each time it receives an image but this isnt as efficient because it takes a few minutes to switch to cell mode form cuddelink mode, send the email, switch back to cuddelink mode etc and while its doing so the home unit isnt receiving other images form other remotes. Always keep in mind it can only do one thing at a time. If you are in need of the images to be sent immediately upon receipt, you can do so, but if you have multiple remote cams linked up that are also taking and sending images home , the home cell will get behind at some point and have a hard time catching up. Especially if you have a higher deer density and get lots of pics.
ACCMan
5 year old buck +
- Location
- Virginia Zone 8A
Thanks John, its nice to know you can tailor it to fit different properties deer density.
Red Picqua
5 year old buck +
here goes....my wife works at the local high school which is out in the country so its not uncommon to have deer and turkey close to school, well this particular afternoon i went to pick her up and as i pulled into the lot the gobbler in the pic was strutting on the lawn. I pulled over, got out and let a few calls out and he started drumming and strutting around my truck. He was definitley a wild bird but didnt have much fear of humans.He wouldn't let you touch him but he wouldn't leave either Supposedly he was up the road at the cheese factory store strutting in the window the day before and when the local warden arrived he was gone.
After a a bunch of laughs and pictures at the high school, the local warden came and was able to corral him (with some major difficulty) into a dog kennel and transport him to a public hunting grounds a couple miles away. Youth season opened that weekend so im sure he provided some excitement for a young hunter. The funny part is the people that know me well, know how much time i spend turkey hunting both for myself and with others I take out. My area of wi has a lot of turkeys in it and we do really well every spring, this year i was in on 24 tags being filled so you can imagine the ribbing i got when i posted a bunch of the pics of this bird. Most were joking that they now know why we are successful......the turkeys in my area are obviously not very wary! I have an old wagon wheel at my place , whenever we get a bird the tradition is to take a pic "on the wheel" many of my friends wait every year for all the wagon wheel pics to hit their phone. Here is some more pics for you turkey hunters. Sorry for the long rant to your question , talking turkey gets me a bit fired up!
that is a great story. beautiful turkeys and very funny pics of your wife. I would have paid to see a warden trying to coral up a wild bird. They are fun to hunt in the spring.
Peplin Creek
5 year old buck +
- Location
- Zone 4b - Central Wisconsin
John, do you know if the rechargeable batteries with the solar panel already come charged up? I have the cameras already out. I don’t want to pull one to charge the batteries if I don’t have too.
john volkman
5 year old buck +
They should be charged but they recommend that you charge them when you receive them. You dont have to charge them, they do include a charger with it. Rechargeables are a lower voltage than standard alkaline , right on the line of showing "low" at times. I do know some people that put them out without charging and arent having any issues. I would think if you can get them in a good spot facing south and angle them at 45deg you should be ok. They also include a swivel mount with them. If you are mounting them on a pole you will need at least one bolt and nut to secure it to our pole mount. If mounting on a tree you will need a couple screws or the strap to fix it to the tree.
Peplin Creek
5 year old buck +
- Location
- Zone 4b - Central Wisconsin
But don’t have to pull a camera out to use the charger. It looked like I had to put the batteries in the camera and then the charger into the camera, correct?
john volkman
5 year old buck +
yes thats correct, i wouldn't be afraid to put them right in the camera in the field without charging them. I would say odds are slim you will have an issue especially this time of year. with the amount of sunlight they will get.
BC18
A good 3 year old buck
- Location
- West Central WI
Hi all. About 6 weeks ago I purchased 6 of the G-series, 3 Powerhouse Blackflash and 3 Powerhouse IR's. I have the home cell unit on pre-order from a distributor. So far, for me, there are some pro's and cons with these units. I have 4 just off of known deer trails, 1 cam off a bean field and another on a clover plot.
Pro's
Above average trigger speed. On par with Browning Strike force and Reconyx Hyperfire2
Above average pic quality. The thumbnail quality exceeded my expectations as well.
Quiet. So far I haven't seen a deer notice or hear the cam while taking pics
John Volkman has been awesome! He personally responded to a few pm's very quickly and has been extremely helpful with advice/tips. Thanks again John!
Cons
Poor distance in heavily wooded areas. I'm getting a max of 350 yards on most cams. Hilly terrain and elevation effects the distance as well.
Battery life is horrible. To the point of defeating the entire purpose of the system. I had one cams batteries go bust after only 1682 pics, another at 1843 and 1 other made it to 2954. Whoever thought it was a good idea to go with 4 D batteries should be replaced. I would rather put in 12 AA Lithiums that can take 50,000+ pics without having to go out to the cams for replacements. I see that Cuddeback offers the Cuddepower for $20 and the solar unit for $70. I am not a fan of the upsell tactics and would rather pay the money upfront for a decent battery system that can handle the purpose of the system(not having to go to the cam every few weeks).
