Most trail cameras work most of the time. However, the outdoor environment is hard on electronics and some fail. In this post, I review the record of cameras we have used over the years to give an account of symptoms, failure modes, and in most cases, fixes. Perhaps this will help you figure out what’s wrong with an out-of-warranty camera. Even better, if trail camera manufacturers could take this information to heart, perhaps they could eliminate these failure modes from future models!
[Updated 2021-07-19] Added “Disassembly Notes” section at the end of this post with tips on taking some cameras apart.
[Updated 2022-09-19] Added some new failures. Last notice of update on this post, although I will continue to add to it as I become aware of more failure modes.
The table below gives a summary of failures and fixes discussed in detail in the rest of this post. Follow hyperlinks in the “Name” column to get to each.
NameSymptomsFailureFixStuck IR FilterPink day photos; dark night photosCold solder joint on leads for IR filter motorReflow solder on IR filter motor leadsDigital Image ArtifactsPortion, or all of vidoe or photo frame has “digital” artifacts. E.g. very wrong color, or vertical lines, or “split screen” (Likely) Main processor failureRepair not practically possible. Run-On TriggeringMultiple videos with no animal after legitimate triggerThermal path between CPU and PIR detector causes self-triggeringIncrease delay between triggers; push PIR detector 1 mm up off surface of PCB; tighten CPU heat sink screwsLoss of FocusOver time, photos and videos become blurry and out of focusFailure of lens, which sometime seem to develop an “astigmatism” (areas that our out of focus) over timeReplace the image sensor lensEarly Battery DrainingNew batteries fail after a few weeks in the fieldCorrosion of small internal battery leads to higher than normal current drain while camera is in “sleep” modeRemove corroded battery, clean PCB, replace with a new cell. Reset Date/TimeDate/Time reset to some default (e.g. 12:00, Jan-1, 2017) despite being recently set. Other camera settings are preservedWearout of the small internal battery prevents real time clock from workingRemove discharged battery, replace with a new cell. Reset Date/Time and Lost SettingsDate/Time and other settings (e.g. “mode”, “video length”) reset to some default value when camera is turned off, then back on (or when triggered)Corruption of internal configuration fileHard reset by removing/reinstalling batteries. If that doesn’t work, reload firmwareLost SettingsMenu settings (e.g. “mode” , “video length”, etc.) reset to some default value when camera is turned off, then back on (or when triggered)Failure of EEPROMReplace EEPROM with one programmed with factory imageLost TimeTime is off by an hour or more, despite being recently setUnknownUnknownPunctured PIR LensPIR sensor stops working; water incursion; visible damage to PIR lensThin Fresnel lens over PIR sensor is punctured or broken, often by a bird pecking at it; sometimes by a large toothReplace Fresnel Lens with replacement from manufacturerFlash FailureDark night shots; IR Flash does not come onDrive transistor for high current IR LED array overheats, melting plastic, opening circuitReplace drive transistor if possible. If plastic is damaged, time to retire cameraNo Photos TakenDespite new batteries, working SD card, correct settings, correct arming, camera takes no photos/videosUnknownUnknownWater IncursionMoisture or condensation visible on the inside of the camera, often in front of camera lens, or LED flash windowDesign limitation; failure of gasket systems; crack in Fresnel lens for PIR sensor. Design problems may not be repairable. Check all gaskets for integrity and proper seals. Check Fresnel lens and replace if cracked. Place camera in security box; or cover with a “roof” to limit water from the top. In very wet (e.g. tropical) environments, consider putting desiccant material inside the camera enclosureSD Card FailureCamera will not turn on, or freezes, or does not take photos or videos, or runs down batteries in <48hoursSD card is unreadable, unwritable, or returns errors to firmware which cannot be handledDiscard SD card and replace with one that worksSD Card Corrupted and Battery DeadSame as aboveMost likely SD card spontaneously fails in cameraDiscard SD card. Full format new SD cards in PC before deploying in camera. Quick format, take test photo in camera. Sound FailureAudio associated with video is missing sound, or is crackly and noisyMicrophone is damaged, or wires have become disconnectedReplace microphoneSummary of Trail Camera Failures, Symptoms, and Fixes covered in detail in this postMany cameras use a motor-driven IR filter to block out IR during daytime photos, while allowing IR to get to the sensor for night time photos. If the IR filter is working, you can hear a faint “click” as a tiny, simplified, electric motor moves the IR filter from one stable position to another, and back.
