I started with the Dakota units in 2010, they are horrible at eating batteries, especially in the winter. I still have one or two units that I've modified with a rechargeable 7ah SLAB and a charge controller running off a 10watt panel (PNW has a lot of no sun days in the winter) but do not have them setup now. I need to get that fixed.
They are prone to false positives also and lacking in some design areas.
For the price and not needing the distance of MURs, I would use a base/sensor setup that's Wi-Fi (1000ft) as they are much cheaper and less power hungry.
The Brinno is a nice alternative because the batteries are long lasting, and no trigger distance is needed to get it recording as it's time lapse. Downside is seeing anything change in the speed of the recording playback. Unless you have a player like VLC to slow the feed down it's pretty much worthless and then you are reviewing at 1/2 real-time speed to catch a change.
That Brinno trail cam looks like a fantastic piece of kit with that battery life. Have you used the Dakota MURS alerts at all?
I started with the Dakota units in 2010, they are horrible at eating batteries, especially in the winter. I still have one or two units that I've modified with a rechargeable 7ah SLAB and a charge controller running off a 10watt panel (PNW has a lot of no sun days in the winter) but do not have them setup now. I need to get that fixed.
They are prone to false positives also and lacking in some design areas.
For the price and not needing the distance of MURs, I would use a base/sensor setup that's Wi-Fi (1000ft) as they are much cheaper and less power hungry.
The Brinno is a nice alternative because the batteries are long lasting, and no trigger distance is needed to get it recording as it's time lapse. Downside is seeing anything change in the speed of the recording playback. Unless you have a player like VLC to slow the feed down it's pretty much worthless and then you are reviewing at 1/2 real-time speed to catch a change.