Cell phone trail cams??

I'm looking to buy a few trail cams that send data to one mother cam in the vicinity, that then send the pictures to my cell phone.
I'm sure some of you guys use these, and could give me some recommendations.

You must have money to burn.

The kids bought me a Tactacam Reveal X Pro. I have had it out on a trail that runs past my archery stand. I have setup to send pictures to my phone. Wanted to have it out to watch the rut unfold. It seems to work good. The shutter speed isn't as fast as some but still takes pretty good pictures. I like it.

I use Barn Owl on my farm. I can move the cameras around. I'm sure there are les expensive ones

Tactics cam we have 16 between my boy and me

Don't know about a mother cam. I just use the cheap Muddy cams.

They work OK. I only run them for two months each year. Data gets expensive but the sons enjoy it.

Check out Natchez SS they have trail cams on sale now.

I think Cuddeback is the only brand that has that kind of camera system but there may be more that I'm unaware of.

I had terrible, horrible, no good, very bad experiences with spypoint.


My tactacam has been awesome

tactacam x pro...I run 3 no problems...I think $37/ month unlimited pics.....you will need cell service where you run them, VZ or ATT

Browning are good, the tactacams I got had some issues.

Tactacams work very well for me. Odds are you'll either get addicted to it or annoy your spouse. Or both.

I have three different brands of cell cameras monitoring an orchard and I doubt there's a hundred yards between any of them. Every one of them indicates a different signal strength from weak to strong. A Browning, Tactacam and Moultrie.

Cuddebacks do what you are talking about. I have eight cameras feeding into one. One cell charge

I have a tactacam reveal sx that has been good, except the lithium battery pack that I had on solar charger only lasted 8 months before it was shot. They would not do anything to help, not even send me a cheap $10 battery tray for aa batteries. So I bought another rechargeable and have been using it for the last 4 months or so. I also bought the $10 battery tray in case this rechargeable goes out again, which im sure it will. Would have bought that and just went with it but it was out of stock everywhere for months.

I also have a muddy matrix that I have had about a month. Have had no issues and it takes good pics.


I personally would stay away from the rechargeable batteries and just use AA lithium. One set of those would last about as long as my 1st rechargeable did. I believe the muddy is $129/ year with unlimited pics and the tactacam is a little cheaper I believe. If you pay by the month, you will pay twice as much.

As long as one cell camera picks up a tower, the additional cameras will feed that one?

How far apart are the cameras?

Waggler I just started using cell cams. I was skeptical, I’ve always used standard trail cams with SD cards, mostly Browning’s. I bought a pair of moultrie edge cameras. They have been great so far. Download an app and all the camera adjustments are made from there. Battery’s are still showing full after over 2000 pics and bunch of videos. Clarity is great and they pull from the nearest cell signal. I bought two more Tuesday.

They do not send to a central unit like you mentioned, I think cuddeback do that ( cuddelink ). Any particular reason why you want them setup like that? Just curious.

A central unit should result in just one cell plan/charge?

I found a great deal on the spypoint ones, there is a reason they were cheap.

Yes.

They suck

Like said above, stay away from spy point, customer service sucks, If you have a problem with a cam, you have e-mail them & wait for a reply. Sometimes it took an week to solve a problem.

I have six Cuddeback cameras that link together to extend the range from camera to camera and you can have up to 25 cameras all linked to one cell camera. If you use an armored cord and cuddebacks sun and shade solar panel with built in battery, they work perfectly. You can't have video, just pics on linked cameras. You can change settings on the cameras remotely, so you can stay away from them completely instead of going out and changing SD cards. I am very happy with them.

The cameras will be in a basin in the mountains that has no service. However, there is service on the ridge above the lake. The cameras will send pictures to the mother camera on the ridge. That is the hope anyway.

Great idea Waggler I’m not sure if it can be done?

I had the most expensive/best up at my place 10 years ago but the cell service just wasn’t adequate. Tried a booster device but it didn’t work.

Ive hunted south texas ranches where lease holders had all sorts of setups sending pictures and video directly to their Dallas offices. Maybe searching options in that direction or keywords could help?

Osky

Just buy an individual spypoint micro or flex for $80 if you search the internet. The first 100 pics are free and if you set it right so it’s not looking right at a bait or water hole where critters are going to hang out for hours you won’t need to buy the data plan. I have 14 of them, and for the most part have had good luck in 4 years. I had to go pull them once and reconfigure the SD cards and had to have the tech helpline remotely update firmware on a couple. It’s not that big of a deal to do that every now and then. The tactacams and more expensive brands might be better (better pics maybe less maintenance ) but I’d rather get the last pictures of a bear destroying my camera and know I only lost $80 and not $200. I can tell what the animal is with spypoint photo quality and that’s all I care about.