Cuddeback's Cuddelink

[aa961jester]

Cuddelink Update

First I would like to say John Volkman does an excellent job as a rep/information guru for Cuddeback. I hope they realize what they have in him.

Second I think John should train Cuddebacks customer service reps, they are rough and the three times I called since June I feel as if I am imposing on them and I did something wrong.

I currently have nine Cuddelink cameras on my 200 acre farm. I have seven J cameras and two G cameras. One of the J cameras is on my cabin as a home camera. In addition to the nine cameras I also purchased two J camera battery boosters (the ones that take 6 D batteries) and four solar panel units also for the J cameras. I have a significant amount of money invested in the Cuddelink system. I purchased the first pack of 4 cameras in June 2018 and the last J camera/booster/solar unit was purchased in October 2018. On my cabin I have a J as a home with a solar panel. This setup has a full southern exposure and has not given me any trouble, it has been running the solar since July. I have a J camera with a solar panel on my feeder also full sun southern exposure no issue. When I was at my farm last July/August I noticed the other two solar panel units which have a south west exposure and probably 65 percent sun exposure through trees were dead. I pulled the batteries and charged them in my cabin. When I returned to the cameras to re-install the batteries I noticed that the LCD screen in one of the cameras was not operating. I pulled the camera and took it home to send for repair. When I called Cuddeback I spoke to a woman who made me feel I was imposing on her she said I could send the camera back for repair but I had to pay the return shipping as they don't send UPS call tags. OK, I sent the camera back and received a new one about two weeks later. I returned to the Farm in November and re-installed everything to include another new J camera and solar panel. I returned to the farm in December to find the new solar unit was dead. I pulled the batteries to charge them in my cabin and upon reinstalling them the camera was dead, no lcd screen no lights. I tried with new Ray o Vac batteries and still a dead camera. I now pulled this camera to send back for repair. Upon putting the rechargeable batteries in another camera I received an error 45 code. I tried in another cam and got the same code. I took the batteries out and tried to recharge them and got the same code. Ok something is wrong with the batteries because the code cleared with regular Ray O Vacs.

Today I called Cuddeback about the camera and the batteries. I was told I could send in the camera for repair but I was on my own for the batteries. I asked what a code 45 was and was told she didn't know. I explained that the solar panel kit was bought new in October and according to the camera only worked for 20 days. The woman on the phone said Cuddeback has nothing to do with the batteries that the batteries are free I am paying for the panel, it's a courtesy that they include the batteries. I explained to the woman that that was unacceptable BS and that nothing is "Free" in this world. I asked if I could then purchase a solar panel without the batteries and she laughed at me. I told her she was wrong to laugh and argue about the batteries. I explained that Cuddeback chose the batteries and had a responsibility for their choice. She said no they are free she said I should call the battery company and complain to them. I asked if I could speak to a manager and she said she was the manager. I asked if Cuddeback would cover the return shipping for the camera and she said no. I asked to speak to her boss and was forwarded to a voice mail without her saying anything else to me that is how my call ended.

I do think the Cuddelink system is a good system. I do think Cuddeback has some technical issues with the system and they need to admit that. I think there is an issue with the rechargeable batteries that needs to be addressed. I think because of the way the system works they use up more battery life than other trail camera and I accept that. I think Cuddeback should offer a 12V external battery system as well. Hopefully none of my other cameras will need to be sent back because so far I am at 29.00 returned shipping costs.

 

[john volkman]

Cuddelink Update

First I would like to say John Volkman does an excellent job as a rep/information guru for Cuddeback. I hope they realize what they have in him.

Second I think John should train Cuddebacks customer service reps, they are rough and the three times I called since June I feel as if I am imposing on them and I did something wrong.