IR Filter and motor unit from a Browning BTC-7A camera. Note the transparent red color over the camera lense, indicating that the filter is engaged. Also note red (attached to “+”) and black (attached to “-“) wires soldered onto the circuit board in area marked “MOTOR”Failures of the IR filter result in two kinds of “wrong” photos/videos:
The IR filter is often the only moving part in a trail camera, and therefore subject, in principle, to mechanical failure. Some manufacturers even go so far as to offer models with two image sensors — one with an IR filter, and one without — in part to avoid the possibility of IR filter failure.
In debugging these cameras, my initial hypothesis was some sort of mechanical failure of the motor system. On investigation, I found that the motor mechanism is refreshingly simple and robust. In all cases of “stuck filters” I investigated, the IR filter mechanism showed every sign of working correctly, as shown in video below.
IR Filter actuator in action. I removed the plastic cover to expose the inner mechanism. This robustly designed part, with little load, and relatively low activity, is an unlikely source of IR filter problems.Instead, the problem has been a cold solder joint between the wires from the main PCB to the IR filter motor. Cold solder joints occur when the solder doesn’t quite get hot enough to melt completely. The connection can look good, and even work well for a while. Over time, however, the connection fails, eventually leading to a sometimes intermittent open circuit. Cold solder joints have a notorious history, but have largely been eliminated by automation from modern, mass-produced electronics. I believe they occur in some trail cameras because of manual soldering of the IR filter motor wires to the PCB, and because at least one of the PCB pads dissipates a lot of heat, and is therefore more difficult and time-consuming to solder correctly.
One can sometimes “fix” a cold solder joint by mechanical agitation. Yes. By “banging it.” Unfortunately, the problem is likely to recur as thermal changes and oxidation work their undesired magic. The permanent solution is to open the camera and to use a soldering iron to reflow the solder on the offending joints. Nowadays, I need a magnifying glass (or better, a binocular dissecting microscope) to watch the satisfying point at which the solder melts into a uniformly shimmering mass and wicks completely around the pad on the circuit board and the wire to the IR filter motor.
In this failure mode, reported to me by followers of this web page, the image files written to the SD card have “digital image artificats”. These artifacts may include bizarre coloring, visually noisey or solid horizontal stripes, or multiple “images” or pieces of an image in the same file. These artifacts are “digital” in the sense they don’t reflect the “analog” artificacts that might actually occur in an image. E.g. poorly lit, washed out, blurry “blobs” or eyeshine reflections.
Example of a digital image artifact from Browning trail camera. This still is taken from a video clip in which image started out ok, but over the course of the video, took on bizarre coloration and white stripes. Photo courtesy of @Ulli LimpitlawDigital image artifacts may affect all of the photos and videos taken by the camera, or may only affect a subset of images. They may appear consistently through a whole video, or may change, flashing in and out, between portions of a video.
Sometimes digital artifacts will result in images with pink color, also seen in “Stuck IR Filter.” We can rule out “stuck IR filter” if only a portion of the image is pink, or if the pink coloration occurs in night time video.
I have not debugged one of these failures to a root cause, but I believe these digital image artifacts are caused by a failure of the video memory used by the main processor in the camera to process the image on its way to becoming the .jpg or .mp4 files that are written to the SD card. The consistent failure of even a single bit can lead to incorrect color, and address decoding errors can lead to portions of the memory (and therefore the image) not being updated at all, and thus having only uninitialized data.
Unfortunately, there is not a practical way to repair cameras with this problem. In principle, one could replace the main processor itself, but his part is not available on the consumer market, and would require lab equipment and expert time to remove and replace. One could also replace the entire main circuit board, but this circuit board is the bulk of the cost of the camera, so you’re better off with a new camera.
This is a problem I have seen in several cameras. I even featured one of these failure modes, in which a camera suddenly “photos itself to (battery) death” in an earlier post. See: Runaway Trail Camera. I have recently seen a variant of this problem in Browning models BTC-7A and 8A. The camera takes a video on a legitimate trigger, but then continues to take videos constantly for up to several minutes. This even though the animal has long left. We have seen this failure develop in cameras over time. That is, initially the camera operates correctly, but over time, it begins to get more and more of these “run-on” trigger events.
After some investigation, I believe this problem is caused by unwanted coupling of heat between the microprocessor (used to process the video and compress it into MPEG files) and the PIR sensor. As cameras get smaller, designers are more likely to put the heat-generating processor closer to the highly heat sensitive PIR sensor. This at the same time they are using increasingly sensitive PIR sensors (to capture all those animals!) , and processing higher resolution videos (generating more heat from the microprocessor). The PIR sensor is sensitive to changes in its local temperature, which can cause it to trigger falsely.
