Spypoint Cameras?

I wanna know the good and the bad on spypoint cameras. I picked up a couple from Cabela’s Saturday night to try out.

i have one for ATT. worked great for 2 months. now I can set it right next to my cell with good signal and it refuses to connect. I have uploaded software upgrades and still nothing. Its not even heavy enough for a boat anchor

I have two SpyPoint Cell links that I connect to my own trail cams. They work very well, but can be finicky once in a while. Even with only one bar of cell service they still send photos. But in the last week or so the cell signal has been bad at times and great at other times. They will disconnect for a while the start sending pics again when signal is good. I send pics every 2 hrs. Both of mine are Nationwide.

I’ve had 3 going on 2 yrs. have never had issues. I think most the time it’s user error not the camera.

I have one going that I left in Oklahoma at the end of last season. I forgot to hike up to get it, and figured I'd let the batteries die and just take new batteries up on my work weekend next week. Unbelievably, I am still getting pictures from it. I have 3 of them, and my father in law has 3 of them. 5 out of the 6 work flawlessly. One of them, we can't figure out what is wrong with it.

I had three with only one still working. Tried to update, changed cards, customer service, you name it and I tried it. Two will not connect no matter what I do and the first one is still working flawlessly. Changed out the other two for Reveal X and no problems so far. Would buy more but no one has them in stock.

Do a search on this forum and you can gather a lot of information.
I had one that I did a lot of test on right there in my backyard and the detection circuits
were terrible because I had wildlife at my feeder and no pictures. Tried to work with their "no
customer service" and that was a joke. Some have had luck with them but a lot of others had so
many problems with them. I don't agree with the comment above about user error because most hunters
have purchased lots of cameras over the years and know how to run them in great detail. Even in my case I
had the Spypoint and another camera side by side and could prove the detection circuit problems.
just my 2 cents.

Good luck - from my experience you will need it. And - not user error when they work for a week or two and quit.

Thanks everyone for the reviews. I’m gonna give them a go and see what happens. I have regular trail cams as wel that’s already going on the place.

Agree on it not being user error. The 5 that work great jus work. The one that doesn't is not user error, because we've been successful 5 out of 6 times.

I have 9 currently and for the most part haven’t had any issues had 2-3 that’s didn’t wanna cooperate but they exchanged them no questions asked.

I had one of three quit sending pics and wouldn’t get signal. Did a quick and easy update on my computer and it was working just as good as ever afterwards.

I bought one when my son was drawn for the Chap back in December so we could hunt multiple spots in that short time frame.
Honestly, I have no complaints other than the quality. The Set up and app were super easy and was functioning in a matter of minutes. I like that you can pay month to month instead of an annual contract all through the app. But back to the quality. It maybe low due to the signal I’m receiving, but it sure ain’t 10mp. I know what I have coming in and the times. Bottom line, I think it’s a bargain for $99

You can buy HD pics they are cheap I buy 50 at a time so I can get the better version of the good pics.

Thanks, I’ll take a look. The problem I have is getting 100+/day which could be all doe. Guess it’s worth a shot though.

You select which pics you want in HD. When looking through pics and you see a good pic just select request full HD

Damn, that’s easy enough. What will the Chinese think of next..

I think that low picture quality may be happening for a couple of reasons. I have bought 3 to 4 cameras of the same model or brand now 4 times in the last 10 yrs. Out of 4 cameras of the same brand and model there may be 2 or 3 that take horrible pics. The others will take great photos. I also think that my Cell Link will not send the same file size that your camera takes. It sends a smaller file and then stores the larger file on the micro SD card. They do that to save battery life. You can download the SD card to your computer later on when the card is full and get the better quality images. All cameras take higher daytime resolution photos than they do at night with B&W infrared. So when you get a lower resolution pic that was taken at night, it will be even lower resolution by the time you see it on the app. Slow trigger speed can affect picture quality also....giving it a blurry/grainy look. I have a higher end non-cell Reconyx camera set on high resolution that does not take any better night time pics than a $29 Walmart Tasco camera. I have seen photos from other camera brands that are much better but even then a camera or two from a large group may take low quality pics.

