03-25-2008 update:  This short update will just say that this cam has just done everything very good. Since 3-12-08 this camera has taken nearly 5000 pictures and 175 movies. The low battery LED is still off and the camera is still going strong. We are still holding and fortunately we have a couple other SG-550’s so we can parallel some of the tests, or otherwise we would be here all summer.

03-28-2008 update:  Well as of yesterday this cam finally died from lack of battery. The total 5120 pictures and 175 movies were recorded during this period. This is far past what we expected. Should this cam be deployed to a trail situation with 20 to 30 pictures a day it might last an extreme length of time. This will have to be one of our next tests. So far we are very happy with the performance of this camera.

04-13-2008 update:  When we originally received the 550 we fired it up with rechargeable Energizer NiMH to just get a feel of how things worked. We found the battery life was fairly short compared to the life we got out of regular Energizer AA’s. The battery life test was done over a period of about three weeks and was pushed hard with it being on an active feeder. We now have three 550’s in the field and they are still taking over a hundred pictures a week and we are going on three weeks and the battery indicator registered 3/4^th full. There has been no disappointment so far, this cam just does things very well. Our experience is that there are some cams like Pix Controller cams that just work much better with rechargeable batteries, but that is not the case with this cam. We should be receiving the factory external battery cable shortly so we can hook it up and get that data displayed also. Meanwhile we are just going to have to wait a couple more weeks to run down the Energizer cells that are in them now.

04-19-2008 update:  Over three weeks now in the field and one of the three cameras took over a thousand pictures this week and the other two much less. The battery indicator still reads over half and going strong. We pulled one to bring back in for an in house test and the other two were re set to a suspected critter hole and the other on an active trail. We finally got a really good bob cat picture but he was almost Dead center behind the date time stamp on the picture. We also had a picture of a striped rabbit and he was also partly covered up by the date time also. I guess we will have to aim just a little lower so the date time stamp is well below the target area.
 

05-03-2008 update:  This cam just shines when it is in the movie mode. The programming parameters are very good and movie length and delay can be adjusted so it almost takes a continuous movie. I just cannot complain about this camera yet and I have looked hard.

05-17-2008 update:  All things are shining like a new dollar still this week. Anthony and I keep wishing we had about 4 or 5 more of these little cameras to use because we just keep finding places where they would fit and do a good job. We have stretched the ones we have now to the limit and just cant wait until the next week to do a new setup in different areas. This cam is proving to be a real hard core trail camera.
 
05-23-2008 Scoutguard camera weather protection: Today while scanning a new operators manual from HCO’s Scoutguard camera. The back of this booklet has in dark letters. “The camera is not weatherproof, please protect your camera properly for outdoor use.” This kind of shocked me because we have had three cameras out through a lot of bad weather without any negative results. For those who choose to further protect your cam, I have designed a very simple enclosure that is made from 4 inch PVC. I used a 6 inch section which I cut an oval from the front with my band saw and then drilled two holes to accommodate a Python cable and made a top from a margarine container lid. The reason for choosing this lid is that it is translucent and would allow some light to better reach the day night sensor, thus maybe preventing a possibility of whiteout pictures. This is held on by a little silicone. Through the back I ran two screws from the inside to act as a stabilizer when it is attached to the tree. This enclosure would also help to keep someone from accessing the memory card. Photos for this project are in the sidebar.
 

Animal's eye view coming/going camera stand using Scoutguard SG550.

05-31-2008 Update:  We had a two week stretch before we could make it back to the testing area and check all the cams. We had nothing but excellent results from all cams this past 14 days. The setup with the coming and going stand that I built for this cam worked well. The two cams were set on 50 second videos and picked up cats coming from a distance and then the other cam would catch them exiting the area down the trail. Again it was said that when we would check a particular cam “ I wish we had another 550 to stick side by side to double check this cam”. Well it is going to happen; we are going to use a series of 550’s to use as a standard against other cams. This is not to say that there might a better cam that we put it up against but it will tell us a world of information that we could not get with just testing a single cam. The small size makes it a perfect candidate for this job and its performance has shown that it can probably hold its own in most areas.

In a rush last week I made a dash to the testing property and put out the come and go testing stand I built for the 550. Not taking my ATV limited me to just going down the road about a half mile and finding an active place and doing a setup. The area was like a country road and trees on both sides and narrow. It is a normal path for a number of critters and I chose an area that had a little wide area on one side that would protect the cams view from the rising and setting sun. This eye level view worked much better than we had anticipated. We picked up bob cats and coyotes coming and then going down the road along with dogs and coons. One of the cameras had a slight aim problem so it was picking up the approaching animals a little late but the going cam got them good and gave a good rear view of their exit. In some cases we would see them stop and look around and then proceed down the road. I had anticipated we would have just about equal amounts of pictures on both cams but that did not prove to be the case. The cam that did not have the aim problem had many more movies than the other but it also had some thin brush that I thought I had stomped down that had came back up in front of the cam and cause a few false triggers. Today we pulled the two cams and stand and moved to an area in the rear of the property and did another setup with a little more attention to aim and clearing. I also used some squirrel juice (scent) on the opposite side of the road to keep the animals attention more to the ground and not the concealed cams. Next week will tell the story on how well this setup worked.

A short video presentation we put together to
demonstrate the coming/going stand: (click below)

06-08-2008 update:  One of our findings has been a real disappointment but there is a pretty simple fix. This cameras lens looks straight out and the PIR sensor looks below that. During a number of our setups we began to see that food was gone from directly in front of the camera and no picture was taken. We know that this camera has better than average sensing ability but we could not figure out what was happening. This week we did a setup looking across a road at a trail. We had a lot of empty pictures and we began to search for the reason being we had no wind and even with the sensitivity set high we should not have gotten the false triggers. Then we began to see a tiny amount of fuzz moving across the bottom of the videos and found that coons were walking down the road and the lens was looking over them but the PIR sensor had them picked out. The next case is where we set op a coon attraction called a coon wheel and put fish inside the wheel. Again we got no pictures but the food was disturbed. The camera did not trigger on the animals up on the coon wheel but did trigger on things under the wheel. A quick test verified this. For short distances (under 10 feet) it is best to aim the camera high so instead of the animal being centered he would be toward the bottom of the picture.  I know in some cases this may put a portion of the critter behind the date stamp.

09-03-2008 update:  This has been just about the most exciting little cam that we have ever tested. All seven of our cams received their updates and all are now busy doing the task of security, scouting, and monitoring. This camera has really taken on the big guys and made a lot of folks pay attention. No issues during the past 45 days and all cams are still going strong and the battery life is very good. We are not going to close this review until the 09 cameras come out because we want to just keep on playing with these jewels for a few more months.