Browning BTC-7A Printed Circuit Board showing close proximity between PIR sensor and microprocessor. Tightening the screws on the heat sink (top left and bottom right in photo) may help reduce “run-on” video triggeringIn the scenario I have documented in the lab, the processor heats up while processing the first video. Then the heat from the processor travels through the PCB to the PIR sensor. The PIR sensor starts becoming warmer at a rate that exceeds 2 degrees Celsius per minute (the rated maximum spec on the PIR sensor). This causes the PIR sensor to immediately trigger, which causes the processor to get even hotter, and so it goes. Fortunately, the PIR sensor is only sensitive the the rate of change of its ambient temperature. Once the the sensor reaches an equilibrium temperature, it stops triggering, and the run-on stops.
I think the root causes of the problem are some combination of:
Update 2021-11-10: We noticed that this problem seems more common in Browning Spec Ops Advantage (BTC-8A) vs. Recon Force Advantage. Turns out that the BTC-7A has a series of cutouts in the PCB around the PIR sensor which limit heat flow (see photo above). The (earlier?) BTC-8A PCB does not have these cutouts. Increased heat flow through the PCB in these cameras explains the increased prevalence of this problem.
Update 2024-02-03: After a long hiatus in Browning trail cameras, this problem has made a comeback in certain instances of the Elite HP5 SpecOps and ReconForce cameras. These cameras have a substantially different internal design vs. the Advantage series cameras I focused on in the original post. Gone is the CPU heat sink, and the PIR sensor is now on a separate “daughter” PCB. It is possible that pushing the PIR sensor a mm or of above the daughter card may help in these cameras as well, though I have not yet tried this.
One can work-around this problem by setting the “Photo Delay” parameter (the minimum amount of time the camera will wait before re-arming) to be larger. This allows the camera to cool down a little before waiting on the PIR sensor. Unfortunately, this also means that the camera won’t retrigger quickly if the animal is still there.
I have had some success in reducing (if not completely eliminating) the problem by:
I have seen this problem now in several Browning models (e.g. the Recon Force Extreme BTC-7FHD-PX, and the newer Recon Force Edge BTC-8E), but I expect it to be endemic to exist in other types of cameras as well. Initially, the camera takes great, crisp and clear color and night time photos and video. However, over time, the quality of the images deteriorates as both the photos and videos become blurry and out of focus. On careful inspection. one can sometime see that only a portion of the image is blurry and out of focus.
After much head scratching, I came up with a simple experiment that at least isolated the problem. I took a series of photos of myself at varying distances from the camera, with and without a “corrective” magnifying lens from a pair of reading glasses taped in front of the camera’s own lens. I found that in all the photos without the corrective optics, the photos were blurry and out of focus. However, for some of the photos taken with the corrective lens, the photos were in perfect focus.
The fact that the corrective lens fixed some of the photos ruled out any problem with firmware or processing hardware. More subtly, it ruled out the possibility of lens becoming scratched, cloudy, or perhaps covered with condensate.
This problem remained mysterious to me because the “fixed focus” plastic lens mount and lens seemed so solid. Not so.
As shown in the photo below, the “fixed” lens assembly is actually two pieces. The first piece is a Type-S, or “M12” lens mount, which attaches to the PCB with a pair of screws. The lens mount has a 12 mm hole, tapped with a 0.5 mm pitch set of threads. A small lens screws into these threads. The amount that the lens is screwed-in determines its distance to the sensor, and therefore the optical focus.
S-Type M12 Board lens mount (left), shown separated from the screw-in lens on the right. These parts are from an Exodus Lift 1 camera, but are typical of other trail cameras from other manufacturers.My original theory was that the lens was somehow rotating in the mount (possibly due to improperly installed glue), causing the camera to lose focus.
Subscribers to the blog (thanks Ulli and Dan!) had this problem and agreed to test out my early theory. They found that the glue was solid. Moreover, that since the IR Filter motor is stuck to front of the lens, and it had not rotated, neither could the lens. Finally, when they turned the lens (a good half turn) they found that it fixed the focus in one part of the image, but made it worse in other parts of the image.
This new data required a new theory, and here it is: the lens itself is deteriorates over time. This is not surprising, given the number of thermal cycles these cameras often experience, and the low-cost, plastic housing for the lens components. I’m imagining that the lens assembly somehow goes a little out of alignment, causing the image to become defocused. I have verified, in any case, that replacing the lens fixes the problem.
This repair requires replacing the image sensor lens. In the repair I did, I used a lens from a “parts camera” as a replacment. I am currently working on a post that includes sources for replacement lenses. Until then, I would not recommend simply buying an S-type, M12 “compatible” lens as a replacement. Trail cameras seem to rely on a unusually compact lenses, and most of the lenses I’ve found on line are too long, and won’t fit in the camera. Stay tuned.
