Cuddeback Cuddelink Review - Check all your game cameras from one location!

[@arjaya]

Great review and just enough tech detail to understand how these cams work. I work in the tech industry and was on the fence about getting into these camera units, but was questioning how well the wi-fi worked. I'm in the same situation where I could use a home unit without a camera on it as I live next to the woods I hunt. Thanks!

[@BooneDownSouth]

I too am in the tech field and was scratching my head as to how they would get wifi to work through the woods ;) These things work great though.

[@CraftersAutonomous]

Nice video! Great job editing. :)

[@trevorhenry7056]

Great video! Do you think that the thumbnails being sent would be able to identify a trespasser? Thanks in advance

[@BooneDownSouth]

It really depends on how close they were, if they were lined up well with the camera to see their face etc.. It will definitely let you know you had a trespasser and if you did, you can always go pull the card from the camera that took the picture and pull the full 20mb pic from there if you needed the details.

[@billyhowell3832]

Can you delete the cards without having to go to the remote cameras and are the pictures in the vidio the thumbnail photos thanks great vido

[@BooneDownSouth]

Billy, so the way it works is that all the cameras take full resolution photos and keep them on their own individual cards. The remote cameras then make a thumbnail image which is only around 50k or so and transmit those thumbnails back to the home camera. So I only ever touch the home camera's card. I pull it and it it has folders for each camera location. The home camera's pics are in full resolution and then all remote camera pics are the thumbnails. So basically, if I see a thumbnail and I really want to get the high resolution photo then I have to go to that remote camera and pull it's card. To be honest I have never done that. The thumbnails are good enough for me to know whats happening at my cameras. So having said all that, once I pull the pics of the home camera card I format that card and put it back in the home camera. The other cards I never touch. So those remote cameras just keep re-writing over the cards as they fill up so you never have to touch those. The pics in the video are a combination of pictures from all the cameras. All the pics from remotes are thumbnails in the video. Thanks for the comment!

[@chrisa2351]

Thank you for this! I've been looking for something like this. All the cameras I could find were dependent on all cell service. There is absolutely no cell service where I hunt. Do these cameras have any sort of external power jack? Something, that if need be, I could hook up an external battery and/or solar panel? It's awesome that these are mesh networked. So if you had a big hill or something between 2 cameras, you could buy a 3rd camera and just place it at the top of the hill, high up in a tree if you had to, and it would act like a repeater.

[@chrisa2351]

Nevermind, I just saw there are version you can get with solar panels and rechargeable batteries

[@BooneDownSouth]

Chris, Yea I love these things. I just don't want to pay the cell charges. Quite honestly if I have feed out it would be 300-400 shots a night, and that would just rack up those cell charges. Cuddeback does make solar kits to work with their cameras. They also have an extra battery pack that lets you stack an additional 6 D batteries on them too. It is amazing what kind of foilage this signal can travel through. You are correct about the hill. If you put one on top it will link the two below and act like a repeater.

[@Miguel_Travels]

Great video. I'm definitely interested in the cuddelink system. I live on the 40 acres that I hunt, so a home base unit would be ideal. New subscriber 😁

[@BooneDownSouth]

Miguel - I will be adding to my system this year. I am telling you man with multiples of these around your property you REALLY know what is going on. I mean I always pretty much learned the patterns they "typically" use on my property but man watching these cameras spread out across the property - you KNOW when the rut is kicking in based on the quick uptick you see in the buck activity across the cameras. I have been running mine for about 3 years now and they are the best camera system I have used. Not that the cameras are so much better than anything else out there, but that ability to have them all send in to one location which lets you check your camera EVERY day if you want to without swapping out cards all over the place and messing up your deer woods is what makes it so good. Best of luck to you!

[@Miguel_Travels]

@@BooneDownSouth Yep... I'm sold.

[@TheJimmyjam1958]

Great review. Do you have any idea how long it takes to transmit an image? Im thinking of taking my home unit with me in my box blind and have 3-4 cameras in the woods around me so I can see what’s going on in a 150-200 yard radius area that I can’t see. Thanks

[@BooneDownSouth]

I do not, because I just check my home camera every so often. However, there is some information in the user manual which can be found here: fccid.io/2AJYQ-17R1-0915M-01/User-Manual/Users-Manual-3326646 Go down to page 8 where it discuss network control. It states that with 5 or more cameras the network limit is about 24MB a day. So I am taking from that it transmits about 1 MB/hr. It doesn't send the 20MB picture, it scales it down to what they call a thumbnail which will be about 50KB. If I am doing my math right, a good estimate would be about 20 pics an hour, which would be about 3 minutes per picture.

[@xilex9383]

I park my car frontend first in a carport. If I place this camera on the dashboard, so it is facing the near, do you think it has enough wide angle to capture the face of someone who would enter through the front doors? Do you know if it can transmit a sequence of images as part of a timelapse or video? Thanks.

[@BooneDownSouth]

I really don't know without seeing your layout. I think there are probably better options for you though if you want to provide video security than to use this. It would probably be hard to mount on your dashboard and I think it would be too big and bulky as a permanent solution. I would look at some small 4 channel wifi camera DVR solutions for that scenario. There is a time lapse mode but I have not used it.

