Anyone had any luck using home security cameras in the wild. Our trailcams are working well, but some cool stuff coming, pricing is not terrible ~$300+
AI detects pets, and probably ignores them. 4G subscription needed so running costs to consider. IR illumination and noises may scare away what we are chasing. Pan/Tilt sounds like a noisy liability.
Heya, I’m using unifi protect cams and have even used one of their pan tilt offerings, but in the end found it better to install more of their cheaper (non pan tilt ) PoE (power over Ethernet) cams for better coverage. Bit of a funny setup with my network, putting WiFi router and PoE switch in box out in garden, and the then running 50-100 m Ethernet cables out to further out areas like orchard.
I can’t say that I’d recommend setups like this to most, because cost of cams, switches, outdoor Ethernet cables, and box for recordings etc adds up. But the upsides for me have been worth it. I know now exactly when to focus on rebating and where to move traps, once I see a new possum pop up on cams. It becomes super obvious what all the likely paths are when you see the footage.
Trailcams have their limitions in that they only record a video after detecting motion. My experience with several trailcams is that can be pretty unreliable. And, of course, you rarely see the whole event.
I use a “home security” camera, as you describe it, attached to the outside of my house observing an adjacent tree with an AT220. Or sometimes a Timms trap. Or sometimes a cage trap located on the ground just below the tree. This camera, with continuous infrared illumination at night, records 24/7 to multiple 35 minute 250MB MKV files transmitted wirelessly to a server running in my house. Separately, the camera transmits an individual image to the server every minute. A simple script file allows me to scroll very quickly all those single images first thing in the morning. Alerting me to any activity which I can then investigate further by going to the appropriate MKV file.
Obviously, the disadvantage of this approach is that the viewing isn’t “in the wild”. It would be challenging to replace the electrical power needed to operate the camera and server with a battery.
