Alright- here we go. my spypoint rodeo!
I picked spypoint after a moderate bit of research because they seemed like they had the best deal for transmission plans. I started with a Link-Evo I purchased at Cabella's last year. I pulled the camera from the box, setup was moderately simple, I tested transfers to my phone, things went well for a day or two, and I put that thing up on the hunting property where it preformed real well- So well in fact, an impulse buy at cabella's added a link-micro to my collection.
Link micro's a cheap camera comparatively- but that doesn't make it bad. I followed the same setup procedure, then proceeded to put the camera on the other end of the hunting property the weekend before opening day. My idea was that I liked the evo so much, and I would put the camera out behind my tree stand and when I was hunting set it to "instant transfer" and anytime the camera went off I'd get a notification to my cell (and ergo Bluetooth earpiece) that it had been activated.
Reality don't work like that. In 4 weeks of use I have maybe 8,000 images that all more or less look like this (some in daylight).
View attachment 388054
Friggin useless. I'm not the only one to ever have this problem, and the single LED on the micro makes figuring out any errors very difficult.
Not wanting to f*** with the camera during the season, I just had to make do. Eventually I tried to exchange the camera under Cabela's rather generous returns policy,
that did not go well. I couldn't get my second better Link-Evo from a trade up, but thats ok, I'd wait until the summer and buy another evo. I take my existing EVO and put it on a relative's vacation house property and just let it transmit on the free plan- it stops transmitting in April. I tried every piece of tech support on it- new SD card, New batteries, factory reset, fresh formats, new firmware, old firmware, online chat tech support, whatever- Finally Spypoint gives me a upgraded new camera. Somewhere around that time I joined a spypoint group and read about 50 messages from other users with link evo's who had theirs die suspiciously about the same time (bad update?).
Anyhow. My new Link-Dark, and my new (not purchased from Cabelas) link dark went out with a 3rd link-dark (you lost 500 bucks Cabela's) have gone out to the hunting property where they transmit flawlessly.
Now- onto more technical stuff.
Quirks- Spypoint is known for them. Last year an update killed my link-evo in the field, I needed to go to it, reformat the card in a tablet, and recycle the power.
Spypoint broke the cellular app a few times last year, needing my links to re-connect to the app (march back out to the field again).
Spypoint image compression varies with signal strength- the crappier your signal the crappier your picture because the more its compressed- with that said, there is no signal standard, 2 bars on your verizon cell is not 2 bars on the spypoint strapped to a tree 2' in front of you. Nothing dictates what a "bar" is. There is some hubbub about minimum and maximum values based on the type of signal too- 3g vs 4g show not as 3 and 4g, but 3g tops out signal strength at 3 bars.
Sometimes they just die for no apparent reason. My evo should have worked fine- it did not.
Spypoint customer service is outsourced, reads a script, and is useless beyond the script.
Some users have warranty replacement problems, I did not. I sent my evo in on a monday and had my new link dark as a replacement in-hand the following Monday.
Photo transmission plans vs packages- Photo transmission plan is needed per camera. The scouting package gives you free HD photo downloads (covered below a bit, but more resolution than the app normally sends, less than the card is holding). The scouting package works for up to 5 cameras and also has "buck tracker" which is really, really shitty image recognition. I bought it last year, won't be doing that again.
These are not beautiful cameras, they're scouting cameras. Some examples are as follows:
Early morning and evening shots can be very low contrast: I'm moderately confident this is a bobcat.
HD Shot from Card
View attachment 388062
As sent through the app:
View attachment 388063
HD Shot from Card
View attachment 388060
Through app image- Same camera as above, just now on the tree directly above the "P" in spypoint, or maybe above the "K" I think.
View attachment 388066
HD Shot from Card
View attachment 388061
HD from the app (not the same resolution as the Card).
View attachment 388064
As you can see- not amazing.
If this hasn't helped you at all and you have more questions, let me know, I'm kinda brain fried over here.
