Problems with first trail camera

[oporhatch]

I am new to trail camera's and therefore are at the very early stages . Bought a £70 trail camera to begin with as the area i am monitoring is a farm quite
away from my house .
Currently the camera is triggering but the picture is not clear
Also sometimes it fires a video as well , which you can view ok …. It sure why sometimes
just looking for some guidance - it’s a sim trail camera
Currently looking at SD card , but have tried 2 already
Any help or ideas would be appreciate

 

[yoderjac]

You don't mention the specific cam, but in general low end cams are built in Chinese factories with very poor quality control. They have a high failure rate and a short lifespan. If you cam is still under warranty, return it. It is not uncommon with these low end cams to need multiple replacements under the warranty period.

 

[oporhatch]

thanks for the response ....now looking at a campark tc22 to see if i have problems with that

 

[catscratch]

Trailcams go out sometimes. Even expensive ones (I had a cuddilink go out 364 days after buying it). If you aren't to picky I'd suggest a Walmart Tasco cam. I've got a couple at around $29 each. Not the quietest but they've done me well by lasting several yrs. In fact now that I think of it 2 of the 3 I've bought outlasted the Brownings I bought at the same time.
Good luck!

 

[yoderjac]

I've been running my network of Buckeye Cams 24/7/365 for around 15 years. I've only had a couple failures and those were repaired by the company. Quite expensive up front, but reliable with a long lifespan. They are not for everyone, but there are high end cams that are reliable.

With the low end stuff, the biggest issue is QC. So, one guy can get a cam that runs for a few years and the next guy might need several warranty exchanges in the first year.

If you read enough reviews, you can sort of figure out that some brands seem to do somewhat better than others. Another issue is component swapping. When a factory finds they can get an equivalent part for less money, they begin using them. So, you can buy a cam one year and buy the same camera 6 months later. They look the same on the outside and have the same name and model number but can be quite different under the hood.

Depending on how you use them, lifespan is pretty short at the low end. The electronics are not coated. Any moisture that gets into the battery compartment vaporizes as the camera heats in the sun. It gets into the moist air get up into the electronics and then condenses. One thing that can help is buying small descant packets and putting them in with the batteries if they fit.

For most folks who just want to see some of what is out there, most cams will work....at least for a while.

 

[oporhatch]

The one thing I noted was that the camera seems to struggle with PIR when I am in a heavily populated tree area , it as though there is to much for the lens , if I get right up to the lens it then activates, moved it to another location , which had a less cluttered background and it triggered fine.
unfortunately I need the camera to trigger in the cluttered area of tree, still not sure whether its the phone signal that is causing me issues, no moving it about my farm to different zones to see what the impact is .

 

[yoderjac]

That is not really how PIRs work. Depending on the Fresnel lens used they can have a short wide FOV or longer narrower FOV. With low end cams sometimes it is not mounted correctly and the triggering is biased one way or the other. PIRs trigger best on faster lateral movement. You can walk directly up to most cams slowly enough from the front so the PIR never triggers.

If you attach a cam to a small diameter tree movement of the camera in the wind will cause false triggers. If you mount them on something solid but point them at a background of something like small trees or tall grasses that blow in the wind, it will cause false triggers. Placing a PIR in a wooded environment with a cluttered background that does not move should not "overload" the PIR.

 

[oporhatch]

thanks for the response much appreciated
I will keep placing it around different places in the farm and see how it reacts , to find something consistent
I am currently trying to capture pictures of people stealing rubber from my trees overnight, unfortunately they enter over a stream
which is at the lowest part of my farm and the phone signal struggles to be a consistent 4g