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Cold Weather Test on a Couple Cameras!

T

Thunder Ridge Extreme 1

PMA Member
All,

I put my CamTrakker out last Friday night and pulled it last night with 400 photos (with a 5 min delay) on it and it was still operational. I put a Leaf River Digital out just down the ridgeline that same night (with 3 min delay) and it lasted until Sunday morning. It took 96 photos and was completly dead even though it was on battery save mode! It also would not function with new batteries after 3 hours in the house so it may be toast.

Just some feedback from the field!!

Later T$
 
My experience with a Moultrie and Bushnell are that you need to rig up a high aH external battery in sub freezing temps. I only get 2-3 days max with a regular 6V lantern battery on these 2 cams. I use up the memory on my SD cards before running out of juice on the external batteries.
 
OHshedder, I have a moultrie and I was wondering what you mean by a high AH external battery. Do you mean you actually make a external case and modify the camera to have the battery seperate? Please elaborate if you would.
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Exactly- get a 12ah, 14ah, or higher Werker 6V battery. Put it in an empty plastic ammo case at the base of the tree and run wire into your camera. My experience with my Moultrie is that a small solar panel doesn't keep your battery charged enough if you get alot of night pics during cold spells. The external battery is the way to go. Check out chasingame.com for details on external battery mods.
 
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Exactly- get a 12ah, 14ah, or higher Werker 6V battery. Put it in an empty plastic ammo case at the base of the tree and run wire into your camera. My experience with my Moultrie is that a small solar panel doesn't keep your battery charged enough if you get alot of night pics during cold spells. The external battery is the way to go. Check out chasingame.com for details on external battery mods.

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Good advice. I've found the same thing to be true of my Wildview 2 cam made by Stealth. It'll burn through C batteries like they're going out of style. This cam uses a 12v battery but the same basic idea applies. Here's how it turned out:

wview1.jpg


wview2.jpg
 
Is this the type of battery your talking about? (for a Moultrie)

WERKER 6V 14AH BATTERY

You just cut the end off and wire to like size external wire into the cam I assume.

Have to drill a small hole and seal it?

That's my only complaint with this moultrie over a feeder is battery life...it stinks
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Is that high of number of ah really nessasary, because all I could find was 6 volt 7.2 ah werker battery. Will this work or do I absolutly have to have at least 12 ah? Also do you know where I could get one of these batteries? I looked at hardware stores and found nothing.
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Mike,
I edited my above post for the sake of brevity but since you asked... I had mentioned that I used a 7.2 amp hour battery and it's working great. The higher the amp hour rating the better but I'm just letting you know what I experienced. Mine takes a 12v battery but they make all sorts of lead acid batteries in both 6v and 12v with varying amp hour ratings and 7.2 is a common one. I bought mine that you see above at Interstate Battery and I had it out with my Stealth for 2 weeks in temps that ranged from around 20's at night to 30-40 during the day and when I brought it home and put it on the charger, it only took about 20 minutes and was already reading full charge and that was just with a trickle charger. That made me believe that it had a LOT of life left in it. I'm unfamiliar with the Werker batteries but so far I've had great luck. I wish I could give you a report on the full potential of my battery but I pulled that cam and haven't replaced it since. I think I'll put it back out this week sometime and run it until it quits just to see what it'll do so I can make a more informed post on what it'll do in the long term. These weather conditions would be an excellent test of it's true potential.
 
[ QUOTE ]
All,

I put a Leaf River Digital out just down the ridgeline that same night (with 3 min delay) and it lasted until Sunday morning. It took 96 photos and was completly dead even though it was on battery save mode! It also would not function with new batteries after 3 hours in the house so it may be toast.

Just some feedback from the field!!

Later T$

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So whats the verdict on the LR, is it toast? I know I had mine out last year in some buku cold and never had any trouble with it, always got excellent battery life (1,000+ pics) with it, that was its strongest suit. BTW, if it is toast, I'd send it in to LR. I had a wire break after the warranty expired and they fixed it, no charge, no questions.
 
The higher the aH, the longer the life. I just checked my Bushnell which is running on a Werker 6V 12aH and it has been out for over a month (it has never gotten above freezing and has been near 0) and the battery still had juice. You can get the Werkers at Batteries plus stores or on the net. They are usu around $25/ea but sometimes you can find a deal on ebay and get 2 for that price.
 
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