Night Time Garden Camera

Hi folks,

We’re thinking of getting a camera to film garden activity at night. We’re not looking for great captures of wildlife, more of a security camera view, but where our trespassers are of the wild sort. In the best case scenario, I’d be able to see what happens before, during, and after my dog tears out in the yard at approximately 2am. :joy:

I started looking into products yesterday and the options are overwhelming. Do folks here have favorite wildlife/security/pet camera options that’ll give us a view of what’s happening in our garden space? Here’s a potential mounting point/view, but we can put things in lots of places. There’s a chicken coop to the left and a fence line to the right that I’d love to get an angle on, so maybe something with a wide angle lens. I’m not opposed to mounting more than one camera.

Thanks!

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I’m sorry but I don’t have a camera recommendation. I just wanted to tell you that that’s a wonderful garden.

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It is a wonderful garden, I agree. Much nicer to see a great garden than a great desk set up!

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Reolink argus 2 with solar panel. More or less install and forget and it is catching animals from the site of foxes and cats ( at least mine did already) and stores them on a as card that can be accessed by the phone, pc or Tablett.

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First, as others have said, nice garden. :slight_smile:

A couple questions which might help focus [pun!] the options presented to you:

  1. Do you want video or still images? Or both?
  2. Do you want to view the goings on in real time or after the fact? Or again both?

We live on a wooded lot with a number of mostly wildlife gardens along with several ponds and I’ve a couple of trail cams in the yard to see what critters may be visiting. They can do both still and video imaging, day and night. They write to a card which I retrieve to view on my Mac. There are plenty of brands that provide such cameras, including wifi and cellular models. Be aware that the megapixel counts claimed for trail cams are mostly marketing hype using software interpolation, as per my research on various review sites. They are good to see what’s going on but won’t win any photography contests.

I’ve also acquired a so called ‘nest cam’ I plan to set up this spring, of the type used to watch eagle nests and the like. We have many nesting birds on our property so I thought I’d give it a try. This models sends a live signal via wifi which can be viewed on most devices. The one I have does not include onboard storage, so I’ll need to capture the feed and save it.

I took a quick look at the Reolink camera @DreamingVoid suggested and it looks interesting. I could see a camera like that in my future as well.

Good luck with whatever you decide and have fun with it.

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Thanks for these recommendations. The Reolink does look like a great option. To answer your questions:

Definitely video.

After the fact is fine, but I would prefer to not have to climb up and get the card to see the videos. There’s plenty of wifi in the garden/where we’d install the camera(s).

What are the brands of the trail cams/nest cam you’re using?

Beautiful garden! I’m envious. We also have a garden and wanted to know who was visiting in the night. We settled on a simple trail camera. There’s no connectivity, so you need to copy from the SD card when you use it, but it was a small inconvenience. We get all kinds of good material from this, and use it all the time.

I have trail cams form two brands Garde Pro and Moultrie. The specific models I have no longer seem to be available. They provide equivalent quality images.

The nest camera, not to be confused with cameras from Nest, is from a company named Green Backyard. Again, the model I have is no longer shown (I’ve had it awhile, but have not yet gotten around to installing it; life intervenes some times).

I’ve been really happy with my TP-Link cameras, with the C320WS seeming very nice so far, though I’ve only had it a week and haven’t had time to put in a card yet (I also have a couple of C310s that I really like).
They can connect via wifi or LAN and store video on a card, and they are low cost.