The repair involves getting into the camera, removing the main circuit board, removing the IR filter motor assembly from the top of the lens (it’s held on by double sticky tape). I replaced the whole lens mount/lens assembly, but it’s possible to just change the lens. The latter requires removing the glue along the threads. Dan advises the use of small screw driver heated with a flame to soften the glue. Future post will include details on setting the focus correctly.
Teardown of a Browning Recon Force Extreme (BTC-7-FHD-PX) camera, including replacement of the image sensor lens. Lens assembly is remarkably similar across different camera model and even different camera brands. Thanks to blog subscribers Ulli and Dan for early, remote debug, and for letting me borrow their trail camera to test my new theory.Occasionally, cameras seem to drain batteries very quickly. This whether they are taking photos and videos or not. A modern trail camera should take tens of thousands of photos and several hours of video, even at nighttime with the flash, on a new set of AA Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries. It should last in the field without taking videos or photos (just waiting, with the PIR sensor active) for years.
We recently ran across this problem after a long hiatus when retrieving a “pandemic” camera that had been in the field for over a year. Unfortunately, this Browning Strike Force HD Pro (BTC-5HDP), with a new set of 6 Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries exhausted its batteries, somehow, after less than a month. This was particularly frustrating, since it was in a really good spot! During the month it worked, it got some great photos, and would have undoubtedly gotten many more had it not failed. The silver lining is that I got to investigate this failure mode in detail.
Trail cameras consume power in two ways: while taking video or photos; and while waiting to take video or photo. Actually taking the the photos/videos consumes much more power than simply waiting. In this camera — the active power is about 650 mW, whereas the “sleeping” power is close to 650 uW — or 1000 times less.
The camera in question used the batteries at greater than 60 times the expected rate. This is very difficult to do in the active state — since consuming ~60 times the power is hard to do with the available components, even in failure. This caused me to suspect the “sleeping” power. Since this power is very low to start with, there are several possible failure modes which could consume little absolute power, but still much more than the intended idle power. Since idle power is consumed all the time, even a small amount can drain the batteries over a series of days or weeks.
I used my digital multimeter to measured the current (which is proportional to power) consumed by the problem camera. I happened to have (from the same trip) a camera of the same model that had not failed, which I was able to use as a reference. I confirmed that the current (power) consumed by both cameras in “active” modes — that is taking photos and videos, or displaying the user interface — was very close.
Then I moved on to the “sleep” mode and found some strange behavior in the problem camera. Unlike the good camera, which consumed a constant ~50 uA, the problem camera started out consuming 3 times this amount. Over time, it seemed to approach the lower figure, but the long time constant (10’s of minutes) suggested some energy storage element — a capacitor or perhaps battery — was not working properly.
On visual inspection, I found a small battery on the PCB with some corrosion between the positive and negative leads. This battery is used to power the real-time-clock (RTC) (date and time) device while the user is changing the main battery pack. This battery is designed to be “trickle charged” at a very low current (< 10 uA), and can power the RTC for several hours.
Corroded coin cell battery pins. Top view, installed on board on left, bottom view, removed from board on right. 10x magnification. Coin cell diameter approximately 6 mm (1/4″). Yellow “goo” of left is glue used to hold the battery to the board during manufacturing.In the case of the failed camera, some bit of moisture lead to corrosion between the positive and negative battery pins. Alternatively, the battery itself failed due to thermal cycling, and started to leak. Whatever its source, the corrosive mixture created a parasitic circuit between the battery pins. This “short” drained the battery and caused the charging circuit to try to draw more current as it tried to charge the small battery from the main battery pack. After 30 days of doing this, the main battery pack was completely drained. Diabolically, in the intervening year, the corrosive mixture dried out and became less conductive, masking the original failure mode.
I was able to find a similar, 3V, rechargeable, surface mount battery online (see references) — the Seiko MS920T-FL27E for a couple dollars. It is slightly larger than the original cell, but none-the-less fits on the PCB, and has a compatible set of pads. I removed the old battery using some solder wick, cleaned up the board, and then installed the new battery. The current draw in “sleep” is now back around ~50 uA, and the new battery maintains the RTC while I’m swapping the main battery pack.
Date and time on camera are incorrect, appearing as the pre-set default (e.g. 12:00 am, Jan-1, 2017) , even after being properly set. Depending on the type of camera, the data and time may go awry only during changes of the primary battery pack, or even with the primary battery pack installed (and charged). This problem usually develops after cameras have been used for several years.
Verifying this problem is done by opening the camera and measuring the voltage across the two terminals of the internal battery. See photos in “Early Battery Drain” section, above, for an example of what these batteries can look like. Assuming a 3 Volt battery, a measurement below ~2.7 Volts indicates battery is discharged.
