I am considering buying a Trail camera that fixes to a tree etc. I have many animals coming into my garden, including Roe Deer. And I would like to get some pictures/images of them. Could anyone recommend one upto a max of €100. Thank you
I have this one. Honestly, it isn’t too bad, and certainly much better than my previous Chinese trailcams.
The connection to the camera via the phone (Bluetooth and Wifi) can be a bit of a faff sometimes, failing for no apparent reason, and generally trying to scroll through the images via the wireless phone connection isn’t always the best idea, as it can be quite slow to refresh the images as you scroll down on your phone.
Another negative point is that the rechargeable batteries (which I bought extra) suffer from extreme heat, extreme cold, and despite its waterproof rating, from downpours in which case it has a tendency to switch itself off, or reset the internal clock to the default date (in the latter case, it still continues to function, just with the wrong date/time).
Other than that, I’m actually pretty satisfied.
The main difficulties come in deciding whether, and how many, photos to take before getting the video camera to take over, as the video camera is slower to start up than the photo part.
I have a Coolife trail camera which I did eventually find very good but finding something wrong with it at first because I didn’t understand I complained and gave it a bad review. I can’t remember now what the problem was but as a result they sent me another one without asking for the first one back.
I got pleading emails from what sounded like a young girl or woman saying that if I didn’t upgrade my review she would be chucked out in the street without a job. That set me against her rather than anything else but eventually it was sorted and I was also sent a free solar charger too.
I have remembered now the reason it wouldn’t work, it needs 1,5V AAbatteries, which are rare, and I was using the more usual 1.2V.
In the end I had to buy special ones with a slot in the top to recharge them on a special charger which plugs into the computer, wouldn’t charge on an ordinary charger which I have.
Apart from that it works fine, but a lot of mucking about before I was satisfied.
Thank you both, it’s just the kind of information I am looking for
I know this is an old thread but I wanted to add my fourpennyworth.
I have a problem with rats in the potager so I designed a humane rat rap that did not poison them or break their neck (even rats need a break).
Anyway I tested it and it seemed to work properly so I baited up at night and left it to catch a rat. I did this several nights running but each morning I found the trap had sprung but there was no rat inside.
I then bought a new trail camera to replace my ancient and no longer functioning camera.
I discovered that a magpie would come along and peck through the grill at the bait inside springing the trap door shut. I covered the area with some strawberry netting to keep the magpies away. Sure enough, next night, when it was dark, two rats came along and very nervously investigated the trap. After many hours one went inside, trod on the activation plate at the end of the trap and the door started to shut. Unfortunately, a second rat had also stuck his nose through the entrance so prevented the door closing allowing the first to escape. Who could have anticipated that? I will try again tonight.
But the point of all this waffle is to express my surprise at the improvements made to trail cameras.
The camera I bought cost around €50. It has an integral rechargeable battery and can be kept recharged by a solar battery for long deployments. Everything is then controlled from an app on my phone. I can watch a live view of what the camera sees, I can reshape the trigger area (in this case the trap door), I can download all the files then reformat or clear the memory card and also change many of the parameters. I can do all this without having to disturb the carefully located camera. If I am within 20 metres of the camera, I can do it from the comfort of the living room where it is much more interesting than the current fare been transmitted on TV. (think Springwatch)
Might be useful to also mention the make of your trail camera…
Of course DrH. It is this camera from Amazon. I should stress that I basically just stuck a pin in a long list of candidates and was influenced mainly by price (it has since gone up €15 so look around for bargains). I did not spend time going through reviews to find the best one. Having said that it does everything I wanted (and more). In fact, when I have solved my rat problem, it has inspired me to go and film in other locations.
Thanks,
I’d like to get an idea of the volume of sanglier traffic behind our house
I bought that model some years ago and at first I didn’t think it worked correctly. I was wrong but by that time I had given a bad review the sellers not only sent me a replacement without a return, but also a solar recharger as well.
Should be perfect for that. Would be interesting to see any results if you do. Last year, we had two on our doorstep when we returned from shopping . I intend to try and find what makes the interesting smells on trails my dogs are keen to folllow.
If you plan to share a videos captured by a trail camera to iThing users, make sure it uses the MPEG 4 format for video files.
My Apeman H45 saves videos as AVI files which forces me to covert them myself before sharing with my iThing dependant family.
Yes, the camera I mentioned saves videos as .mp4