[@MrXtshawytscha]

Thanks for the review. I have read mixed reviews on the ability of these to hold up in wet weather. Have you had any issues with moisture entering them cameras? Also wondering if these are too big to easily conceal in brush and stuff. We are looking to upgrade our technology to deal with our wood thieves and these appear to be a good solution.

[@BooneDownSouth]

I have not had any problem with wet weather affecting them. Now having said that I don't leave them out all year long either. I put my cameras out at the end of summer, pull them at the end of January. Put them back out for spring turkey season and then pull them after that and repeat. However, my cameras have been out through many rain storms and all of mine are holding up. As far as concealing them from people, they are on the bulky side, however, to do a really good concealing from humans will take about the same effort from just about any brand of game camera out there. The black flash unit is what I went with so a person would not see any lights on it at all if they walked by it at night. My buddy is thinking of doing the same thing for wood thieves ;) I would mount it high looking down if I was trying to catch someone, The good news is though that hopefully by the time they discovered the camera it would already be sending pics to the home unit for retrieval. And the whole time they are in range if they stole the camera it would continue to take pics and send them to the home unit.

[@dbierman2001]

What has the battery life been like? I’ve read several reviews on Amazon that say these things eat batteries which defeats the purpose if you have to constantly go to the camera to change the batteries.

[@BooneDownSouth]

Duane, I put fresh batteries in all 4 cameras the first week of November. I had to replace batteries in one of them the last week of December, the other 3 still had some juice. I expect the other 3 are probably about ready to be changed as well. They do eat up the batteries more than other cameras because these cameras are not just snapping a picture and firing a flash. They also have to maintain a wireless link and are sending the digital photos over that link. That function requires a little more out of the batteries. The nice thing though is that when you pull the pics off of the home camera, you get a status update page for each camera. That shows a lot of detail which includes the remaining battery percentage still left. So it's not like you are running out to change batteries so often that it is going to effect your hunting.

[@dbierman2001]

@@BooneDownSouth Was cleaning up my email and ran across your reply, thanks for the info.

[@ryanschultz8136]

Any updates? Everything continue to work well this deer season?

[@BooneDownSouth]

Everything is running great. I even added a 4th camera to the network. I was able to pattern a 9 pt that was coming in to a camera on a somewhat regular basis just after dark. I hunted that spot for 5 days straight when I thought the rut was going on and on the 5th day he showed up with an hour of light left. I didn't get the actual shot on video because it happened too fast but I'll post a video in a few days. I only found out he was coming through regularly because of the cameras. I never left my sent in the area since that camera was transmitting the pics back to a camera directly behind my house that was convenient for checking. I plan to keep on adding a camera or two each year to this system. This year I was able to really pinoint the timeframe for rut activity as the cameras where showing more daylight buck pictures all at the same time. I was also able to determine when the secondary rut started the same way. I have never owned more than 2 cameras at once, and now I am really seeing the benefit of having several.

[@rogersmicharl]

what model no. is the black flash dual ir camera. ??

[@BooneDownSouth]

Michael, It is the Cuddelink Dual Flash 20MP Model G-5055

[@orcaspotter]

Great review! Very useful. It looks like you were able to get months of use on just one set of AA batteries. Is that right? Any thoughts on battery life?

[@BooneDownSouth]

I used the same batteries all the way through hunting season which is rather long in SC. Sept - Jan 1st. Most current game cameras have improved quite a bit in battery life over the last several years.

[@orcaspotter]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm going to use them in Oregon for archery elk season. Good luck!

[@BooneDownSouth]

Yea man that would be awesome. I can see them reaching a good distance across valleys and such out there. Best of luck to you man!

[@atrueamerican648]

fist let me say you did a great job . I am about 300 mills from where I will place the home cameras so from the home cameras to my laptop is 300 miles is that going to be to far to send a sigen thank Don

[@BooneDownSouth]

Donald. Thank you. The wireless range will extended up to perhaps a 1/2 mile in a wooded setting. However, they have a cellular home option that would fit your needs. You purchase a home unit with a cellular modem. All of the other cameras send to that home unit and then the home unit will send all the pics to you via a cellular connection. There is a monthly subscription fee for that though.

[@riehl36]

Great review. Thanks.

[@jlbland]

What do the thumbnails look like when viewing them on your computer. Curious as to the detail

[@BooneDownSouth]

So in the video where I have the sample pictures from the cameras, the pics from cameras 2 and 3 are the thumbnails. I think It's really just a compressed jpeg with lower quality, but from a computer screen you can't really tell much difference in the image. Now I'm sure the difference would be drastic if say you wanted to print an 8x10 of the thumbprint. When I first realized I was going to get thumbprint type pictures from the remote cameras I was a little skeptical, but in reality, I have never even bothered to pull the full resolution pictures off of the remote cameras. Hope that helps.

[@jlbland]

Boone Down South thank you. Been wanting to try these due to how my property is laid out. This would make it so much easier.

[@BooneDownSouth]

Yea I am real pleased with it. I plan on purchasing a few more to add to my network. It definitely makes things easier and much more convenient. When they come out with the home unit, I will probably get that and then I won't even have to leave the house.