In addition to the main battery pack, most trail cameras have a small internal battery permanently mounted on the PCB. This battery or ultracapacitor provides continuous power to an ultra low power “real time clock chip.” In some cameras, this battery or ultracapacitor is rechargeable, taking a trickle charge from the main battery pack. In other cameras, the battery is not rechargeable. In either case, failure of the internal battery (either due to charge/discharge cycles, or just running out of power), removes power from the real time clock chip, causing the camera firmware to revert to the default, preset value.
It is possible that extreme temperature fluctuations, hot or cold, may lead to early failure of the small internal battery.
This problem can be resolved by replacing the battery on the PCB. This procedure is the same as described in, “high battery consumption.” The first, and most important step is to find a proper replacement battery. A non-rechargeable battery should never be used as a replacement for a rechargeable battery. I do not have samples from very many cameras, but the table below summarizes what I know. If you find other replacements for other cameras, led me know in comments below. Ideally, the battery will be marked with a manufacturer part number.
CameraMarkingsTypeReplacement(s)Browning BTC-{7,8}AELNA 3.3V 0.2FUltracapacitorELNA DCK-3R3E224U-E, KORCHIP DMS3R3224Internal Battery/Ultracapacitor Replacement OptionsIf the battery is not labeled, there are other ways to determine whether the battery is chargeable, or not, and the nominal voltage.
The failure mode can provide insight into the battery type. If the camera loses track of date/time even when primary batteries are installed and charged, there is good chance that the RTC battery is not rechargeable.
Alternatively, if it only loses date/time when primary batteries are removed, it is likely rechargeable. To be sure, use a mulitmeter to measure the battery voltage with and without the main batteries installed. If the voltage goes up when the primary batteries are installed, the internal battery is likely rechargeable type.
I have only found 3 Volt batteries in the trail cameras I’ve looked at, but this is no guarantee (and may change over time – this post written in 2021). For cameras which recharge the internal battery, measuring voltage across battery terminals with the primary batteries installed will show slightly above the nominal voltage. Unfortunately, measuring a dead battery won’t tell you what the charged voltage should be.
When the camera is turned on, or when it triggers, the Date/Time and internal settings reset to some default value.
Note that this symptom is different than the “Reset Date/Time” failure in that both the clock and the camera settings are affected.
The camera parameters are settings are stored on an internal file-system based on an EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory). This memory holds data even with power is off. When you change the camera parameters and turn the power off, the updated parameters are supposed to be stored in a file on EEPROM. When the camera is turned back on (or triggered) the parameters are read from the file.
Thanks to blog subscriber ShannonW for her help in debugging and testing the fix for this problem on her BTC-7A camera.
To verify this problem, it’s easiest to: turn the camera on; change one or more of the settings from their default value; turn the camera off; turn the camera back on again; check settings. If your changes have been replaced by default values, then your camera has this problem.
With this failure, for some reason, the settings are not being correctly stored or retrieved by the camera. We know that the EEPROM device itself hasn’t failed completely because it also contains the program that allows the camera to turn on and respond to the menu. These EEPROM devices do have a limited number of write cycles — but the limit is very large (100,000), and the device is only written if parameters change. It seems very unlikely to me that anyone would exceed this limit even with heavy, long term use of a camera.
Instead, the underlying problem could be a corrupted initialization file which is confusing the firmware. In response to this confusion, the firmware reverts to the default settings (and date/time).
Find the firmware at the manufacturer website and install per manufacturer instructions. This will definitely reset all the camera parameters. But, with luck, rewriting the firmware will over-write whatever got corrupted in the current EEPROM, and the camera will start working again.
If you have a Browning Recon Force Advantage (BTC-7A), or Elite HP5 with this problem, you may find that there are no firmware images for this camera on the Browning website. However, I did recreate the factory firmware images for these cameras other projects (IR to White Flash Trail Camera Conversion and Adding Features to Browning Elite HP5 Firmware. You can find it at my BTC-7A-Firmware-Images repository and Elite HP5 repository on github.com
Follow directions for downloading and installing firmware in this document. You are looking for the “Baseline” firmware.
Very similar to Reset Date/Time and Lost Settings. In fact, a good way to figure this out is to try updating the firmware. If it fixes the problem, you are in luck. But if your camera persistently fails to remember new settings, then you have a problem.
The easiest way to do this is to simply change one or more of the camera settings; verify that you have made the change; turn the camera off; then turn it back on. If this happens, the next step is to try installing new firmware. If this doesn’t fix the problem, then it is very likely that the EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) — the device that stores the camera firmware, as well as files with settings value, has failed in a way that makes it “read only”. The firmware tries to write new settings (or new firmware), but the EEPROM device won’t take them.
See my post: Deep Tech: Repairing EEPROM in Browning Trail Cameras and video below.
