CREATIVE XPTrail Camera Solar Panel Kit - Waterproof 12V Solar Charger with 2400 mAh Rechargeable Lithium Battery - Outdoor Power System for All Hunting Cameras

Vendu comme étant 12v mais dans mon cas c'était 2 du même item 9 volt. Donc, je ne peux pas évaluer si ce matin que le vendeur a été très honnête et il m'a remboursé le total

THIS SOLAR PANEL WORKS WITH BOTH CREATIVE XP CAMERAS! I don't know what others are saying but this is litteral the simplest product ever.1. I fully charged the solar panel in the sun.2. Connected it to the camera (THAT'S WHY THERE IS A PLUG ADAPTER cable in the box)3. Turn on the camera and that's it.They recommended I leave the AA batteries in just in case of backup needed and I did. The solar panel has been working since OCTOBER and I didn't have to change anything in the setup.How can this be simpler than this? Also, this company is the only one which offers a lifetime warranty because they know that the products are of high quality. I totally recommend their products as you can see I am a big CREATIVEXP FAN!

The solar panel itself is pretty basic and straight forward and appears to be functioning just fine with my Stealth Cam DS4K 32 Megapixel Camera. However, the very basic piece of paper with instructions, explaining its use and what the various LED lights indicate, was pretty much useless and inaccurate. Additionally, the On/Off button gives no tactile indication or LED indication as to whether is it on or off. A simple email inquiry to their customer service resulted in a prompt and detailed response from a "Customer Obsession Representative" but with inaccurate information for the solar panel I purchased. When I pointed the misinformation out to them, including photos showing the exact lighted condition of the LEDs and On/Off switch, I received the following email from a different Customer Obsession Representative:"Thank you for responding to our email. We just want to confirm, you would like to know where you could place/plug the USD cable to charge and the order of the LED lights in order to determine if the unit is on or off, correct? May we ask for your Amazon order ID so we can also review your order details? We are looking forward to your response so we can take care of this together. Have a good one!"I provided them with the additional information they requested and received this reply:"Thank you for circling back. We appreciate you sharing the details we need. I have this raised with our internal team. Kindly give us 24-48 hours for feedback. Thank you for bearing with us. Let us know if you need further assistance. Take care! "A week later I received an email asking if my questions were answered satisfactorily.In summary, the unit works fine but appears to be on all the time. To ensure it is charged I simply leave it in the sun. It has run my camera just fine as well. My frustration is poor, inaccurate instructions. How hard can that be?

The battery cord has a 5.0 X 2.0 end and the camera receptacle is 4.0 X 2.1. The cord end is to large for the Camera

