Cuddeback 1385 Home Wireless Image Receiver for G or J-Series Cuddelink Trail Cameras

I have 4 of these deployed on two 100 acre properties in Georgia. On each, one acts as home for the Cuddelink cameras on that property. One property is very hilly so 2 more are out as repeaters to boost signal strength on that piece. I've found that placing them atop hills is very effective in keeping the signal chain unbroken. Each is attached to the 6 D-cell battery booster(coupled with the 4 on-board D-cells =10 D cells)to provide unbroken power for the 4-1/2 months of hunting season. One supports 13 cameras and the other 5. Never had a failure or problem in the 2 years they've been out. Great product and I highly recommend them.

I purchased the 4-pack of cameras where I used one of the cameras as the 'home' unit to receive the pictures from the remote units. It worked very well and the range was better than expected with some hilly terrain and vegetation and I wanted to employ all four cameras remotely and needed a stand-alone home unit. I have this unit inside my home and the other 4 spread throughout my property. The furthest camera from my home is about a mile away from the home unit. I used rechargeable batteries in the home unit and it died. I expected to miss all the pictures taken while it was powered off, but once it was up and running, the remote cameras sent their pictures in. Another great feature is the status updates. Each remote will send in a status message four times a day with signal strength, configuration and other information. This really helped me out when I tried to figure out why one station wasn't sending pictures. I looked at the status of it and realized that I configured it incorrectly. It was a big chunk of change to invest in these and I was very skeptical about this technology since there are no competitors, but it works far better than expected.

We have 2 of these units at our hunt club. One is the home unit, positioned just outside an upstairs window. Our land is very hilly with over 300 feet of elevation change. Having the camera upstairs allows more range. In our experience elevation change is more limiting than distance to your signal strength. Our second unit is positioned on top of highest hill, its function is to act as a repeater for all cameras on top of hill which would otherwise not get a signal back to camp.Both of these units are non-cameras. Because of their locations no pictures are desired and these units cost about half of the camera version. We use the cudde add on battery pack with our repeater because of its remote location. It holds 6 D cells, so along with the 4 D in the unit itself battery life is well in excess of 2 months. Battery life is monitored and sent back to home unit in daily reports. Unit at camp needs no external obviously because its checked often when card retrieved for viewing. The Cuddelink system is awesome and best of all no cell Bill!We read reviews where people are complaining about battery life. People forget these units, either cameras or home units, are also two way radios. Do your walkie talkies or cell phone last 2 months? Of course not.Transmitting Data takes power. You will go thru some batteries, but for what the cameras are doing its a bargain! We've had good luck with Energizer Max. Buy some external battery packs, fine tune your network and enjoy!! SNAFU Hunting Camp NY

I've had these camera out in the wood for several weeks now and they work as promised. They are a technically advanced system and the learning curve for operations does take some time. So far battery life is not a problem with temps 50 in day and 30's night. I'm using the camera with a Cuddeback dedicated home receiver and another Cuddeback dual flash unit with antenna kit.They all work seamlessly together.I have cameras spread out over a couple hundred acres of hilly woods, communications between cameras has been good. It's really neat to pull the card from the home unit in the morning and see what's been going on in the woods overnight. As I am still learning, I think operator experience will result in even better pictures in the future. I ordered the Cuddeback mount system from another suppler. That also is excellent. The only complaint is the little padlock locking piece must be ordered from Cuddeback for $1.50 each, it's a 15 cent part and Cuddeback should include it with either the camera or mount. So, overall a satisfied user.

So far, I have to say that I have enjoyed the CuddeLink systems. I bought two of the dedicated Home Wireless to avoid having to set one of my cameras to be the image collector, aka HOME. If you have a spot that doesn't matter too much with foot traffic, then just set one camera to HOME. But, if your goal is to stay clear of all cameras, then this is what you want. These run on D cell batteries so they will run a bit longer than the cameras. I will not go into what I think of the cameras yet as this is a review of a HOME system that is NOT a camera.Certainly been a learning experience but also neat to be able to pull one card and view up to 14 cameras worth of images!

Added this to a series of cameras so I don't have to go outside to check the card. Don't know why I didn't pull the trigger on this sooner. Only downside that I can see is that it should come with a AC adapter so it can be plugged in desktop where you review your card.

The first one I received wouldn’t power on so I got en exchange.The second one wouldn’t power on either , I could the positive battery contact was too far away from the battery and not making contact so I bent it to touch problem solved .Seems like a bad design.Other then that it works fine .

The Cuddeback System is pretty slick. I check trail activity from my house with this unit, which is the "Home" unit (receiver) in the system. All that needs to be done is swap out the SD card in the unit with a fresh SD card, then review the photos from all of my cameras on my PC using a card reader. No need to even go outside.