This failure is similar to “Reset of Date/Time” failure in the date and time are incorrect. However, in this failure mode, the date and time are merely “off” by a number of hours, vs. resetting to a factory default value. So far, we have only observed cameras losing several hours, never gaining hours. Note that the time being off by a small number of minutes over the same period is a “feature” of the battery-powered RTC design, which accrues some drift in its internal time base.
I am still in in the process of collecting data on this failure mode, which happens in our sets relatively rarely. Here are some questions I’m trying to answer:
If you have answers to any of these, please respond in comments, below!
Usually damage to the PIR sensor lens is obvious on inspection, and may involve other cosmetic damage to the camera. These thin pieces of plastic can be punctured by birds, or by the teeth of animals. They may also become brittle and crack on extended exposure to direct sunlight due to UV damage.
If damage is more subtle, you may first notice poor PIR sensor performance and/or moisture in the camera.
If lens is damaged, it’s important to take your camera out of service ASAP, as water can easily leak in and cause more (possibly irreparable) damage. Hopefully, you catch this problem before that!
Fortunately, several manufacturers, including Browning (see References) offer replacments for broken PIR sensor lenses. Find and order a replacement and follow manufacturers instructions for replacing. You will need to disassemble the camera to get at internal fasteners and gasket. Photo below shows a typical seating mechanism for the PIR lens. Note that the PIR lens is highly engineered. It features an array of Fresnel lenses in a very particular orientation and a camera-specific focal length. Your best bet is a manufacturer replacement for your camera. A part from another manufacturer may work on your camera. A piece of black plastic is right out 🙂
Video showing replacement of PIR lense in a Browning Recon Force Advantage (BTC-7A). Note that for this camera, a replacement lens for the BTC-7HDP will also work. PIR Lens assembly as seen from the inside of an Exodus Lift 2 camera. Center photo shows assembled unit. Left photo is with seating mechanism and lens removed showing rubber gasket around the edges. Right photo shows seating mechanism (top) and lense (bottom), removed.I’ve only seen this problem in older Moultrie model. The flash stopped working, and the nighttime photos were very dark or completely black. I determined that the IR LEDs were not working by testing the camera in a dark room, and looking for a faint red glow from the IR LEDs. Alternatively, you can take advantage of the IR sensitivity of most digital cameras to test for IR light by looking at the camera under test through the camera viewfinder screen. It also helps to have a working trail camera to compare to.
When I opened up the camera, I could see that the power transistor driving the LED array had gotten so hot that it had melted the plastic housing for LED PCB, and then failed at some point.
I might have solved the problem by replacing the flash PCB. Unfortunately, the melted plastic kept a new PCB from fitting into place, so I ended up turning this unit into a “parts camera”.
Water, or more typically moisture, can sometimes find its way inside the camera. Symptoms include visible condensation on *inside* surfaces. The can include the inside of the camera window, or inside surface of the Flash LED window. Moisture can also damage sensitive electronics, as well as cause corrosion of connections. Suspect water damage if the operation of the camera seems flaky: menu cuts out; camera spontaneously resets itself; and especially some combination of apparently unrelated symptoms.
“All” you have to do is figure out where the moisture is getting in, and fix it. Here are things I would check. The details vary by camera type. I’ve used a Browning Recon Force Advantage (BTC-7A) as a specific example
There are 5 sets of “gaskets” on the BTC-7A that I’m aware of:
Check that all of these are clean, undamaged, and properly fitted.
If a careful visual inspection doesn’t turn up any source of leak, you may have to resort to some variant of the “dunk” test. For example, on one of my homebrew DSLR enclosures, I “floated” (just) the front plate (including the barrel and window for the main camera) in a pot of water. Sure enough, after a couple of minutes, I found sources of leaks. I haven’t done this with one of the commercial cameras, but, in principle, I can imagine removing enough of the camera innards to be able to “float” the bottom and top cases. If you do this, make sure that there are no electronics to batteries to get wet if water gets through.
With luck, a problem with a gasket can be fixed by cleaning and/or resetting the problem gasket. Missing hole plugs for the BTC-7A can be replaced as in my post Inside the Browning Recon Force Elite HP4 (BTC-7E-HP4). Note that not all cameras require these. If a gasket has been permanently damaged, replacement is the only option. I have used the online O-Ring Store as a source for O-rings of the type found sealing the Fresnel lens. You’ll have to measure the size yourself. If you take this path, I recommend “bracketing” the size with slightly smaller and slightly larger replacements to increase the chance you have something that works.
In the absence of a replacment, you may be able to make do with a small, continuous bead of silicone caulk. Done caerefully, this is as good as a gasket in sealing the front and back enclosure halves. It does make future disassembly more difficult, and will require replacement on reassembly.
