Windlooker
Well-Known Member
Can you set up any L series cam yo be your home or does home have to be a dual paddle antenna model?
gunrunr
Life Member
Any of the L cams can be designated "Home" if you don't want to use a cellular
I'm running 25 new L cams between 3 farms. Zero issues.
Windlooker
Well-Known Member
Gun, I’m slow on the uptake. Why have a non cellular home? I assume you can pull one home card from a non intrusive location to check pics from several cams??
Oct-Lull
Well-Known Member
Exactly. It just saves having to pay for a cell plan. They also made a non camera home/repeater. The cell cams have to have an active plan to work. I personally think the non camera cell unit is the best option to get every possible picture. Because of the way the system works I am not sure 100% is a realistic expectation
Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk
That's what I do. No cell.
gunrunr
Life Member
Not everyone wants to lock themselves into paying for a cellular plan. Set one of your cams to "Home" and it will collect all the pictures from all the other cams on the property. Put that one somewhere easy to access and you can get all your pictures from a single location. No more walking into the "Good Spot" to pull cards during season.
fatboy
Well-Known Member
What is the range that I can have this home cam from the others on the property?
gunrunr
Life Member
Same as the camera to camera distance and best answer is "it varies"
Line of sight i have done it at a full half a mile - if there is a big hill in the middle it is less
Cameras have built in signal meter to tell what sort of reception they are getting to make it easier to find a good spot that will work.
Line of sight i have done it at a full half a mile - if there is a big hill in the middle it is less
Cameras have built in signal meter to tell what sort of reception they are getting to make it easier to find a good spot that will work.
bwese
Active Member
Sorry this is so long but I feel it may help someone
I have been running cuddelinks since 2017. They have missed a lot of pics. They have the latest firmware updates and I have replaced the lenses. I run all my cameras facing a northerly direction.
I have mounted a browning black ops and a cuddelink G camera on the same post, the browning just above the cudde, overlooking a corn pile after season for survey. The cudde took 40% less pics than the browning.
The place that cuddes are valuable to me is in areas of my land that there is no reception for actual cell cams. This is in bluff country and so there is lot of opportunity for areas that don't have cell reception.
I run all cuddes and repeaters with an extra battery pack attached. They will be dead by the end of December to end of January after being set out in mid August. It can average from a 1000 pics to 2500 pics per cam before they are dead. It takes approx 15.00 for the 10 D batteries per cam and repeaters I use. I also will set up a repeater as a home came after season and not use a plan so I can still survey property post season. That is a nice option. I buy 3 or 4 months of unlimited pic plans. That costs 40 dollars per month.
I've had 4 out of 10 cams fail since buying them. Cudde has stood behind each one and replaced them. One repeater( I highly recommend repeaters to make the sending of pics easier on batteries and better pics received) failed after warranty expired and I didn't try for any product support.
I run 20 spypoints on the rest of the property.(started with spypoints in '20 and have built up the numbers since then) All but 4 are 2 years or older. It takes approx. 8.00 for the 8 double a batteries in each cam. I get 4 to 6 thousand pics sent to my phone before the cams have eaten the batteries. I have the pics sent one time a day. They also take many more pics than the cuddes set up in the same spot when tested. I use the spypoint club plan to get 250 free pics per cam each month but pay for monthly plans when it comes to Sept through November. The plan I purchase is 8.00 per 1000 pics. I average approx 2.5 plans per camera through November. I watch the cams closely and buy a monthly plan when the "free" 250 pics are about done, then upgrade to the 30 day plan. When that runs out before the 30 days I will upgrade the plan to unlimited and it is prorated for what time I have left. I then start at the 250 pic again and when they are about to run out, I repeat the process.
I've had 2 spypoints go bad during this time. One was still under warranty and the other not. They covered the warranty one and credited me with enough spypoint bucks to replace the other if I wanted to.(just banking it until I see a deal I want to blow it on) Their customer service has been extremely helpful in the several times I've had issues with cameras. The helped me work through the issues remotely and the cameras worked fine after that. (except the two that did die) They have a chat option to get after a problem fast and correct it. I really like that option. I have seen all the bad reviews they get and i really don't understand why based on my experience with them. I really think it is user error and camera placement. One can't expect a cell cam to work in areas with poor reception.
It costs roughly 20.00 to run the cuddes for a "season" and it costs around 33.00 to run the spypoints for a "season". I get 2 to 4 thousand more pics from my spypoints than the cuddes so to me it's easy to see where the best value is. If one has good reception on their hunting land I highly recommend spypoint cameras. I run the inexpensive link-micro lte. I've bought those cams from anywhere from 2 for 69.99 to 2 for 89.99. The value of the cams is significantly cheaper than cuddelink when one just factors in how much each unit cost and divided by how many years they have been used. My cuddes will have to run at least 6 years to get close to the value of a spypoint that runs for just 2 years. The vast majority of my spypoints are on their 3rd season.
Besides the brands mentioned above I have run bushnell, moultrie, wildgame, gardepro, and couple other brands I don't recall. Of these, gardepro was the next best, but not a cell unit. wildgame and moultrie were junk, 100% failure shortly after warranty was up. As one can tell, I'm a camera junkie but I believe I've settled on my drug of choice, for now
The hunters who hunt my property help split the cost of batteries and plans so it make it really much more affordable than it looks.
Windlooker
Well-Known Member
As I learn this system I’ve come to the conclusion that I do not receive all photos taken via email. Someone suggested putting a different cam with one of my Cuddes to compare.
Each Cudde has a sd card. I pulled a card and believe the cam is good, triggering 99 % of the time and forwarding the pics to the home cam. Each day I receive a report outlining battery life, images taken by each cam etc. It’s actually a good comprehensive system.
But, my home cam report has a count of 10366 images received from the remote cams, and without a doubt only a fraction of those are being emailed to me.
Next year home cam only with no cell plan.
Each Cudde has a sd card. I pulled a card and believe the cam is good, triggering 99 % of the time and forwarding the pics to the home cam. Each day I receive a report outlining battery life, images taken by each cam etc. It’s actually a good comprehensive system.
But, my home cam report has a count of 10366 images received from the remote cams, and without a doubt only a fraction of those are being emailed to me.
Next year home cam only with no cell plan.
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Anyone notice that they changed the design on the new Rayovac batteries I think a little and they aren’t making contact in some of the Cuddelink cameras? Never had a problem before until this last batch I got and they looked a little different. Had to put a washer in between so they make contact.