Spy Point Cellular Game Camera
 

Hello has anybody tried the cellular spy point game camera I see they have them on sale at Canadian tire for $200 just wondering if it’s Telus compatible thanks everyone


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Which model

I run two of the Link-S models and they have been great. I had to return the first one as the internal battery would not charge. Customer service seems good also. My friend bought the cheapest model and had issues with it. The nice thing about the spypoints is that it comes with an activated sim card and there is a free option for 100 photos per month. The plan is purchased directly with spypoint so no dealing with your service provider. You also get 1 month free of unlimited access. Also if you put in a referral e-mail address I believe each person gets another free month, and you also get a discount off if you buy another one.

I’ve read nothing but bad reviews on any of them. I was going to pick up a few this year as well but after came to realize there a waste of money.

Got a link micro, haven’t had the opportunity to give a good in the bush test as I am using it for a security cam at my cabin. Set up is easy and the fact that you get some free pics is nice. App works well. I would say if you are interested, pull the trigger on it and play around with it. 200 ain’t much for a neat toy these days :)

I’ve got 2, Spy Point Cellular camera’s.
1 is a Link S.
1 is a Link Dark.

The Link S has a slower trigger time and very poor IR images.

The Link Dark is easily twice the camera the Link S is, easily twice as fast trigger time and easily 3 times better with the IR photos.

i have 3 micro links, they are pretty great and saved me a pile of gas last spring during bear season.

had them set in low lying, fairly remote areas, I new signal would be a problem because during the previous hunting season my cell phone would only get signal when I was 8 feet up in my tree stand.

looked on amazon and found 10 foot wifi antenna extender cables for $15 each. bought 3 of them. we rigged up the antennas with a stick or climbed up the tree and tied them to a branch. got 2 bars, more than enough to send pictures.

the odd time there was some lag from the time the pictures were supposed to send, to the time where they showed up in the app.

my biggest beef with these cameras is actually with the app, you cant save photos directly from the app, you need to screen shot them. and each time you login to your account, it reloads all the pictures and can soak up a lot of data on your phone.

pictures and videos are very good quality in my opinion, although I have not tired many different trial cams.

for the $200 each we paid (split with hunting group) it was worth it as we don't use trail cams in the fall.

So how does the SIM card work ? I have 3 Ridgetec cellular cams with Telus SIM card I here these have there own network ? This is the model I am thinking about , thanks Attachment 157676


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Spy Point
 

I run several cameras every year and find the Spy Points are hit and miss. I have a few that have lasted a couple seasons but generally I find they are low quality cameras that don’t hold up to conditions in Alberta. I’ve tried every make out there and Moultrie by far lasts the longest while taking quality photos. I think you get what you pay for and there’s a reason Spy Points are always on sale or priced on the lower end. The second best cameras I have are made but Big Game Treestands but they are difficult to find in Canada.

Look up Reconeco Outdoors, local guy from Ft Sask area. They work great, free app to control all the camera settings from your phone. $16/month unlimited, BELL network.

LC

I use mine for security up at the farm.

You can share the pics and email them to yourself thus avoiding the screenshot issue

I have the same issue with the time lag - strangely not all the time but sometimes.

Further, they often show some trespasser driving in but not going out even though I have the delay set to "instant". Yes there is only one way in and out of my place.

Pics on the card are actual not bad but the text ones are not the greatest. Here is my "guest " that decided to check in today. Hope he closed the gate if he went through...I'll know if he didn't as the cows will trip it on their way out.

https://i.imgur.com/8qrcvHX.jpg

are you serious that this "guest" is perhaps lost? i dont want to say trespassing. Has it gotten that bad in the rurals? if yes, Holy Cow that's clearly cut grass, indicating private property.... let alone the 5th wheel.
Wow

I probably have a truck or car drive into the yard site at least once every 2-3 weeks.

I really wish you could remote into these cameras or simply have it send pics when manually triggered via the app.

The Reconeco cameras can trigger a picture on demand.

LC

Hey Lefty. Can you remote in?
With my link-s I can choose the time and it will trigger a picture.
Also is it a flat price for multiple cameras?

I can also save the photos to my phone via the app. I wouldn't think it should be any different with the different models. Someone mentioned they couldn't.

Mathews z7
Yes you buy the plan through the spypoint app with the sim card that comes with the camera. No activation cost. It uses the same towers as your cell phone.

