Scoutguard series Q & A
Sequence of Battery, SD Card, Remote, and Power On
1. ALWAYS load battery, insert SD card and plug in the remote BEFORE turn the power on, otherwise, the cam won't recognize the components and will give you a blue screen. MAKE SURE SD CARD IS NOT LOCKED.
2. ALWAYS plug the remote gently, avoid damaging on connector.
3. If the remote does not work, 95% of the possibility is the SD card compatibility issue. Please reformat your card and try again.
SD card problem
Please note that not all the SD cards will work on all hunting cameras. When you have the problem like this, try to use a different brand card or format the card when the card is in the cameras (connect the camera to your computer by supplied USB cable and format the card from your computer). MAKE SURE SD CARD IS NOT LOCKED.
Camera gives 2 beep error code and will not respond to Menu button on remote
SG550 doesn't have internal memory. The operation requires SD card to be used. Please be noted that not all the SD card will be compatible with SG550 (basically, it happens on almost all the game cameras.). Other than the card issue, low battery power may cause this problem too.
Why do I see a small, round, rose-colored filter or lens looking piece in the camera eye loose and rolling around?
The red O-ring in front of the lense is an IR-filter, it's designed to move around depending on your shooting time. When the cam is powered up, the lens will move into position. When power is shut off, it relaxes. For daytime shooting, the filter will be in front of the len to filter off the IR light which shall interfere your image otherwise (all commercial digital cameras have such a filter fixed in front of the len); for nighttime shooting, the IR filter will be moved away from the lens to allow IR light pass through to give you the B&W pictures.
Why can't I see the picture time stamp on TV?
You can not see the time stamp on TV because the TV screen 'cut' that part off. The only way you can see the time stamp is on your computer. Indeed the TV screen frame is smaller than the actual picture resolution (it cuts the margins). To allow the TV shows the time stamp, the time stamp has to be lifted up, which is annoying for most of the people using computer. So, we had to make the choice to put it at the very bottom.
Daytime pictures are too white
Camera may be pointed at the sun; point away from sun.
Only day time pictures, no night pictures.
Camera batteries may be too weak.
Camera takes only a few pictures and batteries are dead
When the camera was set up to very small delay time like 0 or 1 seconds, the camera will be in wake mode all the time. This may cause more power consumption.
Date time in the way
If your pictures from SG550 have the date/time stamp on the way, please go to date/time stamp relocation update to update your camera so the stamp can be relocate to the bottom connors.
Camera locks up after taking a certain amount of pictures
Please turn off the camera and change another SD card and try again. This usually happens due to the low quality SD card which has writing problem.
Set the camera to 1 second delay but it takes more than 1second between taking two pictures
The interval time means the camera SLEEP time after each picture shot. It's very common for people to misunderstand it as Picture interval time. These are two different concepts from our understanding of SG550.
For example: let's set 3M, 1 photo shot and 1 sec. interval time, the following is the major time sequence after each picture taken:
• Back to sleep mode,
• Wake up after 1 second interval time.
• Triggered instantly if there is a motion (trigger time 1.3 sec., counted as 2 second in picture recording)
• Take the shot.
• Digest the image, process the image into jpeg format and output to SD card (this takes 1-2 seconds for 3M and longer for 5M)
• ‘Shut down', back to sleep mode again.
As you can see this will make the Picture interval time around 5-6 seconds from the previous shot due to the overhead. And our testing on SG550 always give 6-7 seconds for day & night pictures. So, the 0, 1, 2, 3 …seconds Interval setting just specifies the SLEEP time (step 2). Obviously, the overhead is more significant for very short IT settings.
No animal in some of the pictures
1 Check to see if the camera is pointing at the rising or setting sun which can trigger the sensor.
2. At night, the Motion Detector may sense animals beyond the range of the IR illumination. Reduce the distance setting.
3. Small animals may be triggering the unit. Reduce the distance setting and/or raise the height of the camera above small animals.
4. The Motion Detector may sense animals through foliage. Reduce the distance setting.
5. If the animal moves quickly, it may have moved out of the view of the camera lens before the picture was taken.
------Move the camera further back.
------Point the camera up or down a trail, not across it.
6. Make sure the mounting post or tree is stable and doesn't move.
Why don't HCO cameras come with the software CD as other brand cameras do?
Simply speaking, you don't need it. Our camera is Plug-n-Play device and you don't need any driver for it when you connect it to your computer. Also, all the computers have their own image view & edit software.
What does Mega Pixel (MP) mean?
The word "pixel" is actually short for "picture element", which is one of those millions of dots on your computer screen or digital image. Now, every one of those pixels holds one color and combined with the other millions of single colored dots, forms the picture. Mega pixel means a million pixels, so a 3 megapixel digital camera has 3 million pixels. To get the total pixel count, you multiply the horizontal pixels by the vertical pixels. For example, 2590 x 1920 = 5 Mega pixels.
Our cameras use 2MP/3MP/5MP CMOS image sensor. They are creating up to 3MP/5MP/7MP digital pictures. For more information, please click here .