I currently have nine Cuddelink cameras on my 200 acre farm. I have seven J cameras and two G cameras. One of the J cameras is on my cabin as a home camera. In addition to the nine cameras I also purchased two J camera battery boosters (the ones that take 6 D batteries) and four solar panel units also for the J cameras. I have a significant amount of money invested in the Cuddelink system. I purchased the first pack of 4 cameras in June 2018 and the last J camera/booster/solar unit was purchased in October 2018. On my cabin I have a J as a home with a solar panel. This setup has a full southern exposure and has not given me any trouble, it has been running the solar since July. I have a J camera with a solar panel on my feeder also full sun southern exposure no issue. When I was at my farm last July/August I noticed the other two solar panel units which have a south west exposure and probably 65 percent sun exposure through trees were dead. I pulled the batteries and charged them in my cabin. When I returned to the cameras to re-install the batteries I noticed that the LCD screen in one of the cameras was not operating. I pulled the camera and took it home to send for repair. When I called Cuddeback I spoke to a woman who made me feel I was imposing on her she said I could send the camera back for repair but I had to pay the return shipping as they don't send UPS call tags. OK, I sent the camera back and received a new one about two weeks later. I returned to the Farm in November and re-installed everything to include another new J camera and solar panel. I returned to the farm in December to find the new solar unit was dead. I pulled the batteries to charge them in my cabin and upon reinstalling them the camera was dead, no lcd screen no lights. I tried with new Ray o Vac batteries and still a dead camera. I now pulled this camera to send back for repair. Upon putting the rechargeable batteries in another camera I received an error 45 code. I tried in another cam and got the same code. I took the batteries out and tried to recharge them and got the same code. Ok something is wrong with the batteries because the code cleared with regular Ray O Vacs.

Today I called Cuddeback about the camera and the batteries. I was told I could send in the camera for repair but I was on my own for the batteries. I asked what a code 45 was and was told she didn't know. I explained that the solar panel kit was bought new in October and according to the camera only worked for 20 days. The woman on the phone said Cuddeback has nothing to do with the batteries that the batteries are free I am paying for the panel, it's a courtesy that they include the batteries. I explained to the woman that that was unacceptable BS and that nothing is "Free" in this world. I asked if I could then purchase a solar panel without the batteries and she laughed at me. I told her she was wrong to laugh and argue about the batteries. I explained that Cuddeback chose the batteries and had a responsibility for their choice. She said no they are free she said I should call the battery company and complain to them. I asked if I could speak to a manager and she said she was the manager. I asked if Cuddeback would cover the return shipping for the camera and she said no. I asked to speak to her boss and was forwarded to a voice mail without her saying anything else to me that is how my call ended.

I do think the Cuddelink system is a good system. I do think Cuddeback has some technical issues with the system and they need to admit that. I think there is an issue with the rechargeable batteries that needs to be addressed. I think because of the way the system works they use up more battery life than other trail camera and I accept that. I think Cuddeback should offer a 12V external battery system as well. Hopefully none of my other cameras will need to be sent back because so far I am at 29.00 returned shipping costs.

