Trail camera recommendations?

[Galveston]

Hello all,

We're fortunate to get loads of wildlife in our garden and our existing trail camera has caught lots of badgers, foxes, hedgehogs, mice etc.

Our current camera (a StealthCam) is getting a bit long in the tooth so we're looking for a replacement. We're most interested in the hedgehogs and small animals, but the StealthCam doesn't seem very sensitive and we get the impression it misses loads of stuff (e.g. food magically disappearing between videos) . It also suffers from a delay, so we get lots of videos of a disappearing tail then 20 seconds of nothing. The focal distance is set to about 3m, so again not much use for small animals that only trigger the camera when they're much closer. The StealthCam does have a 12V input, which is great because it runs forever from a leisure battery.

Any recommendations for a responsive, sensitive, close-focused trail camera with a 12v socket....?! Happy to pay for something good.

Cheers, Rob.

[Baby Shark doo doo doo doo]

Funnily enough, I bought one for my mum last month!

Sollona Wildlife Trail Camera 12MP 1080P

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sollona-Wildlife-Activate...

We’re pleased with the image/video capture and it has caught every ‘planned food interaction’ (foxes, cats, badgers). It also caught a robin pulling a worm out of the ground this morning!

[silentbrown]

Just got one of these from Amazon. Photo quality seems marginally worse than a potato. I've no idea what the actual sensor resolution is.

Only 6V input, by the way. I've no idea yet how long the batteries will last when the unit's on.

[Simpo Two]

This is interesting, because last year I got back from a holiday to find that someone had tried to force open a door.

What gadget would be best for snapping a perpetrator from a range of 20 feet in darkness without any trace? (not needing a smartphone)

[silentbrown]

Simpo Two said:

This is interesting, because last year I got back from a holiday to find that someone had tried to force open a door.

What gadget would be best for snapping a perpetrator from a range of 20 feet in darkness without any trace? (not needing a smartphone)

One of these would work. They have a PIR sensor for detection and IR flash.

However, the problems you'd have are these:-

• Image quality is poor and at 20ft you'll struggle to identify the culprit
• They're small (15x10cm) but hardly invisible.
• Battery life would be a concern if its a semi-permanent install unless your wire in a permanent 6v feed.

[Simpo Two]

silentbrown said:

Simpo Two said:

This is interesting, because last year I got back from a holiday to find that someone had tried to force open a door.

What gadget would be best for snapping a perpetrator from a range of 20 feet in darkness without any trace? (not needing a smartphone)

One of these would work. They have a PIR sensor for detection and IR flash.

Thanks - in retrospect it might be better to have something that flashes to scare them off. Even if they remove it, they'll think it's gone to a phone somewhere.

I'd only set it up when away, so no more than a week.

[breamster]

Simpo Two said:

Thanks - in retrospect it might be better to have something that flashes to scare them off. Even if they remove it, they'll think it's gone to a phone somewhere.

I'd only set it up when away, so no more than a week.

I recently got an internet connected pir sensor which when triggers notifies my phone and turns on lights in the house. Not great but cheap and may suffice to scare people off. Battery has lasted a good few weeks so far.

[DortchRules]

wow, I am jealous for your location, I really love nature and all animals, but I live in the city and the wildest animal I can see there are house cats and pigeons, that is all or pity, so I go for about 50 miles to install my trail camera, to make some nice pictures of wildlife. Well, I bought the best trail & game camera Stealth Cam C42 No-Glo This is a camera most suitable for covert uses. For one, this camera No-Glo functionality means that it doesn’t emit any infrared lights that might alert the game and spoil the shot. So animals will not scare unknown sounds and more nice pictures will me did.

Edited by DortchRules on Monday 25th May 06:12