"Trail camera" you can view on your mobile?

[SD198]

Hi all - can anyone recommend a trail camera that links to your mobile phone at distance ie so you can check on your mobile what's in front of the camera at any point? I'm not particularly techy, but I'm presuming you'd need a camera that connects to your phone either over the internet or sends a pic by text message. For that matter, has anyone had any luck in using two mobile phones and one of the many apps available to connect them for this sort of purpose?

Thanks

 

[FISH BOY]

I thought about these, and believe you need a SIM card like a mobile to send data to your phone.

I believe they are very expensive so went with cheapies incase they got lifted. TBH glad I did as in one two week sit out I had over 9,000 pictures! 5,000 of the same bloody squirrel!

Phone would have been pinging all day and night

 

[SussexSteve]

Been using game cameras for years exactly why I never bothered with this type of camera. Can have 3 of these for the price of one of those type cameras!trail-cameras

 

[Steyer 6.5]

I use spypoint and seem to work fine reactivated sim and controlled by my iPhone.

 

[weimaraner]

Llt Acorn, Spypoint, Browning do these cameras.

Plus and minus points.
They are ok in some senarios, but as FrenchieBoy has said, they can be a pain when a bird or a squirrel keep activating the PIR, taking up unwanted space on the SD card, PLUS all the phone alerts !

A mobile SIM card and tariff is needed, so they are expensive to buy and run, compared to a normal trail camera, that means expensive to lose too.
Ie. You could buy 6 Campark T70s cameras, for the price of one SIM camera.
I prefer the Browning cameras., but these are pricey also, but good quality pictures + videos.
Secure it well, if you decide to purchase one.

ATB.

 

[caorach]

If what you want is "live" video where you can use your phone to view what the camera is seeing at any given time then I'm not aware of a trail camera that does this. Most take a photo, or video, and then use the network to send it to your phone at some point after the image was taken, it may be quite quick but it isn't exactly real time.

As others have said you need to very carefully consider if you have a need to send images by phone, or even if your ground has a signal that would support it. I suspect that this is a selling point for cameras that offers very little actual advantage to the stalker. You get a much better picture of deer movement by having more cameras out rather than by having one very expensive camera that sends you pictures in the middle of the night, when you are in bed, so you can show your mates what a great gadget you have.

When it comes to trail cameras the things to prioritise are trigger speed and the quality of the triggering system, image quality matters very little as long as you can see what is there and I think Reconyx who are recognised as making the best cameras are still at 3MP cameras for example, adding more is simply marketing as these are not pictures you are going to frame. Some cameras can become extremely slow indeed especially when shooting video and once it becomes dark - they are often reluctant to publish these trigger times but it can be many seconds and by that time the animal is long gone. Also not all triggering systems are built equal and, of course, you simply don't know how many images your camera has missed until you mount it beside one with a decent trigger system only to find that it records 3 times as many triggers.

If you want to meet some real "trail camera" nerds and experts this is the place

Index page - Chasingame.com discussion forum

 

[SD198]

Thanks for all the helpful replies. What I was hoping to find was a wireless camera that I could leave in situ in the one spot on my permission where it is safest to shoot deer, so that I could check it regularly on my phone (whether by a still image or video) and attend straight away if deer were present (my permission is not that far away) - but it sounds like to the extent that cameras are capable of this, they are probably going to be out of my price range.

Thanks again

 

[BryanDC]

Maybe you would be better to look at remote security cameras. These are available with sim cards that will transmit direct to your phone. I have no idea what the cost would be but it sounds more like what you are looking for.

 

[RichardAllen]

My Ltl Acorn can never get a signal anywhere you actually want to place a camera. And it is tricky to get exactly the view you want. Rarely comes out now