We are trying to monitor and catalog wildlife that passes by our home. Does anyone have experience with a simple non-subscription cellular outdoor camera? Ideally the camera could be mounted facing an area where animal activity is common and we would be alerted by an app on the phone telling us if anything was detected with picture/video stored for a short time and available without having to physically access the camera. Hopefully catch that bear and occasional bobcat as they stroll by. Or was that a coyote last night? And what was that creature making noise at midnight?
Any thoughts from people who have experience with this stuff would be appreciated.
I don’t have the exact experience you’re seeking, but for clarification:
Does it have to be cellular (as opposed to wi-fi)? It’s hard to find a non-subscription cellular service because somebody has to pay for the cellular data plan — which would be especially expensive for uploading live video.
By “non-subscription”, do you mean “I don’t want to pay a monthly fee”, or must it be completely local-network only (no signup or cloud account needed, etc.)?
If you’re willing to be a bit flexible on those two particulars, I have a bunch of Wyze cameras at home, and they frequently record animals, e.g.:
or in night vision:
They are cheap (starting from $30 a camera, less on sale) and can record locally to a SD card (when it fills up, it’ll recover over the oldest footage and keep going). They do require a Wyze account, but the basic plan is free forever. I think you can also turn off even the free cloud recordings (if you want to) but then I don’t think you’d get live alerts and must manually review your SD card footage.
Sorry if that’s not what you’re looking for.
If you want something less cloud-y, there are also just game cameras/trailcams you can get that are purpose-made for capturing wildlife. There are cellular ones too like this random one (no personal experience), but you do have to pay a monthly plan for the data. The ones that advertise no subscription fee are 6x the price, so they probably just roll in the subscription fee to your upfront purchase… and I wouldn’t be surprised if the company went out of business within a few months and reappeared under another name.
On the other hand, the offline ones usually just have a motion sensor and record locally, so truly no subscriptions or account needed.
