Just pulled 3 SG500's from the woods yesterday. Two I got from BeeBusy back last October are still going strong on the same set of batteries. Newest one from Trailcampro had no night pics that were even viewable. That one is a month old and on first trial run. Over 1100 pics total. Day pictures were great. Late afternoon pics were whiteouts, night pics were nothing but darkness even when you could make out a deer less than 4 foot from the camera. Over 800 night pics and not one in the bunch that indicated the emitters were working properly. Got a message out to TCP now to get this one returned to them. Bummer!!

it happens, but it's wise to just exchange the camera as you are doing, it is a bummer though. Was the newer camera with the problems the scoutguard 550v?

Nope, all 3 are the original models. Tried the batteries and card from the 'bad pic' one in one of the others this weekend and pics were fine, so looks like it's definitely a bad emitter problem. Had to get a bad one at some point I guess.