I have a new issue with my link micro. It stopped communicating. The app says that the last communication was over a week ago. I had a friend replace the batteries 2 days ago (batteries according to the app was still fine during the last communication). It is still not communicating. Does anyone have a solution? I emailed SPYPOINT but I haven’t heard back from them

Mine stopped communicating mid July. I received some support early on (they wanted the *.txt files sent to them), but I have since received no help or communication from them for two months. They won’t answer emails. Are they still in business? I paid for the Annual subscription in June. I am not happy. Middle of hunting season and no pictures transmitted, but pics are still taken and you can manually check the card so better than nothing, waste of $200 subscription though.
Elk chewed the antenna off yesterday, so probably doesn’t work now anyway.
I won’t buy another Spypoint. I have 4 of them. Just the one cellular though.
The best pictures I get are from some discontinued Browning cameras that were on sale at Wholesale sports a few years ago.

If it has more pictures than your subscription it will stop sending.

Yes you can with a app on your phone (App Store tree to download) you can send to two phone numbers and two emails giving you 4 outlets of pics. It sends the pics in MMS format keeping data transfer low and fast. Videos are not sent but stored on the card. You can set the card to loop if it fills so it will overwrite the first pictures with the latest. You can also change settings on the fly, if the grass is tripping it change the sensitivity although when I was testing it there were very few of any false positive. Actually caught a pic of a bird flying by.

LC

I have the unlimited photo plan, so that can’t be the case

My link-s stopped sending last week also. Tried troubleshooting with new batteries, swapping sim cards and still nothing. Was still taking photos but not sending them. Brought it home and then it completely died. Called spypoint and they told me they would send an e-mail in which I would get an RMA # to get a new camera. No e-mail yet so called again today. Same story today so hopefully I get this e-mail so I can get a new camera. It's about a 30 minute wait on hold.
Might be looking into lefty's recommendation...

Spypoint cameras are garbage. Their service is worse.

Try a RidgeTec.

I have sent 3 emails regarding this issue and still haven’t heard back from a customer service representative.

My advice to anyone in the market for a cellular camera would be to stay away from the SPYPOINT micro. I’m not sure if there are any good options, but SPYPOINT has been very disappointing to say the least

This^^^^ on my never ever purchase again list

My cam has worked on and off for the last couple months. I moved it to a new spot the other day. Batteries were at 50%. Got it setup, it sent 2 pics then the batteries went down to 0 and now it’s not working. The worst thing about it is I put in a hard to get to place and I really do NOT want to go in unless the wind is perfect and I’m going to hunt it, so for now I’m paying for a useless service.

Their support has straight up sucked. No replies at all.

I have 2 of the Micros (and another sitting in my house unopened as soon as I determine where I want it), they have been working well so far. When you buy a $170 “cellular” camera, the Expectation is not that it works like my $500+ Ridgetec... I have mine set to send me pictures twice a day, and the odd time it just doesn’t send them until the next day; but that is reasonably minor to me for the price paid.

In saying that, I have always run a lot of Spypoints and have promoted their cameras when asked on this site which cameras to use, but I would have to agree with a lot of other comments on here that their customer service has really started to slide. I really think that their cameras have been best bang for your buck in the past, but the significant decrease in customer service does have me questioning which cameras to buy in the future.

DR


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This is the exact same situation I am in with my camera.

Have you checked the card to see how many pictures are on it? I found mine stopped sending pictures and batteries went dead when it took several hundred picture one night. ( wind was moving the tree) Because the number of picture exceeded my subscriptions it stopped sending pictures but I still retrieved them from the card. I replaced the full card, moved it to a location where wind would not effect it and it has been working fine.

I love these cams but they are very high maintenance on the firmware updates. They can completely hang up and won't send to the app no more without the firmware updates.
Then they typically require 3 bars or better signal to get a proper update done through their network after you uploaded the new firmware. It can be fussy and frustrating to get the process completed.
I run 3 Link-S models, 1 Evo-J and for comparison use a Covert Black Ops and Uway MB600 cell cams. Pretty hard to beat the typical cell cams for reliability, they just keep working in general. But the Spypoints are as close to "free" running service as a guy can get. The batteries and monthly cell plans really add up after a while when running multiple cameras.

Just an update for those interested.
I followed the RMA process. As soon as I sent the old camera and gave spypoint the tracking number the new one was in the mail within a couple days. I received my new camera and it is back out working.
Luckily I have the 30 days free because the call line is so busy I can't get in touch to transfer my plan over.