Trail camera to monitor my driveway?

[Mabouya]

I live in a wooded area at the end of a cul-de-sac, and have a longish driveway such that you can't see the house from the road. Every now and then (but not very often) I'll see evidence along the driveway suggesting that some nosy parker (or worse?) drove in, then had a hard time turning around or backing up, so I wonder what was going on while I was away at work.

This happened again recently, which got me to thinking if I should find a way to at a minimum get motion-activated still images of the driveway. One option would be a trail (or security) camera. I don't know much about them, but I'm thinking the following characteristics would be ideal:

1) Solar powered, so I don't have to run power out to some tree 100 feet from the house.

2) Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, which would allow me to download any activity to my smart phone say, once a week. I don't have high-speed internet for my home computer yet, but can get a so-so signal on my phone, which I primarily use to check the weather. So, the camera can't really be easily connected to the web, unless I got a sim card for it, but if I can just download activity to my phone that's fine with me - I don't need real-time notification that Bambi is wandering around. Also, I don't want to have to climb a ladder to remove a memory device to get the data - wireless download to my phone is far better.

3) I don't think I need anything when it's dark - it isn't a vandalism or crime issue, and I really don't think anyone's going come wandering around the area at night.

Anyone out there have any experience doing this sort of thing for "home security?"

TIA

[j44ke]

They are pretty frugal on current alkaline AA batteries. The solar powered ones are a bit expensive. TrailCamPro is pretty good with their recommendations. I usually try to stay under $200, typically right around $150. Mine have tended to be kind of finicky sometimes, mostly with regards to night vision. Bizarrely I've met people who spent $300-500 on them just to look at deer. Those cameras are amazing, and the owners seem to have none of the problems I do. That's also the level of camera local state biologists use. That price range can have solar and cellular, so you can go to a website, log in and review stills or watch the camera's view in motion live. So maybe I'm getting what I'm paying for by sticking to less expensive cameras.

When you set it up, put it about 3' up a tree from the ground and give it a 3/4 view of what you want to see. Side view or straight on view gives you no detail. I used to worry about people seeing them but no one sees them even when I think they are fairly obvious.

TrailCamPro has a limited number of reviews on their site. Here are the security cameras.

https://www.trailcampro.com/blogs/re...-trail-cameras

Also, you might just put a sign on your drive that says "Private Road - No Turn Around"

Note: I don't use mine for security, just for critters. But I did use a camera once to figure out who was riding their quad on our property. It worked.

[Mabouya]

Jorn, thanks for taking the time to reply. Remembering your trail camera, I was hoping you'd chime in.

I will check out the Trailcampro site.

[lumpy]

Bizarrely I've met people who spent $300-500 on them just to look at deer.

Have you seen what some people spend on bicycles?

[j44ke]

Have you seen what some people spend on bicycles?

Right, and those don’t even take photos of deer. Fools and their money.

[kdawg]

We got a ring-type door bell thing recently which has been good so I bought a camera from the same company to look at the back of the house/garage. It's got an internal battery and a solar panel and so far after a month it has managed to charge itself completely even on dull days in Scotland - I'll be interested to see what it does over the winter though.

It only has internal storage of 8Gb but it seems to be plenty - it's motion activated and I've got it on the middle sensitivity and it's barely used anything so far. If anything happens you can use the app to download the video easily. The night vision function is really good too.

Mine is connected to wifi - but the instructions on some of them say that you can just connect wirelessly to the camera if you don't have wifi.

The brand of this one is Eufy - they seem to be $150-250 - got mine on clearance for about $100 though - just the old version but it barely looked different to the new one.