Solar Powering Your Game Camera

Anyone doing this? Most cameras are 6v or 12v and I want to wire up a solar charger on mine. If you are doing it which cameras work well on solar?

I have Moultrie cameras and use their 12 solar battery combo. It's been hooked up for 2 years and it's worked great the whole time. It's not cheap but it's alot cheaper than 6 D batteries would have been in that time span.

I have some stealthcams. I have the 12 volt battery pack.

I put a cheapo solar pannel on it, seemed to work for a while but then started acting up. Not sure what happened to it.

I just wired the pannel and camera to the battery, not sure if that was the right way to do it or not.

I put Solar panels on the aux. battery boxes for stealth cams.
They seems to be working good so far.

^^^This is what I am wanting to do and wanting to know if it will be okay for the camera. I don't see why not if the voltage is the same????

I wire my wgi's straight to a solar panel and battery, been going for 3 years now without issues

All of our cameras have solar panels. Been doing it for a few years.

All of our Primos TCs have solar chargers on battery kits. been trouble free for a couple years. Except for the horse that thought it was an apple

For those of yall that wire it to the camera, do yall just attach the wires straight to where the batteries go?

My Hunten has a aux power port that my panel is plugged in to. Camera uses a sealed lead acid Battery which I like better than recharging aa batteries.7000 pictures this fall so far and no issues.

Starting to get a little gun shy about using aux battery with solar panels on my game cams. I have now lost a Stealth, a Bushnell and a Primos TC 46 while using the external setup. After contacting each manufacturer before using the external, I was advised (by all) that I had to leave the batteries in the camera. I was concerned that since I was just using standard (non rechargeable) batteries, sending a constant current from the external battery / solar panel setup through the regular batteries in the camera might cause an issue. In all three cases (over the past 3 years), I ended up with the regular batteries massively leaking acid and ruining the cameras.
I suspect that with the external battery / solar panel sending the constant power to batteries that aren't meant to be charged, the end result was the ruptured batteries. I should note, that in all 3 cases, I had been running the external setups for several months without any problems before the batteries leaked and ruined the cameras. Unfortunately, none of the cameras were still in warranty.

Just make sure to have rechargable batteries in the cameras.

Yep.

why do you need to have batteries in the camera with an aux setup?

Treebass do you have regular batteries in your cameras like some of the others have mentioned?

You need the rechargeable battery to "store" the trickle charge from the solar panel. Basically, the panel tops off the battery during the daytime sun, then the battery powers your camera while it takes pictures all night long. And you DO need rechargeable batteries, not alkaline or carbon-manganese.

If you live on or near your lease and can change out batteries weekly, I probably wouldn't bother with a solar hookup. If your lease is too far to go weekly, I would definately go solar.

BTW, you don't need to buy a charging unit from the camera manufacturer, but I would if your camera already has a port for same. If your camera isn't set up for a charger, you can drill a small hole in the bottom of the unit and run a wire with aligator clips inside and clip on to the battery lugs. But be aware that such a modification would likely nullify any warranty on the camera.

I only buy cameras that take four 1.5 volt batteries so I can do this. It has worked out well for me for years.

This^^^

I have several of the Moultries. For most models I have not needed the internal batteries installed as the Moultrie solar panel/battery combo takes care of that. However, on some of their new models you cannot open the door and remove the SD card without unplugging the external power. So, if you are using the external power option, you either have to have the internal batteries installed or reprogram each time you remove the card. I wish Moultrie hadn't done that...

+1

I use the Primos TC 46 and you can plug the solar panel directly into the port on the bottom of the camera if you use rechargables. Spoke to the folks at Primo's before I did it and they said it was designed for that purpose. Easiest setup that I know of since there are no externals except for the solar panel and wire. The only real trouble I've had with this set up is that some creature keeps unplugging the charger and chewing the connector off. Using flex conduit helps, but is not 100% effective. One of the cameras that has not been chewed on has been going for a 2 years or so.

The very reason that I contacted the manufacturers before using the ext batt / panel was to determine if I needed to leave the internal batteries in, and if so, do they need to be rechargeable batteries. Stealth, Bushnell and Primos all advised me that I had to have the internal batteries installed, and that they did NOT need to be rechargeable. They explained that when the external battery setup is plugged into the bottom of the unit, the internal batteries are bypassed (if this is really the case, then why do the internal batteries need to be in there?!!).

I use the Moultrie solar and they are worth it. I have a Wildview IR camera on it with no batteries for the past month and it works great. The Moultrie M-80 has been on a panel for 6 months and the internal are still at 100%.
Well with the money and savings in batteries. Especially on the Wildview. That thing eats the C cell bats in 1 - 2 weeks.

Here are some pics of my setup. It's just a homemade plywood box with the camera and a solar panel mounted on it. The battery is a rechargable 12 volt sealed feeder battery. It's been out for 2 months taking about 30 15 second videos a day and it is still full charge.

I have a stealth cam with the 12volt battery and solar panel. Been using it for 3 months and battery is still full. I have my camera taking 2 pics with a 30 sec delay. So I average about 1300pics every 2 week's. I say its a good investment.

I tried unsuccessfully to hook up an older Wildview this weekend to solar. It has a positive and negative conncetion on both sides going to the motherboard in a single connection. I jumped the positives and negatives and tried other combinations and could not make it work on the solar battery. 4 C's and it was fine. Gonna try a different camera next. The one I tried this weekend was an older disposable camera in case it cooked it.