Another easy solution is to keep water off of the camera. We always put our cameras in steel security boxes, which do a good job of deflecting water from above or below. Others have fashioned little “roofs”, placed above the camera, to deflect rain.
Finally, if all else fails, for “mild” moisture incursion, you can use silica gel packs to soak up moisture that does get in. This solution is relatively easy to apply to a typical homebrew cameras. Unfortunately, there’s typically not a lot of space inside a commercial trail cameras for “extra stuff.” Putting them inside the case is problematic because it requires opening the case to replace them (and they do need to be replaced and re-dessicated to remain effective). I have found that Reconyx sells “Desiccant Sheets“. These will work for cameras other than Reconyx, as long as they can be placed inside the “water proof” volume of the camera. For example, I found that these sheets will (barely) fit under the battery tray for our Browning cameras.
If your camera is malfunctioning after a water “incident” you may be able to repair. Start by visually inspecting the circuit boards for signs of corrosion and water damage. If you find these, use a cotton-tipped swab and some isopropyl alcohol to gently clean the corrosion from the board. Pay special attention to the internal coin cell battery used to maintain the real-time-clock (see “Early Battery Drain” section in this post).
Unfortunately, some water damage may to irreparable harm to the circuit board and/or components.
A problem (so far) for the mystery bin. In these cases, we set up the camera, following a checkoff list which includes verifying that:
None-the-less, when we return, weeks later, full of expectation, we find that the camera has taken zero photos. None. Not even of us finishing the setup. And, yes, the batteries are still good.
We have experienced this most frustrating type of failure several times, primarily on Exodus trail camera models. The problem is intermittent and not reproducible. The SD card is empty, with no files, as it was after being formatted in the camera before the final arming operation. I have used several disk recovery tools and never found any indication that the camera had written anything new. The SD card itself is fine. Indeed, after being turned off and back on, the same camera (with the same batteries) can record to the same SD card.
The good news is that this problem happens very rarely. The bad news is that without being able to reproduce it, I have been unable to get to a reliable root cause. Possibly an obscure firmware bug or error case in the camera startup sequence? I’m all ears, internet!
Despite their small size, SD cards are, themselves, a complex computer system with memory, processing, and a great many internal error cases. The firmware inside the SD card allows the billions of fundamentally unreliable, “storage cells” to appear to the trail camera as a reliable data storage device. Sometimes the errors win.
Because SD card failure can be intermittent, good debugging hygiene is required to track down their failure. By this I mean keeping good records of what you changed, and what happened. Certainly, symptoms above suggest potential SD card failure. In general, the best practice is to put known-good batteries (or an external power supply) to eliminate low battery as a possible problem.
Remove the SD card from the camera and try another SD card which you know works. If this fixes the problem, put the old SD card back and see if problem comes back. If it does, you have your culprit.
You can try putting the SD card from the camera with symptoms above into a different camera to see whether the symptoms follow the SD card. Unfortunatley, I’ve seen cases where an SD card would (at least appear to) work fine in one camera, but not in another, so this may not be a reliable test.
It is possible that reformatting a failed SD card in a PC (long or short format type) will “repair” a failed SD card. However, given the opportunity lost in an SD card that fails in the field, and their relatively low cost, we have taken to a “1-strike” policy. Any time, including the first time, an SD card fails we discard immediately. If you do try to recover an SD card by reformatting it, make sure to mark it in some way so that you will know (definitely!) to discard it if it fails twice.
I’ve updated this section based on more evidence and a lot more work to debug and fix. See full post at: Fixing Browning Edge, Elite HP4 and HP5 SD Card Corruption. I’ve included a synopsis of the post here.
These intermittent, rarely occurring problems are invariably difficult to debug. Starting with the symptoms, I was able to conclude:
To get any further, I needed to reproduce the problem in the lab under conditions and with tools that would help me figure out what was going wrong.
I found that I was able to elicit infrequent behavior from the camera that hinted at read/write errors to the SD card by:
I performed this sequence many times while examining the diagnostic print messages. Most of the time, the print messages showed everything fine. But on every 10th attempt, or so, detected some “early signs” of errors from the print message. These occurred in cases where the camera reduced the clock speed to the SD card in the face of detected errors.
Instead of allowing the camera to (optimistically) try to run the SD card at it’s maximum speed, and getting occasional data corruption as a result, I simply limit the SD card speed right from the start. This works because the SD card can easily keep up with the incoming video data even at the lower speed. There is probably a way to fix the firmware so that it could reliably work at higher SD card frequencies. such a fix may be necessary in the future for higher resolution video footage. Browning, please take care of this!
