Trail Camera Review

Our house backs up to a wetland area. There is a small strip of woods that leads to a bigger woods close by. I’ve had a trail camera set up in the back yard the last few years. My old trail camera died late last Winter. I have been feeding the deer the last 3 winters. I was not planning to do so this year, but the wife talked me into it. I decided if I was going to get a new camera I might as well upgrade to one with Cellular service. I ended up buying the Tactacam Reveal Gen X 2.0. Since I’m not a real techy person I was a little worried about getting it all set up. I was surprised how easy and well it went. Its sure going to be nice to get picture and video’s without having to go pull the card ( Even though it is just in the back yard ) I’ve only had it up and running for a few days now, but so far I’m really impressed with the ease of use and the quality of photo’s and video’s it takes. Especially for a camera with a 120.00 price point. It even has a setting where you can turn it off for certain hours. I mainly want it for nighttime viewing. I end up with far to many picture of those F-ing tree rats and birds in the daytime. I had the first picture sent to my cell phone less than 10 minutes after I set it up and filled the feeder. I think those deer are conditioned to know the sound of the corn being put into the feeder and come running. I’m going to attempt to attach a few photo’s and a video from it here. Hope they work

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It looks like the video will work if you click on it.

Those are the cameras all my buddies have been running. I asked for 2 for Xmas from Santa. We will see what happens. I have never used a trail cam

Bearcat89 wrote:

Those are the cameras all my buddies have been running. I asked for 2 for Xmas from Santa. We will see what happens. I have never used a trail cam

I think you will really like them. The company has a few really good video’s out on you tube on the setup process and all the different settings. I’d take a few minutes and watch them prior to trying to set up the camera. They were really helpful. I had a few additional questions and contacted their customer support. They were also incredibly helpful.

I’ve heard nothing but good things about those Cams, and been thinking about getting a couple myself. I bought some cheaper non-cell ones and the first one I set walked off within a week so that’s not encouraging. It was on Private land adjacent to public. Thumper you ever get some big deer on camera? I used to live by the Wilds off 19th street in Sartell, and would see some pretty nice bucks! Pretty sure that area is all developed now tho.

Good post thumper, I’m pretty interested in getting one of those as well. What’s the monthly price to run a cell camera?

BigWerm wrote:

I’ve heard nothing but good things about those Cams, and been thinking about getting a couple myself. I bought some cheaper non-cell ones and the first one I set walked off within a week so that’s not encouraging. It was on Private land adjacent to public. Thumper you ever get some big deer on camera? I used to live by the Wilds off 19th street in Sartell, and would see some pretty nice bucks! Pretty sure that area is all developed now tho.

There is a feature on the one I got that shows the GPS location. If it somehow walks off, the crook better know about that feature. Even if he does, it will show up as soon as its turned on.

Over the last 3 years I had a buck I was having fun watching his growth. I had him from a 1.5 year old till he was 3.5 last winter. He was getting a rather large rack. Last winter he showed up during daylight one day which was odd as I had only seen him on camera after dark prior. He had a bad injury to his Front leg ( My guess he was hit by a car ) I kind of thought he would not make it through the winter. I saw him on my camera a few days later and that is the last I’ve seen him. My guess is he is dead. Sad because I was looking forward to seeing him as a 4.5 year old this year.

Dan wrote:

Good post thumper, I’m pretty interested in getting one of those as well. What’s the monthly price to run a cell camera?

I think if paid for the year it was 120.00. If monthly, which I did. I think its 13.00 a month. No contract so you can turn off and back on at any time. That’s the reason I did the monthly. I’ll probably only use it 5 or so months year. It still works if you turn off the service, you just need to pull the card to see the pictures and video.

It comes with both a AT&T and a Verizon Sim card. You can use either. Which ever one gets the best service in the area you set it up. It does not have to match your cell phone carrier.

BigWerm wrote:

I used to live by the Wilds off 19th street in Sartell, and would see some pretty nice bucks! Pretty sure that area is all developed now tho.

I live rather close to the wilds. The wetlands behind my house wraps around to the area near the wilds. still a fair amount of undeveloped woodlands in the area, but getting less and less each year.

Do yourself a favor and get the solar panel with lithium battery pack. I’ve got 5 of the now discontinued SK model and they came with a solar panel and the lithium pack. I suspect they discontinued it because it was to good of a product at to low a price, $169.

The lithium pack alone will outlast a set of batteries but if you pair it with the solar panel it’s virtually unstoppable. Mine have been out since March and the batteries are still reading 100%. We’ll see how they do over winter.

hdog3385 wrote:

Do yourself a favor and get the solar panel with lithium battery pack. I’ve got 5 of the now discontinued SK model and they came with a solar panel and the lithium pack. I suspect they discontinued it because it was to good of a product at to low a price, $169.

The lithium pack alone will outlast a set of batteries but if you pair it with the solar panel it’s virtually unstoppable. Mine have been out since March and the batteries are still reading 100%. We’ll see how they do over winter.

