Cuddeback's Cuddelink

[tlew]

So that's $60 a month for 4 cameras (my setup)?

I actually haven't had any problems with mine really. They ate batteries, so I put solar panels on them -- 100 days later, not a single issue. I put a cell home out and it was setup easy as pie. Put a D-cell batter booster on it and we're over a month on it. I get emails like clockwork, and I've only had one camera drop for a day and come back which I think was due to heavy rain.

Careful on saying "everyone" is having issues. Are they the *easiest* to setup? No, they require a little patience, but we're only talking about 5-10 minutes here. In less than an hour, I had all of mine setup plus another 20 minutes for my cell home and I save $40 a month or whatever it is. Seems like a good ROI to me. Oh yeah, and I get a report on all my cameras at once to check the health rather than having to keep track of them individually.

I'm being realistic, not a fan boy, and I think some of you guys are either not giving it a chance or have unrealistic expectations.

ETA: I don't have cell signal at all of my sites, so this is a blessing for me to put one cell home out where I DO have signal

 

[archer100]

I am glad I am using this system. I am also running 7 spartan cell cams and 4 Snyper cell cams and have had plenty of issues with them as well. Snypers suck in setup. Spartan has had plenty of issues not receiving pictures due to server issues and cams just quitting working.
I didn’t have any issue setting my cuddelink system up. Watched a quick video on Internet was way easier then the book. Battery life isn’t or wasn’t the best until read on here from john to run the externals. Much like was going thru 12 aa batteries a lot on my other cell cams until started running externals.

Like a few others have now said, I have fought issues with cell service on the other cameras but now with cuddelink I can set cameras in little holes where was no service and have them link back to home. I am really really liking this system and will be getting more soon!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[4wanderingeyes]

I really like the concept, and if everything worked as it should, I will probably pick up some, for the reasons stated above. Putting some cameras where I don’t have cell service. But maybe I am just too old school, and kinda like to put the batteries in it, go through a couple minute set up, and put it in the woods and forget it. I don’t want to have to make fine tune adjustments, to get decent pictures, that should happen either automatically, or it should be an adjustment you can do from your phone from home. Reading all of these pages, and I have stayed up on it, just makes me shake my head in how confusing, and the problems they are having. To me it seems as though the system should have been completely available, and thoroughly tested before it was sold to the general public.

If the cameras need to have an external battery pack in order to achieve average use, it should be included. If you are selling the cameras as a cell or remote emailed option, those pieces should be available at the time of release to the public.

Like I said, I like the concept, but I think for the majority of the general public, it needs to be simplified, and made to run average times, with the way it is sold.

I am a mechanical person. I would relate this as comparing your truck gets the same miles as your car, as long as you hook up an external fuel tank in the box of the truck. I will give the cameras some time to get the bugs worked out, and see if they fix my concerns, if they do, I will probably add some to my arsenal. If not, I will go with what works.

 

[rhwd2003]

Found this forum when researching cuddelink... I have a private lease about 45 minutes from my home and its driving me crazy to go up every two weeks and walk to every camera and swap cards and not know what is going on. So with all of that said I bought a 4 pack of the j-1415 with the new verizon cell home which should be arriving today. I do not have cellphone service at a couple of my food plots and really hoping these reach out to my food plots they are about 750-1,100 feet between each other and where I plan to put the home. If all goes as planned from all the help in this forum I hope they all link up through daisy chain and they all come back to the home and I get emailed what is going on! If so, I will probably purchase another four pack. I did purchase the extended battery boosters but wondering would the solar option work on the home with cell?

I read through the recommendations on all the settings what I haven't seen is the recommendations on the home cellular version? I saw comments about there is a queue of how many images before it emails them... does anyone have any recommendations on that? I obviously don't want an email everytime a picture is taken or it will eat through battery like crazy but what is about the best setting before the emails are sent?

Thanks for everyones help.

