Somebody asked about the game cams that I have for the Beta Site. I guess I never went into any detail about them, so lets clear that up.
Most game cams, like the ones you get at , say, CostCo, are of the type that take pictures or video and store it on a card for retrieval later. They have their advantages, certainly, such as being cheaper in the long run since there’s no expense involved for transmitting those images. You just roll up there every so often, pop out the card, down load into your device, and reset. Easy peasy.
Unfortunately, I wanted something a bit more than that and that means increased expense.
A friend of mine won a game camera in a drawing or something and since they had no real use for it, gifted it to me. Specifically, this guiy: Moultrie Edge 2 Cellular Trail Camera. The selling point for me was that, in theory, I could simply get online to the website, or the app on my phone, and request a picture or video on demand. Additionally, I could set it to send me a picture or video on a schedule. For example, it takes a ‘proof of life’ picture everyday around 1216p and sends it to me.
I say ‘in theory’ because cel phone signal out at the Beta Site is exactly ‘zero bars’. Thus, I had significant doubts this thing would work. But I went up there, set it up, and to my surprise I got a proof of life photo the next day, and then every day thereafter. I also was able to request pictures on demand. I was quite pleasantly surprised. Im guessing that pictures use far less data bandwidth than voice, so perhaps there’s just enough signal for simple communications like that but not enough for voice. Or perhaps the gamecam is utilizing a network that is different from the one my phone uses. Either way, I’m getting pictures.
The gamecam requires 16 AA-batts to run it. Since CostCo was selling lithium batts, and lithiums are less likely to puke their guts out and are also good choices for extreme weather conditions, I went with those. The gamecam app shows me a ‘health check’ of the camera and I can check remaining battery life. Since I only have it communicate once a day with its proof of life photo, and then again only when something triggers a picture, the batteries seem to be still going strong after a couple weeks.
Battery management was a big concern for me because a) lithium AA-batts arent exactly cheap, even if I stock up on them at CostCo and b) its never a certainty when I’ll get up there again to change batteries. You can change the settings on the gamecam, remotely, to juggle various features to enhance battery life. So far, at the rate of power consumption so far, I’m guessing there’s another month at least before I need to start thinking about battery changes.
But, being me, I think about them anyway. Since lithium AA-batts aren’t cheap, I investigated and purchased lithium battery packs for the gamecams. Not cheap, but after the fifth battery change of AA-lithiums it will have paid for itself. Not satisfied, I also picked up one solar panel to add into one of the cams as an experiment to see how long a duty life I can get out of one charge.
Since the cameras require a cellphone connection, you have to purchase a subscription for the connection. Once you have that, there’s an additional fee for each camera on the account. At this moment, I have three on the account although only one is set up. I’ll be setting up the other two on my next trip up there. Averaging out the cost, it comes in at about a dollar a day for the subscription. When you say ‘a dollar a day’ that doesn’t sound like much but it means coming up with $365~ up front, which seems like a lot until you break it down to a dollar a day.
To me, it’s worth a buck a day to get three different angles of pictures every day from the Beta Site. Plus the infrequent picture when something stumbles into range of the camera. But here’s the selling point for me – the cameras cover the two most likely approaches into the Beta Site and let me know if someone comes into the property. Additionally, the cameras cover sections of the public road so I can see if the neighbors have been coming or going. To me, this is information that is vital. When I get something built up there, the plan is to have a deeper camera setup that uses StarLink to keep me informed remotely. But I’ll probably also add another trail cam pointed at whatever I build just to keep an eye on that too.
So, thus far, I’ve been pleased with these gamecams. There’s a bit of a hit to your wallet to get things set up but once its set up it seems to be doing exaclty what it promises. To me, and thats the important condition there, its worth the ongoing cost of about a buck a day to keep an eye on my property, see what the weather is like before I go up there, and get temperature data. I find it to be a worthwhile value.
When I get StarLink set up there the security camera situation will be greatly enhanced, but for now I really like these cameras and have been pleasantly surprised with the performance. YMMV, but I’m pleased so far.
