Trail cam
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I’ve had my trial camera for a week now. Still getting used to it.
I didn’t have brand new batteries to put in, so I put some used one’s in. The first night it was switched on, but I didn’t put a password in it when I switched it on and so didn’t record anything.
The following night, I switched it on and put the password in to activate it – it worked fine, captured a lot and the video length was 30 seconds. I set it for 30 seconds.
However, I noticed yesterday that the video length was reduced to only 7 seconds, so I thought that perhaps my memory card was filling up, and thought that the camera reduces it’s video length to save space – so I cut and pasted all the videos to my laptop so the memory card was completely empty.
Last night it captured 10 videos but the video length was only 3 seconds, and then it reduced to 2 seconds later in the night.
I wonder if it’s because I need to put fresh batteries in. I’ve looked at the manual, it did say something about low power, but didn’t understand what it was going on about, and I’m wondering if it’s to do with the batteries.
Anyway, bought some new batteries, and will try again tonight, see if it goes back to 30 seconds. If it doesn’t I’m gonna be really annoyed.
Has this happened to anyone else? did you work out why this is happening?
Hi HedgieLover
It was almost certainly the batteries. You will see I mentioned it above with regard to rechargeable batteries losing their charge, but it’s the same effect if ordinary batteries are losing their charge. It sometimes makes the video flash on and off as well. Hopefully the new batteries should solve the problem – for a while, at least!
They’ll probably be fine to start with. I tried that (duracell) when I first got a camera, but after I got through a large box very quickly, I resorted to rechargeable ones!
Hope all goes well tonight.
I don’t have the camera on all night – at the moment, I’ve set it to come on at 8pm until 3.30am
because otherwise, I’ll just get loads of videos of cats and not hedgehogs.
The hedgehogs don’t arrive until after 9pm and don’t seem to come after 3am
so I thought, to save a bit of battery, I won’t have it on all night.
I am thinking about getting rechargeable, are they ok in cold temperatures?
I’ve heard that lithium batteries are best for cold temps – but they are very pricey in comparison to alkaline.
I’m just worried, if I buy rechargeable (which are quite pricey) the cold might damage them, however, it’s definitely something I’m currently thinking about.
Hi Hedgie Lover
I had my cameras out all winter last year, including the really cold snap we had with snow, and the rechargeable batteries survived o.k. I had a hog visitor who didn’t hibernate so there was still a certain amount of coming and going.
I read a lot about trail-cams online and how they work and decided that rather than buy a cheaper one I would buy a more expensive one that would do the job. I opted for a Browning camera from naturespy who you can phone up and talk to (as I did) as a precaution! It is a great camera but not cheap. One of the hardest tricks is to site the camera at the right angle as at first it will be too low or high. The SD card that comes with the camera fits in my laptop so I can view/save photos or videos as required. One of the night videos with three hogs on I will be using in my I love Hedgehogs presentation coming up to the local library very shortly. My advice would be to speak to companies first and then get one that fits your personal needs rather than buy blindly on websites.
Sorry to dig up an old thread but I saw some mention in here about the voltage on rechargeable vs non rechargeable battteries & I’ve got some info on that which some might find useful. Yes rechargeable batteries have 1.2v but they keep that voltage right up until just before the charge runs out, standard none rechargeable batteries on the other hand might start at 1.5v but that voltage quickly drops and actually ends up at 1.2v & eventually lower at around 1.1v. I spent a while researching all about it and there’s numerous sites online which have ran tests that clearly show the voltage drop where as a rechargeable battery keeps the 1.2v all the way until the battery is virtually out of charge
So picture it this way using a torch for an example, with a normal battery the light might start very bright but it’ll become dimmer and continue to dim until the batteries are dead where as with a rechargeable battery the light will start bright & stay that way until just before the charge in the batteries has depleted and then it’ll stop working.
So in terms of using trail cameras & using the info I now know about the voltage drop of standard batteries, rechargeables are actually what you want to use as with normal batteries when the voltage starts dropping and ends up below 1.2 the camera could start to misbehave due to the low voltage like activating when it shouldn’t or not capturing movement at all etc
I’ve been using a Victure HC200 trail camera for a few months now, it’s a budget one that cost around £50 but so far it’s working perfectly, I’m using LDR (Low discharge rate) rechargeable batteries with it.
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