 

[BKRamey]

I activated 2 of them last night and signal was good and they are working fine.
My question is that I noticed different firmware versions on my 2 devices and wondered should they be the same? Also, when I tried to update the firmware, I got a CHECK SD message. Which I assumed to be an error

 

[Booner21]

Found this forum when researching cuddelink... I have a private lease about 45 minutes from my home and its driving me crazy to go up every two weeks and walk to every camera and swap cards and not know what is going on. So with all of that said I bought a 4 pack of the j-1415 with the new verizon cell home which should be arriving today. I do not have cellphone service at a couple of my food plots and really hoping these reach out to my food plots they are about 750-1,100 feet between each other and where I plan to put the home. If all goes as planned from all the help in this forum I hope they all link up through daisy chain and they all come back to the home and I get emailed what is going on! If so, I will probably purchase another four pack. I did purchase the extended battery boosters but wondering would the solar option work on the home with cell?

I read through the recommendations on all the settings what I haven't seen is the recommendations on the home cellular version? I saw comments about there is a queue of how many images before it emails them... does anyone have any recommendations on that? I obviously don't want an email everytime a picture is taken or it will eat through battery like crazy but what is about the best setting before the emails are sent?

Thanks for everyones help.

Believe they said 30 images 2x per day. I am in the exact same situation with my best properties 45 minutes away in different directions. Despite the issues I have had i would do it again tomorrow without thinking. Real time info and no intrusion are absolutely incredible to keep my properties fresh and monitored for the way i hunt. I can almost guarantee it will help me kill a good deer this year.

I have a deer I want to shoot that is walking past a cam in in the dark in the morning 6x this month pretty sure he is going back to bed in a place I have never had a cam because I didn't want to go in and check it. May be able to kill him on the first set of the year if I play my cards right and he cooperates.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[Melrose]

Hi guys,
I am on day 5 now of my bew cuddelink system..
And of comparrison, i have Spartans and reconyx too..
Set up is easy. I am not a tech wizard either...
So far i have gotten 4 of 8 cameras deployed with the farthest camera being 1.2 miles from my home link...
My terrain is hilly and i am pleased with the distance and signal strength i am getting..

I will be looking into adding a repeater at some point to get on the back side of the property. Does anyone know if the repeater counts as one of the 16 cameras? Or can i have as many repeaters as needed?
Thanks

 

[swat1018]

Hi guys,
I am on day 5 now of my bew cuddelink system..
And of comparrison, i have Spartans and reconyx too..
Set up is easy. I am not a tech wizard either...
So far i have gotten 4 of 8 cameras deployed with the farthest camera being 1.2 miles from my home link...
My terrain is hilly and i am pleased with the distance and signal strength i am getting..

I will be looking into adding a repeater at some point to get on the back side of the property. Does anyone know if the repeater counts as one of the 16 cameras? Or can i have as many repeaters as needed?
Thanks

The range impresses me, too. I would just get another cam to act as a repeater, I don't understand the value of the repeater. The batteries on my J series last about 50 days with alkaline. I plan to add some solar to mine. I wish the sensor and flash were better, really pleased with network capabities.

 

[Booner21]

We have a cam transmitting pics over 1.5 miles between cameras. Bypassing 1 home and going to another

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[FredG]

... I wish the sensor and flash were better, really pleased with network capabities.

I think I get a little more sensing range when I slide the selector up and mask the fresnel lens down to the three center zones. I don't know, but perhaps a little less dilution of the captured heat signature compared to the wide open seven zones?? A couple of G models with the PowerHouse black flash are very handy for the more challenging sets where longer flash range is needed, but of course that comes with some increase in cost.

 

[swat1018]

I think I get a little more sensing range when I slide the selector up and mask the fresnel lens down to the three center zones. I don't know, but perhaps a little less dilution of the captured heat signature compared to the wide open seven zones?? A couple of G models with the PowerHouse black flash are very handy for the more challenging sets where longer flash range is needed, but of course that comes with some increase in cost.

I don't understand what you're telling me. I have J model red IR. I had them in same location as a Browning HD Elite, probably best camera ever made. Browning filled 4GB card, Cudde had 280 pics.

 

[FredG]

I don't understand what you're telling me. I have J model red IR. I had them in same location as a Browning HD Elite, probably best camera ever made. Browning filled 4GB card, Cudde had 280 pics.

Haha! The reason you didn't understand what I was saying is because I didn't understand what you were saying!

 

[Ccabotlord]

Hi guys thanks for the add.
I am trying to attach an external Yagi antenna due to the poor service on my 226 acre farm in Kentucky. I have the G Series, Powerhouse Long Range IR Camera. There are three antennas for the camera. Can anyone tell me which antenna is for cellular service? Thanks in advance.

