TactaCam Reveal SK

Anybody using this praticular camera or another of the Reveal’s? Have you had good luck? Would you buy again?

https://www.revealcellcam.com/product/reveal-sk/

Use three I obtained prior to the start of last season and I am a fan. If you want to use the delivery to your cell phone feature, it's easy to set up and from this vantage point, inexpensive. I think it delivers good photos. Since I send the to cell phone, I am using the low resolution but am still pleased.

Battery life is good, but strongly recommend use of lithium batteries. I have tried each and see the night time difference.

One caveat, The only thing that got me was a late summer update needed after I had them in place 2 hours away. Dealing with tech support wasn't the most fun. I had to rely on my IT guy to download the update on a SD card. Went down south and it only took on one of the three and likely my fault. Brought back the other two, they sent me prepaid label, shipped them back and was pleased when the return process was less than ten days.

Thanks Hud. The thing I like about the one I linked is it has a rechargeable lithium battery pack and built in solar charger, plus 2 antennas. Same price as buying the X model, plus lithium batteries, plus the solar charger.

It just hit the market last week. I got the email about them. I’m running 1 of the first gen and 2 of the X models that hit the market earlier this year. They work great and battery life is awesome. They also just recently started selling a stand alone solar panel with built in battery. I bought one of those but haven’t had a chance to put it in service yet.

As I said, the SK is brand new so nobody would have any long term performance review of that model yet. By all means, grab one and let us know how it works for you.

I didn’t know it was just released. Placed an order and it will arrive on Wednesday. I’ll put it in service Friday.

I was going to buy the SK version, but can’t find it in stock. Where have you fellows gotten yours?

BassPro online is the only place I found it. It was $179 plus tax with free priority shipping.

Thanks. Found it. Ordered it.

Got the camera temporarily setup on a t-post but will change that to a 2x4 bolted to said t-post. So far it working great. I think the factory sensitivity setting of a 7 out of 9 is too sensitive and sending me a lot of blank pics, so reduced it to a 5. Day time pics are great, we shall see what the night time shows.

Mine showed up. I haven’t tried to set it up yet. I hope the instructions are pretty straightforward.

They are pretty good, if you have issues call me. Biggest issue I had was the memory card, just make sure it’s either a 16 or 32 Class 10!

I’m a little too close to the feeder, they recommend around 94 feet away. I’ll move it and raise it in a few weeks

I think you’ll be pleased with it. I get my pics in about a minute which is great for when I’m out there and hogs show up at feeder.

They started selling T-Post mounts too and I got a couple of them to try out. Beats having to strap it onto the post.

Good information....

Any updates from Wade or GNTX now that you have had the units in the field for the last month?

Pro's or Con's that are noteworthy?

The one I got has been frustrating. The internal battery pack is apparently weaker than it should be, and the solar charger can’t keep it charged properly. It was sending very few pictures. I had a big buck at the feeder, and I wasn’t going to shoot him, but couldn’t wait to get the iPad to see the pics. He was there for 40 minutes and I had no pictures. Not one. So, following a suggestion on the internet, I bought a 12v dry cell, put it in a small ammo can, bought the necessary wire connector off Amazon, and got great pictures till a coon unplugged the connector. I have since bought the bigger Tactacam solar charger with built in battery, and plugged that in. Moved the ammo can to a Browning game cam.

This game cam is not perfect, but when it works, it’s great.

One of the guys on here said he was getting too many pictures from his SK. Seems odd to me, but not a problem I’ve had.

I have an email from Tactacam customer service. He said the original battery and solar charger should put out 100 pics per day and remain charged. I’m not seeing that. My camera might not be up to spec. Time will tell.

This is what I got from Tactacam support today in response to my complaint about too many pictures (350+ in one day!). Not sure that's what I wanted to hear. Kinda hoped that they would give me a step-by-step procedure to follow to calm the cameras down!

Because trail cameras are triggered by motion and heat, cameras can be triggered by small movement such as leaves or weeds in the heat of the day. This can be avoided by turning the motion sensitivity down and hanging your camera higher up to avoid being triggered by tall grass.
Don't hang your camera on too small of a tree- wind can cause the tree to sway and will result in your camera taking pictures of nothing.
Face your cameras north to avoid false triggers caused by the sun moving in the sky during the day, especially at sun up and sun down.
Check the fresnel lens on your camera for animal damage. If it looks like there is a crack, hole or other damage to this piece of the camera, let us know and we can get you set up for camera repair.
If all of the above steps do not work, please take your camera and place it inside a cabinet. If the camera still triggers, please let us know.

Please check these things, and report back to us with an update.

Thank you and have a great day!

I put up the fully charged solar panel/battery this morning. Not one picture sent to me yet. That camera is making me mad. I’ll attach the 12 volt dry cell tomorrow and hope for the best.