I don’t want to skew anyone’s opinion based on my comment of low quality so I’ve attached a daytime and nighttime photo. The pics are fine, just not the clearest I’ve seen. STX, I’ve yet to download from the card, but will check it out.

Downloading from the card should give you as good or better quality than downloading HD photo using phone

This is a pic I downloaded the HD version of. Pretty good IMO.

Yeah, that’s solid!
I have a main frame 10 that now appears to be a mf 12 with a couple kickers. He just happened to step really close to the camera for a pic.. it’s those little details you miss out on.
As far as aging and patterning, the basic package is doable.

The daytime one you zoomed in on is only 449KB and the night time is only 246KB in size. They will all look blurry or grainy when you zoom in or crop them. What is your camera set on for picture resolution size? I own 2 older SpyPoint cams and I will say that neither one of them take very good quality photos. Here is one of them in comparison. This not a cell cam but I have a SpyPoint link hooked to it. Here are the two pics taken one at night and one in daylight set at low resolution IIRC. They are even smaller file size than yours are at 72KB daytime and 56KB night time. These are not cropped but when I zoom in on them they look like your photo as far as quality. When I zoom in on low resolution photos taken with my Canon 90D they will look the same way.

This thread is the only positive I've ever read on SpyPoint...every one but one guy (he has one camera) that used them at our lease have replaced them with something else.

I am the world's hardest on cell cameras evidently...I know I'd never be happy with SpyPoint. To be completely transparent...this will be my 3rd season messing with cellular cameras and I'm on my 4th brand. If a particular manufacturer makes a bad one, I'm going to get it. I'm getting ready to put out Tactacam Reveal X within the next few weeks. I've stopped with the high hopes and my only hope is that they aren't a PIA.

Here’s the same daytime pic without cropping. After looking through the settings I’m unable to determine the resolution size. I also just noticed the trigger speed is on optimal vs fast. Not sure if switching that will help.

That one shows 40.1KB in file size. I think the files are being downsized when loaded on here though. So I would think they are larger on your phone or computer than they are on here.

Go in the app to the camera and then advanced configuration then under quality select High

It’s on high.. I also think this one set back a little far. Might help positioning a little closer.. Anyways, I appreciate the help. Not dissatisfied with the product.

Here is a photo for comparison with my Canon 90D at 32.5MP. The original is 16.9MB and this file is 40.1KB in size. I also downloaded a larger file but this site will not let me load the original file being it is to large. The larger file is only 526KB in size. It not near as grainy or blurry as the smaller one. But neither compare in quality to the original file size.

You may just have a camera that has a bad focus or lens. Like I said above I have several cams that take really bad pics and then have one or two of the exact same model, bought the same day that take much better quality pics.

Mine took and sent great pictures for the 2 months it worked. When it quit working I called customer service and sat for a looonnnnnng time
they told me to upgrade software and it would work perfectly, Not. last time i called them they had no clue, offered no solutions and/or
offered no replacement.

Did it update successfully using the mini SD card?

I've had 3 going for a couple of years and overall I'm happy with them. The camera at my feeder had a weak one bar signal, so I added an external antenna on an extension cable fed through a 10' PVC pipe zip tied to the trunk of the tree. That fixed the signal problem. I use external feeder batteries zip tied to he tree with no box and they last about 8 mths before needing to be recharged. When I have used AA's they seemed to last longer than expected.

Photo quality: The resolution is low because it's designed to be sent over cellular (reduced data size and transmit time). The pics stored on the micro SD are better, but still not as good quality as I was used to, but again, these pics need to be reasonable size to be sent over cellular if you buy the HD package, which I think is a good idea. I do miss the crisp 10mp photos from my old disconnected camera, but it's totally worth the tradeoff to be able to see the animal traffic from 100 miles away. I do a lot of hog hunting and they go through patterns where they wont' show up for weeks, so it's great to know when they are coming and not waste time driving out to the property when they aren't there.

I've had good luck working with support work though the small number of issues I have had.

The best part of the camera is the 100 pics/mth for free plan which is great for security purposes. I only pay for one of my cameras (250 pics/mth).

To save battery, it's best to only transmit once a day. I look forward to that notification that comes at 8pm every day.