 

[rhwd2003]

Alright guys wanted to update everyone, I bought the 4 pack of the J model ir flash and ended up buying another pack for a total of 8. I also bought the home cellular version with verizon. Just a little backstory as I have read almost every page of this thread before I purchased so I thought I would contribute a little. Sorry for the length upfront.

I have a lease on about 325 acres that is about 45 minutes from my house. I have three kids, sports going on always something so when I go hunt its usually on the weekends and I am getting there with no extra time to go check cameras need to go straight to stand. Yes as we get closer to the rut it was driving me crazy not knowing what was on camera before I went and hunted that morning on Saturday usually. If I hunt in the morning I will make a loop that is 6,250 years or 3.55 miles (yes I calculated it). Not only was I walking the whole property but I was spreading my scent everywhere mostly through food plots as that is where most of my cameras were. I also did not have cell phone service except on the hill where I parked at the owners house. So attached below is a screenshot showing you the H (home) camera with cell service connected to the front and back parts of the property where my cameras are and the distance. I was pleasantly surprised how well the cuddelink connected to almost every single spot I wanted to put a camera and still had > 20 signal strength on the cuddelink network.


Cameras 1-3 that part of the property slopes down as the cameras 4-8 the property is steep hills up and down. I was very surprised how well it connected as the leaves have started falling so summer time with more vegetation on trees it may not work as a couple of these were at 22-24 signal strength.

So to go a little further with the story... this Friday afternoon I took half day off work and at lunch went and replaced my cameras with the cuddelink system and set it up. Friday afternoon I hunted came home and checked my cameras to find this buck (never before seen) show up on camera at 9:47am Friday morning.



I was very excited to see him, and see him hopefully more since I had the cellular cameras. I don't have a tree stand setup near this food plot and I only have my summit climber but didnt want to go in the morning in dark and try to find a tree without making too much noise so I decided to hunt another nearby place with a ladder stand. Didn't end up seeing him but saw a few other smaller bucks out roaming pre-rut. I didn't have service at the stand I was at but when I got back to the owners house where I park my car I had got an email from cuddelink with this picture. I am going to attach the first picture that is sent over email/cellular as the same quality that is on the home system memory card and show you it in reference to the picture was taken straight off the memory card. The picture above is from my old camera which was a cheapo off Amazon (was pretty happy with it if I had to say).

Version sent over cellular to my email:


Version straight off the memory card (J series cuddeback):


Now with that being said, if you look closely he was in that same spot Friday at 9:47am and then I would have not checked that camera again for maybe a week or two, well the next morning Saturday I got the email from cuddelink showing he had been in the same spot AGAIN just 11 minutes to the exact time from the previous day. I immediately thought wow, I am going to pattern this buck in 24 hours of owning the cuddelink cellular version. So armed with this info I found a tree yesterday afternoon and setup ready for him based upon his past two mornings going to the left of the camera to a gated opening. But unfortunately this morning we had like 20 mph winds all morning and he didn't show. If you look at the version that was emailed to me there is a lower quality obviously but it is enough for me to see and know its the same deer and I am pretty happy with that.

Anyways, just wanted to give you guys back who have provided so much info to this thread. I did buy the battery boosters to the J series.

I wished you could take multiple pictures or videos with the cameras even in cuddelink mode that stayed locally on the card and did not transfer to the home. I miss the short 15-30 second videos my old camera would take and 2-3 picture bursts. With this cuddelink I only get one picture with a say 10-15 second delay.

 

[FredG]

... I wished you could take multiple pictures or videos with the cameras even in cuddelink mode that stayed locally on the card and did not transfer to the home. I miss the short 15-30 second videos my old camera would take and 2-3 picture bursts. With this cuddelink I only get one picture with a say 10-15 second delay.

Thanks for that great write-up! Very informative, detailed and interesting!

I notice that you have remote camera #2 set to Setup Menu = EZ with Day & Night Delay = 10 seconds with 1 picture per trip day and night. To take more pictures and have them remain on the card for later retrieval I would suggest trying the following:

In your Settings Menu change your Setup Menu = Advanced Mode. (This will expand your options for setting up the camera.)