First i want to apologize if you felt you weren't treated correctly by CS at nontypical. It sounds like it wasn't handled correctly. Keep in mind that policies are set and CS reps dont have free reign to make adjustments on the fly. i passed your experience on to the powers that be.
That said, i want to clarify a few things about your issues with the batteries.
Cuddeback does not warranty the rechargeable batteries and they are included free with the solar panel. The solar panels are sold at a very low margin both by Cuddeback and the dealers that sell them, much lower than normal products, cameras and accessories. The reason why batteries are included in the first place is that there is very high performance variability amongst battery brands and types , both alkaline and rechargeable. If the correct batteries arent used in either case performance is severely affected and the camera ultimately gets the blame. For this reason we included the rechargeable because Cuddeback felt it would give the consumer the lowest probability of having issues, if we didnt include them, many would gravitate towards the cheapest they could find, and performance would suffer greatly. Again, the camera would get the blame. Even though we chose the best we could find, odds are there will be some that dont perform as we wish they would. I dont know of any electronics company that includes batteries of any kind and warranties them. It is impossible to determine age of a battery and shipping costs alone would exceed the cost of the batteries in many cases. The solar kit boxes have a large yellow sticker on the front of them that states the batteries are included at no charge but are not warrantied. It is reasonable to believe that your kits didnt include this sticker by chance. All but the first small shipments of solar kits have included this sticker on the box.
Regarding supplying call tags, maybe there are some camera manufacturers that offer this but im not aware of which ones do if any at all. Cuddeback recieves all kinds of calls and requests for help, everything from not knowing what an SD card is to advanced users who are looking for what f stop is used and everything in-between. This is obviously not the case with your cameras but we receive a large number of returns on cameras that have absolutely nothing wrong with them other than the consumer using a bad sd card or dead batteries. Again, i know this isnt the case in your instance or virtually anyone on this forum as most on here are far more advanced than the average camera user.
Now to possibly help with your battery issue. With the rechargeables, at times they can get so low that the solar panel cannot get them charged back up. Even one bad/dead battery can cause issues. Using the battery housing with the supplied charging cable isnt the ideal way to charge batteries but in an effort to keep the retail cost down it was really the only option we had. There is a Tenzing 16 bay charger that i recommend to anyone running the solars to help charge the batteries fully before deploying them and also to charge them if they get very low. The cost is about $30 , i use one myself and it works great. I believe i had a link to this in an earlier post. In the future Cuddeback may offer something like it as an accessory. But its very easy to find it online for sale and well worth it. I posted all of this info earlier but with 74 pages its not easy to find.
Cuddeback will be coming with two new battery accessory options in 2019 that should be very helpful to those who dont want to touch there cuddelink's for 6 months plus. Neither will involve a 12 volt system but one or both should work for almost every situation.
I posted a few days ago that if someone has an issue with CS or they feel they need help beyond what CS can offer to please PM myself with the issue and ill try to help any way i can. I dont feel your post does much to help anyone involved and it fills up a thread with a bunch of negative posts or back and forth that really dont accomplish anything other than allowing someone to vent. If these types of posts continue i really dont have a choice but to just stop responding or helping members on this thread and leave it to the rest of the members to either slowly die or go back and forth amongst yourselves. I dont want this thread to turn into a Customer service thread and i dont want to fill up the forum or this thread with this kind of back and forth. There is a pile of good info and people on this site and i genuinely enjoy it and learn from it constantly.

 

[Chiefrittah]

I have been following this thread since the beginning and has been a big help. One thing that could help this thread is for someone to pick all the key Questions, Answers, tips, mods, suggestions, anything that a first time buyer or someone learning the setup/functions would ask, and put it all together in one post at the beginning of thread and add to it as needed.I've seen this done on other forums and its a huge help. As far as the cudddelink system goes, I am still very pleased. I run 12 j series and a cell home

 

[Freddy]

@john volkman would you please explain how the cell home unit takes in thumbnails from multiple remotes? I am having a hard time figuring out how the cell home receives images from numerous cameras that are transmitting simultaneously.

Does the home take a portion of an image from cam A, then a portion of a single image from cam B, then take in some more of that same image from cam A? Or do images come in one at a time until finished, then the next image is received?

If cam A has five images to send and at the same time cam B has five images to send how does the cell home handle this? Alternates single images from A,B,A,B,A,B,A,B,A,B? Or instead is it A,A,A,A,A,B,B,B,B,B,B?

The reason I ask is because I use the Cuddelink (partially) for security. It therefore helps to know how the home is taking in images so I can position the remotes with enough overlap and redundancy to ensure viable images make it home in the event a camera gets destroyed by a vandal or thief.

Many thanks, John, for any insight.

