Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Problems with the GardenWatchCam, January 24, 2009
The first GardenWatchCam I received lacked the essential bottom housing plate that contains the tripod mount socket. After an exchange, I found that the camera would only accept flash drives formatted FAT 16, limiting the size of the flash drive. My second unit also has an erratic timer. At the one minute setting, the camera snaps its photos at about 40 second intervals. At the custom 20 second interval, it snaps at 14 second intervals. While tolerable, it also makes the 24 hour setting pretty useless for me.
Brinno's included documentation for the unit is minimal at best.
Two emails to Brinno's customer service have gone unanswered and unacknowledged. It appears that buyers experiencing negative issues with the unit are on their own.
The camera does take acceptable time-lapse movies, but with the issues above, I'd like to warn folks off of it until Brinno becomes more responsible in their quality control and customer service.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Works great despite more critical reviews, July 21, 2009
So I wanted to use the GardenWatchCam for everything except a garden! Heh... Unfortunately I couldn't find exact details on their website or elsewhere about the user customizable setting--which can go from 5 seconds to 12 hours in 1 second increments and comes set at 20 secs. (Not fast enough for clouds or driving unfortunately.)
Of the seven reviews here then, one hinted at it, but all had various issues.
Thankfully I don't share those problems. The timer on mine is exact to the second, per including a timer in a time lapse video. (Search YouTube for RJFerret, the Melting Ice Cubes Comparison shows a timer in the background so you may see for yourself.)
So I am very happy with the GardenWatchCam. It does more than it advertises!
Another reviewer couldn't hear the beeps the unit produces, let me tell you hearing them doesn't help. It gives two beeps when it's turned on as well as the same two beeps when it's turned off. So they are useless. You have to look at the green light (hard to see in daylight) to see that it's on. This light also blinks every 15 seconds and when your unit takes a picture.
Speaking of which, as another reviewer pointed out, it does not store individual picture files, it only produces an AVI file. If you want to composite a picture series you'll need to export frames from the video with other software. However this is FAR more desirable than producing thousands of picture files you'd need to assemble into a video.
There is no way to turn off the time/date stamp at the bottom, so you have to use software to crop the bottom 16 lines. Also it produces a video file that is set to 10 fps instead of the more usual 30 fps. I needed to find/download the (thankfully free) software program VirtualDub to crop and convert the video.
Someone complained that there wasn't much instruction for the included software. Well it simply has six entry fields. Two for time/date, three cover the interval (by hours/minutes/seconds), and the last is for which drive letter your system assigned to the USB flash drive. Only two buttons, OK or Cancel.
Unlike another, I found the manual to be good, the first two pages both explain and show how to assemble the pole, which is self explanatory, just stick it together! Heh... It also explains the lens setting, with exact details of the macro setting, again, obvious to anyone who has used a camera before.
Page seven covers operation, turning on/off, explaining the beeps and indicator lights (low battery and memory card full).
The final two pages cover installing the software (put in your CD and click install--there are no custom options even if you select expert install) and using the software (insert USB drive, note which letter it is assigned by your computer, choose time/date/period and click OK).
There are four things I would change, move the LEDs to the side of the unit so you can see them from front or back, ability to turn off the time/date stamp, make movies at 30 fps and provide a viewfinder. I mounted another camera in place to align my composition, then compensated for the height of the GardenWatchCam's lens.
All in all, considering the value you get for the money, weather resistant, customizable time, video output (many other time lapse cameras require software to combine the thousands of photographs into a movie), easy to use, I am very pleased with my purchase and glad this produce is available.
It simply does what you want it to do, the extras are all secondary to that main function.
hth!
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
good value, May 4, 2009
I got the GardenCam to capture the construction of a building over the course of many months. I could find no other product that has its unique combination of features anywhere near this price. The alternative would have been a very expensive camera and a weather-proof enclosure that doesn't fog up. Then try to figure out how to deal with a camera battery that will need to be recharged very frequently. And what if somebody decides they want to walk off with my gear? I'd rather be out $139 than $1000.
I mounted the camera on a utility pole for a week-long test and it performed as advertised - withstanding some rain and lots of dust. It captured 1 snapshot every 5 minutes. I experimented with the custom time interval setting and it worked ok too. The result was a 118MB AVI and it plays fine on my Mac. There is no need to buy additional software to create a movie.
You can set either close-up or distance focus. I used the distance setting and the quality of the pictures are OK, not excellent. Image resolution is kind of low (around 1MB?) and the pictures are a little fuzzy in the area that the camera doesn't autofocus on. But it does the job.
I think Brinno has done a nice job making it simple to use out of the box. Pop the included 2GB Flash Drive and 4 AA batteries in the unit, press the power button, aim it at your subject and you're making a time lapse movie. I think they may be missing a wider market by calling it a Garden cam, since it could be used anywhere you want to do some time lapse during daylight hours. It has a light sensor so that it doesn't take pictures at night (a power saving feature), so no night time photos with this camera.
Overall, I'm pleased so far with this purchase. I'll be putting it to the acid test over the next 3 months, so we'll see how well it really stands up.
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