I’ve had great success with my camera. Hardest part was finding a compatible SD card. Just spend the money and buy the TactaCam SD card. I like that it has an adjustable sensitivity with 7 options, that way you don’t get triggered by the grass on the other side of the feed pen. Service has been great, if I have the push notifications on, I typically get pics within a few minutes, or I can manually reload it in app and get them right away. Pictures are as good as I could ask for, and I don’t have mine setup properly. It really needs to be about 6 feet off the ground and 90 feet from the feeder, I’m at 3 feet off the ground and 35 feet from the feeder. I’d buy it again

As for my Reveal SK, I’m in email contact with their customer service. Something is definitely wrong with the camera. It worked real well for a week or two.

I continue to have problems with frequency of pics. I'm now up to 701 images in less than a week! It's gonna bankrupt me. 99% of the pics are real, live animals, so it's not a case of false triggering due to weeds/limbs/twigs waving about in front of the camera. I keep reaching out to Tactacam but all I get back are the standard, canned, BS answers implying that I am doing something wrong with camera positioning.

Mine is set at 10 minutes delay, sensitivity level 7. I get 5 to 10 pictures a day. I hope you can change some settings and get it to where you want.

Why not use the unlimited plan for $13 a month?

Because I really don't want a hundred pictures a day flooding into my iPhone. I can turn it off, but then when I turn it back on I get a major picture dump. There's got to be a way to adjust the time interval between pictures.

Adjust where the camera is aiming to or move it to a major trail is what I do to cut down on numbers at a location with high activity.

I'm waging a jihad on hogs at this one site. It has the feeder, a hog log, and a hog trap, all close together. The feeder goes off and the deer swarm the place and I'll get 30-40 deer pics before they finally (sometimes!) leave. It's like Grand Central Station! I've tried repositioning the camera so that it looks down a game trail. I get fewer pictures, but they're all of deer; never have been able to catch the piggies on the inbound lanes to the feeder area. As I've told Tactacam repeatedly: there must be some setting that allows the user to tell the camera: "Give me one photograph every 5 minutes." Or 4, 3, 2 minutes. So far, no luck.

Nothing but good experiences with this camera so far

So cards are found at Walmart and scheels

Creekrunner, how did you get to the setting for a 10 minute delay? Which settings did you change to get there, because that''s what I'm looking for!! Sure would appreciate some guidance from you on this issue.

On the app on your phone, click the phone icon, then click the County drop down menu to get to this page:


Click on the wrench symbol and it should open up settings. I think I'm gonna lower the sensitivity on mine. Hope this helps.

Thanks, Creekrunner, I'll try that!

If this Reveal is similar to the Reveal X then when you go into settings there is a setting called
"Delay" (see picture below) where you can delay the time between pictures so that you don't get a whole
lot of them if you are using the cheaper picture packages. I have set my delay to about 13 minutes and
based on the number of daily pictures I get close to 500 per month. I also have turned mine on and off
at preset times right now since we are not night hunting and have seen almost all of the current deer for
the past month. Just our preference. Hope this helps.

Thanks a bunch, B_Man. With your help and Creekrunner's help, I think I got it fixed. Can't figure out why Tactacam "support" didn't respond with an answer like yours, but I guess that kinda the way "support" is going down nowadays, with a few exceptions.

After much fussing with my Reveal SK, it seems to running right now. I started from step one again, after charging the battery pack again. Took a new SD card and formatted it per directions. I put the original solar charger in place again. Went through the setup (again). Don’t know what I did right.

Still haven’t heard from Tactacam customer avoidance in about a week.

I put one out a few days ago. It was highly recommended. I was able to set it up in the field from my phone, no problem. I need to relocate it but it seems to be working fine.

Fellow Hunters,
I reached out to Reveal/Tactacam and it took almost 4 weeks for them to respond.
IMO, I think they have a camera that was purchased by so many hunters, etc. that they are
overloaded with questions that it takes that long for them to respond. There is no excuse for that
but that is what it seems to be happening when you finally get a response almost a month later.
Part of the problem is that their manual and documentation is lacking.
I think your best bet is to throw the problem/question out here on the forum and see if your fellow hunters can help you.
I had a crazy problem with one of the cameras that always took a picture every single day at 1:21 am and 1:21 pm no matter what.
Here is what was happening- (I post this in case others have had this problem plus this feature was good to know)

Check in Picture: This is a “Peace of mind setting”- Camera will take and send a picture at the same time, twice daily (time is randomly determined by the camera).
This is to ensure that your camera is on and able to take/send pictures.
NOTE: Check in pictures are not designated as such in the app, and will appear to be a false trigger.
This setting is recommended for low traffic areas, where you may go days without receiving a picture.

Hope this helps.

I have that enabled on mine sine one of them is aimed at my deer lease trailer. But, I know what time to expect them so it’s no big deal to me.

After much griping and reworking, the Reveal SK is working pretty good now. I’ve become right fond of it.