Game cameras and eye-fi

[Irritantno9]

I attempted to use an eye-fi in a (deer)game camera that someone gave me.
Insertion of the card into the camera caused the camera to fail to initialize.

After some guessing and research I found that the game camera has a very wimpy 3.3V power supply and shuts the power off to the SD card when not in use.
This is done for power consumption.

I hacked in a seperate 3.3V power supply to the SD Vdd trace and was able to get the camera to initialize and upload pictures to Flickr.
I am aware that power issues may arise and I am planning on placing a 10W panel and regulate power to camera and aux 3.3V supply.

I have tried various game cameras and none of them seem to work without hacking the SD power.

I have another DVR that records single .jpgs on motion detect, but it does not save to a DCIM folder so it does not work as hoped.

Does anyone know of a recorder that can take individual .jpgs, save them to the DCIM folder? I'm looking for something that can accept composite video.

[ykoren]

these guys have products that will capture jpgs on motion detect, not 100% sure if they will record to DCIM out of the box.

http://www.digilant.com.au/ProductApplications.aspx

when I first read "Game cameras" I was thinking Nintendo DSi

[ahubbard]

I know its been a while since your post but I have found some of the older cameras will allow the SD to transfer the pics. However I am interested to know how you supplied the SD card the the power needed?

[Obershnaus]

It is supplied from the camera

[theboogieman]

Ahubbard,

What camera's do you have this working in? I had it working in a moultire d50 whiteflash (3 shot burst) for about 4 weeks. When the batteries died, the white flash did also. I'm unsure if this was related to the eye-fi card. I'm guessing a 3.3v voltage regulator was somehow used to keep constant power supplied to the vdd trace. I would like to know what other game camera's have been confirmed working with this card.

[theboogieman]

Anyone have this working in another game camera beside's the moultrie D50?

[ron39]

Yes, I have successfully gotten this to work in a MODIFIED Bushnell Trophy Cam HD.

Let me explain the modification - since most game camera's are meant to last a long time on a set of batteries they shut off power to the SD card as soon as they're done writing the data to the card - this isn't enough time for the eyefi to power up and transmit the image.

So for anyone else who wants to do this just like Irritantno9 said you have to hack in 3.3v power to the GND and VCC pins. In the Trophy Cam this involves removing a few screws, soldering two wires onto the SD card reader, soldering two wires to the DC power supply terminals on the circuit board, then using a LM317 and two resistors (or similar setup) to step down from 6v to 3.3v for the eyefi card.

So yes it can be done, and with a minimum of fuss if you are comfortable doing some very basic soldering.

[ahubbard]

Boogieman and Ron

D50 is the only one I have had it work with, but I didnt have it in 3 burst mode. Since then I have sucessfully burned up one eye-ft card and a D55IR. I tried the 3.3v ribbon the the pins. Bad news. It gets expensive but I am still looking for the best hack.

[nomzam]

Will you please tell me what is eye fi ... isnt is wi-fi-

[theboogieman]

Ron39,

Hey I am still very intrested in this topic. Is there anyway you could post or pm me some pics of how you hacked in the seperate 3.3v power source? What are you using as the power supply Solar setup or the camera's batteries? Thank you

[ron39]

Sorry I missed your post boogieman. I had to go back and figure out the resistor values I didn't write them down - I think I used a 1.2k and 2.2k resistors - just use a LM317 calculator to figure out the resistors to use like this one:
(eyefi forum program won't let me post the URL... do a google search for LM317 calculator)

You can use different values you just want to be at approximately 3.3v (I used the resistors I used because I had them on hand and they got me 3.5v which was close enough to work).
No I didn't cut the original trace. And yes I'm not running off batteries but external power - it will still work off batteries but will only take pictures it won't transmit. To be clear I added the LM317 between the external power supply point where it comes into the camera so if you run off batteries that part of the circuit is not seeing any power - this way if you want to run it off batteries the eye-fi won't run the batteries down. So yes for my setup to work you have to supply external power (solar or other setup if you can - in my case I had access to external power).

I have some pictures but they don't do a very good job of showing the details of what to do - if you open the case of the Bushnell trophy cam and look where the external power comes in it should be apparent where to tap - use a multimeter just to make sure.

[theboogieman]

Ron39,

I just wanted to let you know I was able to get this working in my Moultrie m80. I bought An adjustable switching regulator from dimension engineering http://www.dimensionengineering.com/products/de-swadj. I'm using a 10w solar panel and a 12v 18ah sla battery to supply the constant 3.3v to the eye-fi card and using energizer lithium AA batteries inside the camera. Seems to be working great so far. My moultrie d50 is still working great with the card without having to solder in anything, as long as I have it set to 3 burst mode. Just curious if anyone has reports of this working in any other game cameras?

[bsenturia]

I'm disappointed that using the 3 shot burst solution doesn't work on the Bushnell. Not sure how comfortable I feel messing with the power supply.

Might be that my best bet is to buy a different game camera but my budget is low and what I need is something that shoots on an interval, not something that activates solely with a motion detector.

Any thoughts/feedback?

[skiawa]

Boogieman, could you provide a diagram or some additional instruction on how you addessed the power to the SD card via the regulator ? I would like to attempt this on my M80. I also have D40 that I want to try as is with just the 3 burst mode. Thanks !

[Jopshua]

I know this thread is a little old, but it seems to be the main place for discussion about game cameras with eye-fi. I found a 3.6v rechargeable lithium in the scrap pile at work and it read 3.7v on the meter after sitting for at least a couple months. I'm wondering how much voltage is too much for the eye-fi card. About a year ago I tried to put an LM317 circuit in to step down to 3.3v and couldn't even get close so I gave up. I remember seeing a post or two that implied that people have fried their cards trying to provide constant 3.3v so I'm scared to just wire this thing in and see what happens. Any input would be appreciated, even advice on stepping down input power.