Set your Delay to FAP (fast as possible) and Images = 1 which will give you a pic to pic delay of 1 1/2 to 2 seconds between pics as long as motion is detected with 1 pic for each trip of the PIR sensor. Alternatively, you could set Images = 2, 3, 4, or 5 (burst mode) to force more pictures for each PIR sensor trip, but you will likely take more pictures than you really want or need. You make these setting independently for day and night photos.

I think that the number of images that get sent out over the network to the home unit is dependent on what setting you have chosen for the CL Delay. For instance, if you have CL Delay = 5 seconds, then 1 picture per 5 second period is pumped into the CuddelLink transmission queue and any remaining pics within that 5 second period are just written to the remote's SD card. I honestly don't remember if I tested this method to verify my reasoning or not, but I think I did... ageing hasn't been kind to my short term memory!

 

[FredG]

Hi guys thanks for the add.
I am trying to attach an external Yagi antenna due to the poor service on my 226 acre farm in Kentucky. I have the G Series, Powerhouse Long Range IR Camera. There are three antennas for the camera. Can anyone tell me which antenna is for cellular service? Thanks in advance.

The two on the top are the Cell antennas and the one on the side is the CuddeLink.

 

[12pointer]

Is there anyway to increase the sensitivity of the G series cameras? I know on my Moultrie's I can set it to high or low, but one the cuddebacks I do see anyway to set it. I have been questioning the number of pictures I am getting on my cuddelink cameras and set a Moultrie on the same trail and got 96 pictures on my Moultrie and 36 pictures on the cuddelink camera. I walked by both cameras 10 times (about 50 feet away) and got all 10 picture on my Moultrie and only 2 on my cuddelink. This cuddelink camera has a powerhouse IR flash module and I would expect it to reach a 50 foot target consistently. Any help would be appreciated. It seems all my cuddelink cameras return less pictures than expected, but I have actually only tested this one. I will set-up and do the same test to a few more this week, I would really rather be hunting and not testing cameras this time of year.

 

[BKRamey]

Does anyone know if the G-1385 HOME (being used as a repeater) will work with the solar panel? If so, I assume I would need to discard the rechargeable AA batteries that come with the solar panel & purchase rechargeable D cell batteries

 

[swat1018]

Is there anyway to increase the sensitivity of the G series cameras? I know on my Moultrie's I can set it to high or low, but one the cuddebacks I do see anyway to set it. I have been questioning the number of pictures I am getting on my cuddelink cameras and set a Moultrie on the same trail and got 96 pictures on my Moultrie and 36 pictures on the cuddelink camera. I walked by both cameras 10 times (about 50 feet away) and got all 10 picture on my Moultrie and only 2 on my cuddelink. This cuddelink camera has a powerhouse IR flash module and I would expect it to reach a 50 foot target consistently. Any help would be appreciated. It seems all my cuddelink cameras return less pictures than expected, but I have actually only tested this one. I will set-up and do the same test to a few more this week, I would really rather be hunting and not testing cameras this time of year.

I'm finding the same thing. The network side is working flawlessly for me, exceeding range and expectation. But, the camera doesn't catch what it should, I also verified with a top notch trail cam.

 

[12pointer]

I'm finding the same thing. The network side is working flawlessly for me, exceeding range and expectation. But, the camera doesn't catch what it should, I also verified with a top notch trail cam.

I'm beginning to wish I had taken a smaller bite as a first bite. I bought 8 G series cameras, power house modules for all, battery boosters for all and a home unit! (close to $3,000.00 invested) and may have to set them on the self and go back to old school of collecting SD cards again. I have had great success with almost everything else with the cuddelink cameras. I put my cameras out April 20th and they are all still working on their original batteries. (maybe because I'm getting so few pictures). I hadn't thought to much about the volume of pictures until I went back to last years pictures where I had Moultrie cameras at the same locations as I have Cuddelinks now and they are all about 3:1 with Moultrie's getting 3 times what the cuddelinks are getting this year.

I shot a 6-pointer with my bow 3 weeks ago and watched it walk right in front of my camera. I was excited to see the picture of him alive just prior to my shot and we I checked there was no picture so I put a Moultrie there and that's the 96 to 36 scenario that I explained above. Cant help but wonder what I'm missing every week!!!

I will set two more Moultrie's out this week on two trails that I have cuddelinks on and report back a week after that....I am hoping before I head to camp on Wednesday that someone can tell me that there is a setting that I can change to solve this problem. :-(