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).
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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
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As sent through the app:
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HD Shot from Card
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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.
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HD Shot from Card
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HD from the app (not the same resolution as the Card).
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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.