First off, I read through this entire thread over the last few days. Phew! My eyes are burning, but I wanted to thank everyone (especially John with Cuddeback) for the extremely useful information on this thread. I’ve been a lurker since back from the QDMA forum days so it doesn’t surprise me that this site has the best information about these cameras.
Second, I’m just about ready to jump into the Cuddeback ecosystem, but I have a couple of concerns. I know this is where most are coming to report problems, but I’m concerned about reliability as the farm my dad and I would be setting this up on is a 16 hour drive away from us. Luckily my dad’s job allows him to stop in for a day or so once or twice a month and our good neighbor is running the system currently too. Obviously we aren’t going to have the luxury to fix downed cameras all the time and especially because these will be going into our sanctuary areas that we only enter a couple of times per year. Do the current users feel the system is ironed out enough to give it a try? Yes. There may be some trial and error with cam placement and RF signal but once you get it set it will be good. In my experience the "rat tails" do help with signal strength if you need a boost. I’ll still be running traditional cams on the exterior of the property FYI as they are pretty low impact spots.
Also, it seems the second concern has been battery life. So far we have planned getting one cell home to transmit from the center of the farm and G series cameras with the powerhouse black flash ( I know people have differing views on flash types, but for us black flash is a must based on past experiences). I also plan to supplement all of these with the newer dual battery pack and where it makes sense, solar panels when those are released for it. I had several G cams with 3358 battery boosters running this past fall. I reached 159 days before I pulled them from the mountain. They were still running off the externals even though it was reading low on the report. The internals were at 1.51v. They could've gone for a couple more months imo. With another bank in the dual power pack I can see them going for at least a year. I also had home cell units with the same setup and battery life. If I had to choose my perfect setup it would be a home cell unit and G cameras. I prefer those over the K cams and J cams.
I am also interested in some of the homemade 9 volts in ammo boxes people have been making if they feel those will outperform the new dual battery pack. Oh and also we are in a high deer density area with spotty cell reception. Luckily the cabin on our place has the best reception so the plan would be to plug the cell unit into the wall (any update on when that plug will release?) and keep the picture interval higher to avoid jams in the network. Any recommendations for the settings to try? It’s going to be a mix of plots, mineral sites, and travel corridors. Sorry I can't really offer an opinion here. I hunt a low deer density area and pretty much focus on scrapes, pinch points, etc. No mineral site's as it's public land but I'm sure someone can chime in and offer a setup that works.
Last question is for John and I don’t know if you can answer this, but any plans to announce any changes to hardware this ATA or shot show? Say a G cam version 2 or even a powerhouse black flash module 2? I know you can’t go into specifics, but I would hate to invest into these and find out a better version is coming out in a few months. A simple “wait for then“ or “you’re good to buy now” would be much appreciated.
sorry for the wall of text. Thanks again to everyone for contributing to a great resource. I’m sure I’ll have more questions to follow and this will be nice to look back into for more information.
