Trail cameras

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madtuna

Only owns one toaster
Joined
Dec 12, 2012
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Location
WA
Hi folks,
The station wishes to purchase another 30 trail cameras and have left it up to me to sort it out.

I know stuff all about them and looking on Ebay is an absolute mine boggle with the bazillion different types and prices and apparently they all are the best on the market.
I do know we don't need anything 3g or 4g capable with the antenna as we generally don't have reception out here anyway.

If anyone has any experience or expertise they wouldn't mind sharing, I'm all ears!

Cheers
 
i dont know what there like supra four wheel store have got them we just started using them at family station near mt hope near cobar because of people entering station without permission my my mum was amazed what it been showing and how many blue and white number plates we have seen we just download and hand to police and go from there
 
I use the aldi ones and have been very happy with them , and the price is right. I don't know how you would go getting 30 of them though.
Jim
 
I had a couple of the Lil Acorn, I would not recommend them as they do not pay any attention to the time clock and take photo/video and at time of the day/night when set to operate at night only. Ended getting some Vimel, were a much better camera at night and cheaper and they took the pictures when given a time frame to operate in. When I rang about the Lil Acorn I was told that it was my fault in setting time and date and did not understand how to do it, Vimel worked first time and are the same to set up.
 
Unfortunately I have to say that my experiences with a couple of them have been rather negative.

As R''62 said large storage card capacity needed due to false triggering of shots, plus poor IR sensitivity, poor battery life, and 1 even poor with external pack.

None of these have used any remote transmission capability if that is desired and if such are available at a suitable cost, as they would be even more sophisticated and need more battery and possible solar power.

Doing a quick 'net search several that were labelled as "wireless" are a gotcha meaning operate without wires, not radio type wireless, but there are a few specced as 4G or 3G but very, very expensive and would need to be within mobile range.

Rob P.
 
MT - go to the product review type web-sites and check out what people say about various brands.

Examples here:

http://outdoorproductguide.com/best-game-camera-2019-buyers-guide/

https://www.gearhungry.com/best-trail-camera-review/

https://www.besttrailcamerareviews.org/

https://www.besttrailcamerareviews.org/wireless-trail-camera/

All I did was google 'best trail cameras 2019', and 'trail cam reviews 2019'.

Assuming you have your mission and features to fulfil that mission already listed (not trying to tell you how to suck eggs here)... once that's done, look for those features in the review.

Once settled on the model, change search to 'best price', and start haggling for the bulk discount.

Best of luck.
 
Hey Steve, I have one (a Scout Guard) but it's very hard on batteries and memory.
Wind sets it off, as do most small critters.
Where you are, I'm guessing that you'll need solar for each, and large memory, otherwise you'll be spending most of your days travelling replacing batteries and downloading files. Good if you are the designated security officer, with many hours of video to view per day.
These are mostly designed to cover one or two areas, and often wirelessly (close range - downloading to your PC).
 
Many thanks fellas! That's given me something to think about. Sometimes you wish there was just one type and brand of a thing so the choice is made.
 
Magilla said:
We use these to protect our archery club, have never had a problem with them except when a couple of low life's broke in and knew where the cameras were and decided to destroy them.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/BOBLOV-...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649
They need AA li-ion batteries, the non recharging type but they can last up to a year.

The non visible LEDs are the go , red LED will be found and destroyed by thieves .

I am disappointed that trail cams are still only commonly found in 16 - 32 Gb memory card capacity , dash cams in cars are up to 128 Gb .

What would be nice is a choice of lens size so you can zoom right in to a gateway for example and capture rego plates , going to do more research on this now :)
 
madtuna said:
It's a bit sad when you have to have trail cams hidden in the bushes to keep an eye on your trail cams in case some pin head steals them

True, and even worse when you get a good picture but they are wearing a balaclava. We had a break-in at the club about 4 years ago and got great pictures of the perps and their trail bikes, we identified them in one day. We showed the cops the pictures and they said they were useless as they didn't actually show them breaking the padlock, just standing at the door. They said the courts would not convict them on that even though the club is in an isolated location with no entry signs plastered everywhere.
 
game trail camera's , I used to import and sell the Scout gaurd brand until Aldi sold game trail cameras at $129 with an sd card, , they looked identical to the scout guard but from my experience , if you deal directly with the chinese manufacturer you can have your own brand on the case.
The cameras are programmable to take up to 3 still shots or short videos , they are good in daylight , but they are prone to be triggered by differences in temperature and wind movement of any plant life in front, all animals seemed to be extremely interested in the camera , have many a cat bird or fox peering at the lens, lol.
night pics are limited in range to about 4 metres, the area that the infa red led will illuminate, its invisible to the human eye , but , they do glow a dull red if you can look directly at the camera location like face height on a tree or even lower. This problem has an easy fix , i positioned my cameras up in a tree to look down at a target area, just make sure the tree don't move in a breeze , don't know any body that walks around looking up , how's that , The other location was in a hollow log on the ground ,again on a targeted area, the camera is camped by bark with only the lens free , now experimenting with hollowed out polystyrene foam , anything to suit the camera location environment, some coated with sand and bondcrete mix to make it look like a rock , all free information, now ,,,, if your a deviate and trespass, then carry a night vision device , the infa red or black lads will look like spotlights when activated at night only not in the daylight hours , position cameras to watch each other if you can, i found battery life not as described on the specs so i went to the small 12 volt maintenance free 9 amp hour batteries with the small solar charger, all up high in the possum lodge, each camera had a security lock , all i did was to remove the sd card and replace it with a fresh one, all coded to each camera,,,,,, you can spend a small fortune on the models that send a phone message to you but in isolated ares you would need to make sure you got the coverage and the mobile sim card costs ????? if i needed 30 cameras, then I would google the chinese sellers search engines ... hope this helps if i needed any more then its off to the aldi store its all in the warranty as the importerter i was deemed to be the manufacturer and provide warranty its amazing what some people do with equipment,,,, then claim its faulty, I hope this information helps the understanding of game trail cameras don't believe what's on the box experience is the best teacher
 
Sometimes just a motion activated spotlight will deter people if they think there is a camera taking pics of them when it lights up.
 

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