I have two of these unimpressive cameras.
By James
Rated 1 out of 5
Date: 2025-08-25
I have deployed 2 of these cameras to simultaneously capture the construction of buildings at the university I work at. These appeared to be a good solution, as they were relatively cheap and the long USB cable would allow me to more easily mount the camera out of the reach of the general public, yet still have easy access to check on it. For about 7-8 months, the camera worked as expected. While the quality of the image wasn't incredible, it was certainly acceptable. One quirk I realized early on was the data transfer speed from the unit, through the extremely long USB cable, was quite slow. Therefore, when I was grabbing a month or 2 worth of footage, I would have to allow for a nice chunk of time. So, sometimes I didn't have that kind of extra time, so I'ld just pop by with my laptop (they only communicate with Windows machines BTW) and check on the camera. I would verify that it was still recording, check on the battery level, see what the live view looked like, then hit record once again and leave. What I had NOT realized, was that all these things might look fine? but the recording has stopped. What I believe happens is that you plug the camera in, and the power coming over the USB turns the camera on again. It then looks like the camera is on, and the record button is still active. You even see a battery level that appears acceptable. Well, you see ONE battery level, because the second battery level, the one from the additional battery pack disappears. It is not terribly obvious to notice though - it isn't like there is a second battery level that is flashing empty or something? it just isn't there and isn't obvious. The only way I realized that the camera had stopped recording was when I finally booked that free time and sat down to pull over files? and it had ended a month earlier. So, what had worked as expected now has this big flaw? one that requires you to babysit the camera far more than you would normally expect to. So that happened to BOTH cameras, and thus I made a point of checking on them more frequently, as well as double-checking the saved files and transferring them more frequently. Vacation comes this summer, and I check the cameras about a week before I head on vacation, only to have one of them do this exact same thing a couple of days after? yet again, I'm now missing a few weeks of footage. What I suspect happens is that if one of the batteries in the external pack goes bad, the entire pack goes offline. Otherwise, how else can you explain a good battery reading one day, then nothing a few days later? That or the battery reading you receive through the software simply can't be relied upon. There are other comparably-priced solutions on the market now that connect to the internet via WiFi, which I would far prefer, but our ITS does not believe they are secure enough to deploy. If you really want a high-quality, reliable construction Timelapse solution, you are likely going to be paying thousands of dollars to one of those construction cam-specific companies?. Or you have to get two of these (for redundancy), and babysit them. I'm stuck with them, but hopefully you all will find a better solution and not have to deal with this.