Weather, rains specifically, tend to mess with CL levels and put cams offline. I also noticed that if cams go offline due to rains I have to go out to each camera individually, go to CL Level and wait for it to get a new reading then re-arm it.
All in all, I love the system and it's intentions. Pic quality and trigger speed are above average. More than a little disappointed in the battery life department so far, as well as distance issues.
I've been told and understand this time of year is tougher on the distance due to heavy foliage and humidity. I'm hoping for a pretty good boost once fall hits and leaves start falling. Also, much respect for John and the help he has provided me personally and the forum.
So far I'm a little more partial to the powerhouse Blackflash's than the IR's.
Pro's
Above average trigger speed. On par with Browning Strike force and Reconyx Hyperfire2
Above average pic quality. The thumbnail quality exceeded my expectations as well.
Quiet. So far I haven't seen a deer notice or hear the cam while taking pics
John Volkman has been awesome! He personally responded to a few pm's very quickly and has been extremely helpful with advice/tips. Thanks again John!
Cons
Poor distance in heavily wooded areas. I'm getting a max of 350 yards on most cams. Hilly terrain and elevation effects the distance as well.
Battery life is horrible. To the point of defeating the entire purpose of the system. I had one cams batteries go bust after only 1682 pics, another at 1843 and 1 other made it to 2954. Whoever thought it was a good idea to go with 4 D batteries should be replaced. I would rather put in 12 AA Lithiums that can take 50,000+ pics without having to go out to the cams for replacements. I see that Cuddeback offers the Cuddepower for $20 and the solar unit for $70. I am not a fan of the upsell tactics and would rather pay the money upfront for a decent battery system that can handle the purpose of the system(not having to go to the cam every few weeks).
Weather, rains specifically, tend to mess with CL levels and put cams offline. I also noticed that if cams go offline due to rains I have to go out to each camera individually, go to CL Level and wait for it to get a new reading then re-arm it.
All in all, I love the system and it's intentions. Pic quality and trigger speed are above average. More than a little disappointed in the battery life department so far, as well as distance issues.
I've been told and understand this time of year is tougher on the distance due to heavy foliage and humidity. I'm hoping for a pretty good boost once fall hits and leaves start falling. Also, much respect for John and the help he has provided me personally and the forum.
So far I'm a little more partial to the powerhouse Blackflash's than the IR's.
john volkman
5 year old buck +
Bc18, thanks for the acknowledgment !
A couple points that hopefully will help.
Battery management is a challenge with this system because it works much harder than a stand alone camera that just takes and stores pics. This is why we came up with multiple options to increase longevity .
Lithium’s wouldn’t fix the problem completely , 12 lithium’s won’t do much more than 4 ds in this situation, what lithium does do is they stay at full power until dead which helps obtain good pics the entire time and also helps in cold weather. In a regular camera that isn’t transmitting they help a lot but not in this case. The challenge is always keeping the price down and the overall size small and that’s why they went with 4 ds as the standard out of box set up, that may change some day but for now that’s what we have. I run the battery boosters on my g cams and I get over 6 months .
You shouldn’t have to go out an re arm your cams after a rain event , it may take some time for the system to reconnect and catch up but I’ve never had to do so and the system is not designed that way, let me know if this happens again. You should not lose any pics either .
Lastly you will see an increase in range as fall approaches and humidity and leaf cover changes . Thanks again for the acknowledgment and don’t hestitate to contact me with any questions.
Peplin Creek
5 year old buck +
- Location
- Zone 4b - Central Wisconsin
I have the g series cams as well as the J series. I really like the g series paired with the cuddeback powerpack. I don’t see any other way to run them currently. I don’t have the picture numbers you do. But all of my g series cams have been out since the end of March and all are running on the external pack yet.
john volkman
5 year old buck +
every situation is a bit different but the hardest working units in order would be
1. home cell camera
2. home cell
3. Home camera without cell
4. home plus
5. remote camera
now some of that can change if pic count goes way up or down on any of the above that take pics. so again every saturation is a bit different.
In my opinion , i would tell anyone with a home cell camera or a home cell unit to run the battery booster that adds 6 d cells to the unit, then its running on 6 d's with the 4 in the unit as backup, when the external battery pack shows low , you know you have a month or two to get in and replace the batteries insuring you never lose power at the unit.
If running J's i would run the solar kit or the 6 d cell battery pack made for the j camera if you want to not have to go to the camera inside of 60-75 days.
BC18
A good 3 year old buck
- Location
- West Central WI
Thanks again for the tips guys!
I’ll definitely grab the power packs and get them up soon. I’m really looking forward to the home cell unit and hope to have a full system running by fall.
I’ll definitely grab the power packs and get them up soon. I’m really looking forward to the home cell unit and hope to have a full system running by fall.
