Want to see what goes bump in the night? Curious what animals might be visiting your property? There are听a million reasons why you might want a motion-sensor camera, and for just $150, this one听is as good as it gets.
My reason for wanting a camera was to see what might be visiting my family鈥檚 cabin in northern Montana听while we鈥檙e there鈥攁nd when we鈥檙e not there,听I didn鈥檛 want to wait for those images, so I needed the information to be live.
But things got a little more complicated than simply installing a doorbell camera. I was looking for an angle that could show me more than the view out the front door, and the听electricity and satellite internet connections at the cabin are spotty at best. What I needed was something that ran on batteries and听was capable of instantly uploading photos to the internet using a cellular data uplink. In other words, I was after a game camera.
Game cameras use infrared motion sensors to capture images of wildlife that walks in front of them. Hunters use them to gain knowledge of what wildlife exists where. In the past, you had to visit the camera, remove the SD card, and insert it into a laptop or tablet to view the images the camera听had captured. Recent years, however, have seen the adoption of cellular data uplinks. Now, many new game cameras are able to transmit images wirelessly, which opens up their application as ruggedized, weatherproof, outdoor security cameras.
But听drive to our cabin, and if you鈥檙e on Verizon, you鈥檒l be greeted by a 鈥渨elcome to Canada鈥 message. That鈥檚 because the only faint, patchy bar of signal available there comes from one of that network鈥檚 towers across the border.
A bunch of Googling led me to a company I鈥檇 never heard of before: Moultrie, which specializes in eastern-style quality deer habitat management tools鈥攁nd a听now-discontinued $400 camera called the 听that customer reviews indicated would work well with a very limited signal.听That price created another problem, though: I didn鈥檛 want this thing to get stolen.
More time on Google听led me to , which produces steel lockboxes custom fit to individual models of game cameras, along with other security gear, like mounts and locks. Sixty dollars later, I鈥檇 ordered a box fitted for the Moultrie and a cable lock听sized to the mounting holes in the camera and box.
On our next visit to the cabin, I set everything up听and mounted it to a tree in the driveway.听I was nervous that my $500 investment (I also had to buy and batteries) was going to be a waste, but all the lights lit up green, suggesting things were going well. You control the camera through a smartphone app鈥擨 pay for the midtier plan that听gives me up to 1,500 images a month for $14. No contract, preexisting or new, necessary.
Surprisingly, the camera said it had four out of five bars of service, despite connecting to that tower in Canada. It has no issues uploading photos听or responding to commands through the app despite being housed inside the steel lockbox. A set of 12 lithium AA batteries I installed last July is still going strong now in late March, despite winter temperatures that reached听the negative twenties.
Almost immediately, the XV-7000i started capturing wildlife photos: an awful lot of squirrels, the fox that lives near the trash cans, the skunk that lives under the house (don鈥檛 get me started), deer, a moose, the big mountain lion we鈥檇 only ever seen as听tracks before, and even a couple bears. The family text thread filled up with images of the animals, giving us all a connection to our favorite place, even when we aren鈥檛 able to visit.
More important, the camera provides an appreciable extra level of live security. When a tree fell in the driveway last fall, we were able to see that it hadn鈥檛 damaged the house. Phew. A commotion at the top of the driveway last summer, while we were inside the cabin, turned out to be a car full of teenagers who looked like they were up to no good. They were pulling out of the driveway just as I ran up there.
The images uploaded to the app initially are pretty low resolution, but with the push of a button, you can request that the camera uploads them in full 16-megapixel resolution at 5376×3024 pixels. That鈥檚听a long way听from even an iPhone-quality shot, but it鈥檚 enough to read license plates and identify faces within听the camera鈥檚 80-foot detection range.
The 鈥淰鈥 in XV-7000i denotes Verizon. Moultrie also makes cameras that run on AT&T鈥檚 mobile data network, if that works better in your chosen location. Motion detection is accomplished using a passive infrared sensor听with adjustable sensitivity, and the black-and-white nighttime images are aided by an invisible infrared flash.
The CamLockBox fits the camera perfectly, allowing no room for movement or vibrations. The cable lock passes through both the lockbox body听and the camera鈥檚 mounting holes, making听it very secure. My only complaint is that it can be hard really snugging the whole thing up against a tree using only the included cam strap. In the future, I plan to remount the camera with lag bolts using the existing mounting holes provided in the lockbox body.
Speaking of security, no one has听tried to mess with the camera. While I have no doubt that a highly motivated person with the right tools could cut the cable lock听or pry the box open, that鈥檇 likely take them several minutes of work. And while they labored, the camera would just fire off shots, uploading them all instantaneously to Moultrie鈥檚 cloud server. I鈥檇 have pictures of them on my phone before they finished. The app also enables you to create custom alerts, pinging your phone if it captures an image of a human, a certain type of animal, or whatever other variable you ask of it.
The best part? While the XV-7000i described here cost me $400 a year ago, it鈥檚 since been replaced by the new ,听which costs just $150. Performance is actually said to be superior on the new, cheaper camera, with a decreased tendency to capture听images of absolutely nothing. I bought one, plus the accompanying CamLockBox and lock, a month ago听and am just waiting for my next visit to the cabin to install it. I want to get some more images of that lion, and I think I know the route he prowls, so I鈥檓 going to install the XV-6000听along his path.