Note that as of this writing (2023-11-14) I do not have many hours of camera time to confirm that the problem is indeed solved. However, I was able to test this fix with my simple diagnostic program. Without the fix, the diagnostic program reliably encounters write errors. With the fix, it does not. So I’m confident that the fix will also prevent the much rarer write errors that have frustrated many of us when using the HP5.
You can download my firmware patches, which now includes this fix, from by GitHub site here.
If you’d rather not load a non-Browning firmware image onto your camera, there are some things you can do to reduce the chances that this bug gets you:
The audio recorded on modern trail cameras should be very good. However, sometimes these trail cameras will lose sound completely, or develop a static or humming noise. Note that some brands of cameras, especially older cameras, may have design problems which limit sound fidelity. If a camera has poor sound “out of the box”, it may not be fixable. I added a new post covering replacement of the microphone in a Browning Elite HP5 camera.
Small electret microphone mounted into the plastic case of a Browning BTC7A Recon Force Advantage. Microphone itself is hidden by waterproof silicone gel holding it in place.A camera that once had good sound, suddenly, or over time, does not. Sound may disappear completely, or it may become full of static, electronic humming, or popping.
There are two likely causes of sound failure, both having to do with the small electret microphone typically mounted to the camera case. The microphone is connected to the printed circuit board with a pair of wires. Either the microphone itself has failed, or the wires have become disconnected from the circuit board. With the camera case open, a visual inspection will generally distinguish between these two cases. If the wires are connected to the circuit board, the problem is likely with the microphone.
If the problem is disconnected wires, these can be tacked back on with are a small soldering iron and a delicate touch. The pads are very small, so high magnification of the work area is a must.
If the problem is with the microphone itself, then replacing the microphone with an equivalent is the solution. Here are some guidelines:
For the Browning Elite BTC-8E-HP4 series (and likely other recent Browning models, at least back to the BTC-7 Advantage series), here are a couple of options. If you order any of these, make sure to find one with the small leads arlready attached to limit the amount of fine soldering you have to do.
Microphone Part NumberCommentsCUI Devices CMC-6027-42L100Water Resistant (IP57) 6 mm electret microphone. Known to work on Browning Elite HP5Panasonic WM-61A Known to work. The specs do not indicate how waterproof this unit isTaidacent 4015Listed as IP67 Dustproof and waterproof to 1 meterPUI Audio POW-1644L-LWC50-B-RListed as IP57 Dust resistance and waterproof to one meterElectret microphones suitable for replacing a failed factory microphone in Browning trail cameras post Advantage series (at least).Make sure to connect the microphone with the right polarity. The red, positive, wire should attach to the pad marked “+”, and black, negative, wire to the pad marked “-“.
I am indepted to blog subscriber Erik, who shared his experience replacing the microphone on his Browning Elite BTC-8E-HP4 with Panasonic WM-61A microphone in the comments section of Browning Spec Ops Elite HP5 Teardown and Inside the Browning Recon Force Elite HP4 (BTC-7E-HP4). Check out his video “showing” the his HP4 before and after replacing the microphone.
Have you seen these failure modes? Others? Have you tried fixing these problems? Please comment below.
I used a hooked dental tool to remove the “rubber stoppers” which keep water out of the 6 screw holes that hold on the back cover. Once these were out, I used a #1 Phillips head screwdriver to remove the screws.
The main PCB is likewise held in place 6 small screws. There are several sets of wires which connect the main PCB to: the battery pack; the front keypad; the microphone; and the IR LED array. It’s a little tight, but I found that I could get at most of the main PCB without removing any of these by careful manipulation of the board. The ribbon cable to front keypad is connected via a “flip-clamp” connector to PCBs on either end. The flip bar can released with a small flat screwdriver to release the cable and give a little more working flexibility. The other wires are all soldered to the main PCB.
The two screws for the heat sink fit directly into tapped holes in the heat sink itself. I found when tightening these screws that it was easy to strip them — an undesired outcome. It may be that the screw in question was already stripped when I got to it, which could have been part of the problem. These screws are tiny — smaller than 2 mm. I was able to insert a slightly larger screw (not sure exactly which size, possibly M 1.7) into the stripped hole and it self-tapped in the soft aluminum of the heat sink.
On reassembly, I sometimes found myself forgetting to re-install the little rubber stoppers into the screw holes in the case. This would have been a mistake, since these stoppers are part of the gasket system which keeps moisture out of the camera.
To access the lens assembly (e.g. for “Loss of Focus” fix), the IR filter must be removed. The IR filter is just held on with double sticky tape (!) to the face of the lens assembly. Prying it back and forth gently will loose the adhesive and allow removal. For reassembly, I scraped off the adhesive, applied another piece of double sided tape (making sure not to block the lens!) and stuck it back on.