Tactacam Rechargeable Battery Question

[Black Ice]

Green screen knows things, so... will the newer internal Tactacam rechargeable battery packs substitute for a solar panel battery that is starting to crap out? I picked up one of these packs from Walmart the other day and now might actually need it since one of my Tactacam cameras seems to not have enough juice to produce a flash at night. Sometimes it works fine, but here recently all night pictures are completely dark.

I'm also open to hearing ideas of building an external battery pack with solar panel, too. Open to suggestions as to what products are good and which ones to stay away from.

I'm not running batteries in any of my cameras. Only cameras and solar panels (with internal battery). Looking for something that will last a long time and be little to no maintenance since my deer woods are 5+ hours away.

I buy both the Tactacam solar panel and the internal battery pack for all my Tactacams now. Had a few issues but turns out something unplugged the cable from the cam to the solar panel. I think I have 12 running currenlty.

I also run 4 Stealthcams with their solar panel and they are junk. It’s always something with the cam or solar panel being broken. I replace a solar panel then the cam won’t take a charge. Then the swivel point on the solar panel breaks from being on the sun to long.

[Black Ice]

I unplugged all our Elusive Wildlife panels after THIS happened to my father's camera about 18 months ago. It got moisture into it due to a storm, sent a shot back into the camera and blew it to pieces. We had some of the older panels though and that was the first problem we had with them.

I switched our cameras over the the battery packs, but I added a Tactacam panel to mine a couple weeks ago. My camera was taking so many pics that is was lucky to last 3 weeks and a lot of the times would even last two full weeks.

I bought my first one and hate to hear that because they have a local place here in Conroe. I run the tacatcam on all of my tac cams but one because the ship time from Amazon was not going to be in time before I left to go to the ranch

[BrianL]

Just a FYI. It looks like if you unplug the camera from the solar panel and do not have batteries in the camera you have to run it thru setup again. I had mine running but decided to move the solar panel to a different location. Camera has not sent a picture in 36 hours and 350 miles away. I don't think this would have happened if I had batteries in the camera.

[BayouCat]

Just a FYI. It looks like if you unplug the camera from the solar panel and do not have batteries in the camera you have to run it thru setup again. I had mine running but decided to move the solar panel to a different location. Camera has not sent a picture in 36 hours and 350 miles away. I don't think this would have happened if I had batteries in the camera.

Yea not fun being that far and not getting pictures. I'm not getting night pictures at all. Daytime is fine. I'm heading up this weekend and plan to experiment with 3 of my tactacams that are acting up. Right now, none have batteries in them, but I plan to try out this tactacam rechargeable lithium battery pack that I picked up at Wally World and see if there's any improvement between that and the solar panel. I don't think it's getting enough juice. It's "supposed" to recharge via the solar panel. The other two, I'm going to test out my external battery box build and one strictly with a solar panel and camera (my "control" lol). We will see what happens with this experiment. Might be like a Myth Busters episode where they all implode and burst into flames.

[Twist]

Yea not fun being that far and not getting pictures. I'm not getting night pictures at all. Daytime is fine. I'm heading up this weekend and plan to experiment with 3 of my tactacams that are acting up. Right now, none have batteries in them, but I plan to try out this tactacam rechargeable lithium battery pack that I picked up at Wally World and see if there's any improvement between that and the solar panel. I don't think it's getting enough juice. It's "supposed" to recharge via the solar panel. The other two, I'm going to test out my external battery box build and one strictly with a solar panel and camera (my "control" lol). We will see what happens with this experiment. Might be like a Myth Busters episode where they all implode and burst into flames.

If you remove the power source from the camera, you should get a check in picture within a few minutes of hooking it back up. I always do anyway when changing out the rechargeable Tactacam battery packs. In my experience, if you don't get that picture, there's a problem and you should turn around and figure it out before leaving the area.

That said, I first put my original camera in an area I was scouting for my wife and it was powered by one of the previously discussed EW panels that has the batteries built in only, no batteries or a batter pack inside of the camera. When I moved that camera to my area, I unplugged the panel and then plugged it back in once it was set up where I wanted it and I never had to set anything else back up. One thing to remember though, and I'm not saying it's the issue with the experience above, there are two power settings on the camera. The first one is Set Up mode, you have to make sure to move the slider to the 2nd notch once you are finished with that, or the camera will not send pictures.