Wildlife camera's or fox watching at night

[Fenlander]

I guess you want to watch or at least be alerted in real time? I can see how distracting rain alerts could be. In the normal use as a security cam that’s not an issue as the alerts have icons for people, cars, interference or general movement. So we can just scroll through for say people or cars as needed.

[Oldman2]

Originally Posted by Fenlander

I guess you want to watch or at least be alerted in real time? I can see how distracting rain alerts could be. In the normal use as a security cam that’s not an issue as the alerts have icons for people, cars, interference or general movement. So we can just scroll through for say people or cars as needed.

I returned the iegeek unit for a refund, it needed 75% wifi signal and warned against using signal boosters, suggesting the modem should be moved to increase signal. I wont be doing that.

I have kept the Tapo c320ws. It seems that some have resorted to adding a cover overhead to shield the lens from most of the rain.I may try that.
I can aid its portability by back peddling to my battery pack and buck converter so I can put the wifi camera where I want to a degree in the back garden.

I need to see how easy it is to change providers as I have 2 separate ISP's here at the moment so one may give more coverage.
Once I am bored with garden wildlife watch and I go for a fixed position I can run an ethernet cable to the c320ws as it has a choice of wifi or hard wired.

[Oldman2]

OK, 1 month later and I have settled on a wall mount for my c320ws and as it has a choice of wifi or hard wired I chose hard wired. It can see the whole garden from its mount and I can view recordings or live video from home or anywhere with internet really. The annoying rain alerts continue but I just ignore that set of recordings, remember its a wildlife camera not for intruder alerts


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Lucky me, I get to review stuff for free, well blow me down with a feather I got sent 2 wildlife camera's recently. A TC24 basic camera and an upmarket CY65 model with bluetooth and wifi remote with access to live and stored video. They say 60ft but I could not manage more than 25ft and even at that the download time waiting for video's to download was painful, walk out and swap the video card for another, so much simpler.


I found both wildcams usable but unless they are mounted with a wide angle long view the subject was in view for a very limited time for video and stills were ok but I soon lost interest in the occasional sparrow.
The big drawback I found with the wildcams was the fact they devour AA batteries at a rate of knots. Eneloops last around 3 days so you need a few sets of 8 for each camera.
Lithium batteries last well but are not rechargeable and expensive. As the camera's are 6volt & the 8 cells are to double the mAh capacity not the voltage, I can see that rechargeable will still be working at 5v so maybe use a USB 5v power pack to feed them instead. I got a jack lead USB to camera external jack and tried it. This works a treat for 1 min or so then as the camera is in low current state looking for movement the power pack thinks the output its connected to is charged and disconnects. I tried several power packs I have here and all did the same. If I wanted to continue with this idea (not sure I have the will) I would need I think to get a buck up converter to generate 6v from the power pack which should keep it awake and give the camera 6v too.
Overall I found the security camera so much more convenient to use and as long as you don't require close up detailed shots of your wild friends it satisfies my needs. Perhaps can set up the wild cams as security cameras near my car....
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A couple of wildcam pics for balance.