 

[FredG]

Freddy,

The file RFTrace.txt which is in the 400Cudde directory on the SD of your cell home camera can be used to trace the sequence of thumbnails as they were received from all of your remotes. With a little bit of correlation I'm sure you will be able to answer your own question. Unfortunately the RFTrace file doesn't tell which picture correlates with the time received. To get your feet on the ground you can look at the thumbnail in Windows Explorer of a transmitted picture... highlight the thumbnail and look at the data in the Details Pane. A copy of the Details Pane is shown as a sample below. The Date Taken is the date/time printed on the thumbnail banner and the Date Modified is the date/time that it was received by the cell home. You only have to correlate one thumbnail from each remote to have a full and detailed look at the sequence of events. Hope this helps....

 

[john volkman]

Thanks Fred! In layman’s terms I explain it this way, the cuddelink network is a highway, the images are cars on the highway . Images flow like traffic , meaning one image at a time is recieved while others follow and merge onto the highway as they get taken. If the highway is full images need to wait to get a spot on the highway so they can travel home. A specific cuddelink network can handle approx 1,000 images per day depending on how many links etc are in the system .
The important thing to note is that if you set your camera delay at 5 seconds or longer and your cl delay at 5 seconds all images will make it home unless your system exceeds roughly 1000 images per day.

 

[john volkman]

I have been following this thread since the beginning and has been a big help. One thing that could help this thread is for someone to pick all the key Questions, Answers, tips, mods, suggestions, anything that a first time buyer or someone learning the setup/functions would ask, and put it all together in one post at the beginning of thread and add to it as needed.I've seen this done on other forums and its a huge help. As far as the cudddelink system goes, I am still very pleased. I run 12 j series and a cell home

I will work on this and if an administrator sees fit to make it sticky that will work great.

 

[Soggy McBottom]

I'm seriously considering buying the cuddelink system. This thread has some great info!

 

[Booner21]

I had a buddy that with basic programming knowledge and about 70 bucks worth of supplies follow directions posted here and was able to get it working via a Dropbox account in a couple of hours with no issues

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

i dont think i stated that it couldn't or wouldn't be done. Someone earlier posted how they did it themselves. For cuddeback to offer it, it needs to be designed to be affordable ( as an example $70 in supplies would dramatically increase the cost of the home unit that currently retails for $129). It also needs to be set up so that all consumers can use it easily. Basically, it needs to be plug and play. Then it needs to be produced in a large quantity.
To those that need it now, it may be worth your time to follow how it was done in the post earlier or to find someone like your buddy to make a few of them up.

Wasn't my intent sorry just saying if that was the only hold up he could do it relatively cheap. Not calling out cuddeback as to not have it available.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[crenshawco]

Oh, ok. Pictures on the site look like they show a 6v 2amp plug under a piece of rubber - http://www.cuddeback.com/products/cuddelink-home

Hi all, I'm new to the forum, but this seems to be the place to go for Cuddelink support. I've got my cell home and 4 cameras figured out after a few weeks of tinkering with them, and I'm loving the system now. The only thing I'm trying to come up with a solution for is longer battery life for the cell home.

In the post I quoted above it is mentioned about the 6V plug on the bottom of the unit. If I were to make my own battery box with a 6V battery and solar panel do yall think it would run the cell home without batteries or with rechargeables in it?

 

[FredG]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum, but this seems to be the place to go for Cuddelink support. I've got my cell home and 4 cameras figured out after a few weeks of tinkering with them, and I'm loving the system now. The only thing I'm trying to come up with a solution for is longer battery life for the cell home.

In the post I quoted above it is mentioned about the 6V plug on the bottom of the unit. If I were to make my own battery box with a 6V battery and solar panel do yall think it would run the cell home without batteries or with rechargeables in it?

The port on the Cell Home (or any G model camera) is not a charging port but an auxiliary power port which is independent from the four internal D-cells. The 'normal' use of the port is for the CuddePower pack (6 D-cells) which runs at 9 volts until depleted and then the camera automatically switches to the four internal D-cells which run at 6 volts. This setup essentially makes the internal batteries a stand-by reserve. You might want to consider designing something that mimics that arrangement because it's nice to have the internals as a backup when you get caught by an unexpected depletion of your primary power source (or a squirrel chews up your cable).