I apologize in advance for the length of this review. I’ve put this off for about three months to allow for a good amount of usage and learning in order to make it useful.I have 4 of these Creative XP cameras with the solar panel/battery accessory deployed around feeders. They have been in operation since mid-September. What follows is a summary of what I’ve experienced.Setup:The instructions are OK but not great. There are clearly some translation issues between German (I think) and English but they aren’t as bad as some other reviews I’ve read. You just need to pay attention to the sequences.There are obviously two primary pieces of hardware/software in each unit… a cell phone and a camera. A third piece is the data subscription. These all need to work together and I’ve learned that they do interact in some confusing ways. I used the SimHero service because it seemed simpler at first. The website is simple but it is also not that user friendly. Once you sign up and make your selections it is hard to modify unless you delete the cameras SIM card and start over. I’ve been afraid to try this so am using what I started with. More on how this service works later. The fourth piece is the Creative XP app. For me it was an acquired taste. It actually works pretty well but isn’t as intuitive as I expected. Once you get the hang of how to navigate and interact with the photos it isn’t bad. I’ve seen some bad reviews on it but personally I find it to be pretty robust. It just isn’t fancy. When I see a picture I want to study I save it to my phone where I can edit…crop, zoom, enhance. The attached photo is one done this way.Setting up the camera itself is pretty straightforward and similar to all trail cams I’ve used.The cell phone part is a bit tricky. I had to experiment with how to set up the text messaging (which I’ve disabled because it uses data and is redundant with app) and the addressing to the app. It’s not hard but follow the instructions closely.Operation:They do work well but it has taken a while to figure out why they do what they do…and in full disclosure this next part is purely my theories.There are reviews talking about how they stop working and require a reset. I have had them stop working but there isn’t really a reset cycle. You turn it off and back on. That said, I’ve not experienced this except when the batteries die. Put new batteries in and you’re back in business. And yes, I did say I have the solar batteries they specify …they are my biggest disappointment. They will not power the cameras alone (I.e. without batteries) and I do not believe they really extend the life of the the batteries themselves. I can’t support that statement with data as I have not tried them without the Solar Panel hooked up. So far I’ve gone through about three battery changes (using Lithium ion batteries, yes expensive….about $100 each time for all four units). I’ve moved the solar panels around to make sure they get plenty of sun but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. I’ve also tried different solar panels (I ordered 2 extra for backup) to make sure they aren’t just bad but doesn’t seem to be the problem either. All that said, this is a cell phone that is on 24/7 and sending data every time it triggers…it is going to consume a lot of power and IMO this shouldn’t be unexpected. It’s just annoying that they say the solar battery accessory eliminates the need for normal batteries.Cell service is interesting. I have very good service on the property and the cameras connect fine. The interesting part is that the frequency of the broadcasts are heavily dependent on the cell tower loading. The SimHero service is a third party outfit. They don’t own cell towers. They contract with the companies that do (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) and resell that service to us. It’s relatively low cost and works ok, BUT it has LOW PRIORITY on the cell tower itself. Therefore, during high load periods you get moved to the bottom of the queue and may or may not ever get your pictures. Other times (when feeders go off early in the morning on a weekend) your phone blows up. I’ve pulled the memory cards and there are a LOT more pictures than are broadcast. I’ve also sat in my stand and watched a lot of critters go by without a single photo being broadcast. Which leads to the next point.Trigger sensitivity is something I have played around with to mitigate random photos with no animals that just consume data. High sensitivity is really the only thing that works for me and even that misses a lot. Medium or low just won’t pick up enough action. I do think that having anything (tree branches, etc) in the field of view affects this but also a completely open fov gets the opposite affect…lots of tiggers because of bright sunlight flashing in and out with cloud cover. I’ve got my locations and fov dialed in and they work pretty well.Night vision is pretty good but this is definitely affected by anything between the IR lights and the area you want to look at. I have three units with overhanging branches and or a hog wire fence between the camera and feeder. This definitely impedes the distance and detail you get in the photos. The camera with nothing in front of it is much better. This isn’t unique to these cameras. Same with any other IR cam I have used.There are a few annoying things that I can’t explain. One example; The Creative XP app has a page that interfaces with each camera and a button to “Receive a Picture” (I.e. request the unit to take a picture and send it to you) which is useful to see if the camera is working. There is a setting you have to select to make this possible and it is clearly explained in the instructions. The issue for me is that it worked for all of the cameras for roughly the first two weeks. After that it just stopped working. Everything else still works fine but this feature just stopped working. My theory is that is has to do with the cell tower priority mentioned above but that is just a guess.The SimHero service is OK as stated above but be careful when you set this up. The cameras will take pictures and send data depending on what walks in front of them. You can select between three levels of picture quality but regardless you will consume data pretty fast. After some experimenting I use the 120mb/month ($6.99) with auto renew feature selected. It’s a balance between how fast you use the data vs cost. You can certainly select bigger packages but they all have a time element attached…they either expire when you’ve used all the data or when the clock runs out. I’ve opted to use the smallest data package and have it auto renew when either of those things happen. If you don’t select auto renew the camera will just stop broadcasting when you’ve consumed the data or clock stops. Still takes pictures which are stored on the SD card.One final thing on SimHero is that it is an international service and is transacted in foreign currency (or better said, NOT US dollars). Pricing is in USD if you are in the US but transaction is in Euros (I think). This means that when you subscribe and put you credit card in (required), and your card isn’t in Euros you will get a foreign exchange fee charge. It is 20 cents on each $6.99 for me. Not much but don’t be surprised. I am working to change to a credit card that doesn’t impose this charge but it is a pain to change this in the SimHero site.Product Service:Big disappointment. They talk a good game but in the end just parrot back what’s in the instructions…literally verbatim.They have responded eventually to all of my questions but the answers were not helpful. In the end I’ve had better luck just working it out on my own.Overall, I’m actually OK with these cameras. I never expected them to be perfect because it is a pretty complicated piece of technology. Hopefully they are learning from a lot of the feedback and improving.I get what I need without having to drive 50 miles to pull data cards very few days but you need to invest the time into figuring out how to make them work in your own situation.Hope this helps a few folks.