I was thinking of getting the solar panel. Wanted to see how the battery life was without it first. If it eats batteries fast then I’ll be ordering the solar panel for sure

hdog3385 wrote:

Do yourself a favor and get the solar panel with lithium battery pack. I’ve got 5 of the now discontinued SK model and they came with a solar panel and the lithium pack. I suspect they discontinued it because it was to good of a product at to low a price, $169.

The lithium pack alone will outlast a set of batteries but if you pair it with the solar panel it’s virtually unstoppable. Mine have been out since March and the batteries are still reading 100%. We’ll see how they do over winter.

How much light does that solar panel need to work. The area this camera is mounted is rather shade covered. I see they also sell a rechargeable lithium batter pack for it.

https://www.scheels.com/p/tactacam-reveal-rechargeable-lithium-battery-cartridge/85059600793.html

The amount of cover will definitely play a factor in the effectiveness. I don’t remember for sure but I believe the solar panel cable is somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-8′ long so you can try to position it in the most light possible.

That’s the pack I was referring to. Follow the directions and fully charge it before putting it to use and it alone will outlast a set of batteries. Paired with the solar panel and the only time you’ll have to disturb your cameras is when the SD card is full. It won’t send pics once the card is full.

I’m so glad I’ve got the cameras I do before they were discontinued. As you can see the cost to add all these accessories starts to add up! Hence my comment about building a product too good for too cheap.

hdog3385 wrote:

The amount of cover will definitely play a factor in the effectiveness. I don’t remember for sure but I believe the solar panel cable is somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-8′ long so you can try to position it in the most light possible.

That’s the pack I was referring to. Follow the directions and fully charge it before putting it to use and it alone will outlast a set of batteries. Paired with the solar panel and the only time you’ll have to disturb your cameras is when the SD card is full. It won’t send pics once the card is full.

I’m so glad I’ve got the cameras I do before they were discontinued. As you can see the cost to add all these accessories starts to add up! Hence my comment about building a product too good for too cheap.

The one I purchased has a overwrite feature for the SD card so no need to pull it when full. It just will record over the oldest data. I thought that was also a nice feature.

Bigwerm – your asking about big bucks must have been some good luck forecast. Got this one last night and again early this morning. Not the biggest rack but looks like a rather large bodied buck

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I’m getting real high tech now. I even figured out how to air play the videos to my big screen TV. Way cool watching them on the Big TV

Good call on the overwrite feature! Just looked at my settings and I have that too! Glad you like the Tactacams. I had no real experience with cameras until these and I don’t think I could be much happier. Pretty easy setup, better range than I expected and nice videos. I’m going to leave 3 of the 5 cameras I have in the field throughout the winter. More for security purposes than anything but I’ll be interested to see how they hold up, especially the solar part of it.

fishthumper wrote:

I think if paid for the year it was 120.00. If monthly, which I did. I think its 13.00 a month. No contract so you can turn off and back on at any time. That’s the reason I did the monthly. I’ll probably only use it 5 or so months year. It still works if you turn off the service, you just need to pull the card to see the pictures and video.

Thanks for the info. I agree, shouldn’t need it year-round so monthly when you choose sounds like a good option.

fishthumper wrote:

I’m getting real high tech now. I even figured out how to air play the videos to my big screen TV. Way cool watching them on the Big TV

Ha look at you go!

I have 2 of the tactacam reveal gen 2 cameras as well and they are really nice cameras. I have had one out since July and it’s at 50% battery life now. The one thing that’s nice with them is all the features are through the app and can be controlled remotely. We can lower the sensitivity when it gets windy so we don’t get a bunch of pictures with nothing. This years youth hunt my son and I were sitting in the stand one morning before light which is about 40 yards from one camera and he got a notification from that camera. There was a doe that walked by and we didn’t even know it was there.

Got a good picture of a nice buck who showed up injured late last winter. Thought he would not survive. I guess he did

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I’ve got a half dozen that I’ve been running the last couple years. Very happy with the picture and video quality for the price. No experience with other cell cams for battery life but seems to be pretty good and obviously you can extend that out well too if you shorten the video duration. As others have mentioned, can’t beat $5/month for 500 pics and being able to activate/deactivate them whenever you want. Run them as cell cams August-December and otherwise just do SD card. Pretty sure they import the cams but they are based out of Minnesota and have been very prompt and fair on the couple repairs I’ve had (woodpecker hitting the fresnel). I may run my food plot off a solar panel next year and see how that goes.

I have been running 4 of the same Reveal x Gen2 cameras. So far so good for the most part. Battery life will last 4-5 months easily if you are not shooting videos. I have them set up like this –
2 shot multi shot with a 2 second delay
Instant send
8gb pics
Overwrite
Medium sensitivity
High flash
I like almost everything about them except the following – when you have them setup to send instantly they will take the first picture and try to send it right away. During that next minute or so the shutter gets locked down and will not take pics during the send time until it’s done.
Problem with that is you see the first deer and miss the ones behind it if they are on the move. If you set it up to batch send daily or twice a day it will try to do that but there is a timer in which it trys to send them in which will time out during the send if you have too many pics, too high of pixels or shitty cell coverage which slows down the sending process. I had a conversation with the Tactacam tech team and they told me to turn mine back to instant after I would go for days without seeing any pics come through. They said that I couldn’t use batch send even though I had great cell signal.