 

[swat1018]

Is your cell home in the woods or at a house? Do you have the CuddePower pack on your cell home? I am running Cuddepower and am at about 70 days and still on the external pack. I need to rig up a 9 V transformer and just plug it in, since it's on the roof of my hunting cabin where AC power is available.

 

[Bill]

I will work on this and if an administrator sees fit to make it sticky that will work great.

Feel free to PM me anything you want as a sticky and I know a guy that will make that happen.

 

[squerril]

For those running the G series cameras, what method did you use that gave you the maximum running days? Was it the external battery pack or 6v 12ah battery supply or solar panel?

Sent from my SM-G925R7 using Tapatalk

 

[Peplin Creek]

It depends on how many pictures you get. If you get under 1000 pictures in a spot you can run 4 batteries in the camera and then get the cuddeback battery booster. 6 more batteries. It will easily run all season.

 

[crenshawco]

Is your cell home in the woods or at a house? Do you have the CuddePower pack on your cell home? I am running Cuddepower and am at about 70 days and still on the external pack. I need to rig up a 9 V transformer and just plug it in, since it's on the roof of my hunting cabin where AC power is available.

It's in the woods but at the gate of my land. It's the only place on the land that really has cell service. Everything drops down into a river bottom after that.

I am getting about 7 days out of my cell home before batteries die. I didnt think the Cuddepower would provide much more than that so that's why I started thinking 6V. I could easily go 12V and get a 9V converter on it. I wasnt aware that the 6V input plug was for 9V of power.

One other question regarding the IR settings. I'm on the factory defaults which I believe is close. I've got a couple of cameras on fields and I'm getting weak flash range. Should I adjust to far or field? See below

 

[FredG]

It's in the woods but at the gate of my land. It's the only place on the land that really has cell service. Everything drops down into a river bottom after that.

I am getting about 7 days out of my cell home before batteries die. I didnt think the Cuddepower would provide much more than that so that's why I started thinking 6V. I could easily go 12V and get a 9V converter on it. I wasnt aware that the 6V input plug was for 9V of power.

One other question regarding the IR settings. I'm on the factory defaults which I believe is close. I've got a couple of cameras on fields and I'm getting weak flash range. Should I adjust to far or field? See below

It looks to me like you are set on "Far" right now. I would recommend first that you tip your camera up 3 to 4 degrees until the centerline of the photo (the top line of the exposure metering zone) is about where the red arrow in the overlay below is pointing to. This will increase you flash range quite a bit. If it's not enough tip it up a bit more. Is this a long range J camera?

 

[crenshawco]

FredG, thanks, that makes sense now that I see that. Yes this is a J-1415. This is also one of the low res images that I was emailed, not the original from the camera SD so it's probably not as bad as it appears.

 

[Freddy]

It looks to me like you are set on "Far" right now. I would recommend first that you tip your camera up 3 to 4 degrees until the centerline of the photo (the top line of the exposure metering zone) is about where the red arrow in the overlay below is pointing to. This will increase you flash range quite a bit. If it's not enough tip it up a bit more. Is this a long range J camera?
View attachment 22228

The PIR covers an area above/higher than the exposure meter (as shown in your diagram)? They are not on the same axis? Specifically on the G-series cameras, please.

 

[Freddy]

It's in the woods but at the gate of my land. It's the only place on the land that really has cell service. Everything drops down into a river bottom after that.

I am getting about 7 days out of my cell home before batteries die. I didnt think the Cuddepower would provide much more than that so that's why I started thinking 6V. I could easily go 12V and get a 9V converter on it. I wasnt aware that the 6V input plug was for 9V of power.

One other question regarding the IR settings. I'm on the factory defaults which I believe is close. I've got a couple of cameras on fields and I'm getting weak flash range. Should I adjust to far or field? See below

For the battery issue on that cell home... how many pics per day is the cell home receiving, and how many cams are you running?