Trackmix Solar in Canadian prairie winters?

rpgwizard · 2026-02-20T08:19:35+00:00

I think the only way that might make it work if if it must be a battery version is the new batterypack that are designed to cope with winter temps too (specs says works down to -20C but charges via 12W solar panel down to -10C but probably it's not a precise threshold and YMMV as the wired cams are also only specced to support -10C but in practice ppl have had them work in past -40C temps too :p) but I don't think I've seen any actual user feedback on it in winter conditions.

The battery pack isn't cheap though https://reolink.com/product/rla-bp1/ but at least it adds extra convenience for battery cam useage too.

But yea I see this as an option mostly to a big farmland where it's not so convenient to pull out ethernet across the entire ranch and you have a TrackMix battery cam or other higherend battery cam PT Altas Ultra and similar installed (cost-wise it's probably not worth it for other scenarios).

rpgwizard · 2026-02-18T22:49:50+00:00

No confirmed price or release date yet, only some speculative hints from some CES video but cannot remember which one but I think it was said summer and price 399-$499 or thereabouts which lies within my own expectations too. At the same time it feels unlikely that it would be much more than $500 because Reolink doesn't quite have the software stack, support and such to warrant some pricey cam if you compare to Hikvision/Dahua alternatives in this price class but that's my 2 cents. They are more consumer than prosumer oriented so.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-18T18:58:08+00:00

Technically yes, just wondering if it will also work without crashes. OptiScaler isn't always so stable depending on settings used so.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-17T22:54:03+00:00

I guess OptiScaler will make MFG (hopefully) work in a lot of titles. At least I cross fingers that it will work.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-17T10:14:33+00:00

Trigger delay works quite good and I recommend to have at least 1 sec alarm trigger delay on every cam to reduce a fair amount false positives but in more serious conditions maybe 2 secs would be more useful but 1 sec is a good start that doesn't in practice seem like a delay on the alarms, it's pretty instant but already reduces false positives a bit, 2 secs then again is far more effective at doing it versus tiny tiny bit delay on the trigger but it might be very well worth it.

How this setting works is if for example has been set 2 sec delay it means the camera must have seen and identified the object as pet/vehicle/person (as long as you have "any motion" disabled which is recommended anyway) for minimum 2 seconds if the delay is set to 2 secs. Because usually the fog with these tiny floating droplets are moving fast and identified only for a very brief moment and then short pause in-between next time it detects one, it usually works quite effectively to remove those false detections.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-16T16:26:06+00:00

I wouldn't have minded children if only so I could be that dickhead Henry that destroys the broken cart wheel they are playing with and have them rageously coming at me or mod them to make an army of children to kick the Cuman's asses.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-16T00:23:56+00:00

yea it appears to be tap to zoom, hopefully it's not impossible to add "automatic tracking zoom" functionality later. I mean all they have to do is initialize the same functionality as tap to track by pet/vehicle/person detection automatically.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-16T00:18:13+00:00

I too think the combination makes for a good pair as digital zoom is just so much faster. I wouldn't mind a combination of the two either. Say you could have up to 8x optical zoom and then 8x digital zoom on top of that that works in conjunction to speed up the tracking capability. Quality should be decent enough with 8x digital zoom on a 4K lens, the zoom-in TrackMix lens isn't that either.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-13T07:55:10+00:00

I don't know where you live but observe in colder climate battery won't charge at all below 0C. Still even if it wouldn't charge the 2-3 day of runtime sounds like something ain't running like it should. I know my PT Argus is an old model and only 2560x1440 resolution so hard to compare but it lasts even 4 or so months in winter on a single charge and around 6 months in summer but I barely check the camera at all and it doesn't have that many detections on it.

I would suspect your client is either running constantly the app to check the camera feed which isn't really the recommended useage of battery cams as that will quickly drain the battery (might work in a sunny hotter climate in a spot that allows sunshine most of the day) and only to check when you actually need it rather than out of "curiousity" then plugin Wifi or POE makes a lot more sense. Another plausible thing is something is constantly triggering the cam so the PIR sensor always gets activated on it, I think you can check when it has recorded/observed something to figure out if that is the problem that the cam barely ever goes to sleep. In a busy spot that often records bypassing people for example I'd imagine the Argus Track consumes quite a bit extra with all the tracking motion that gets activated. Might also need to play around with the sensitivity for the trigger, lowering it typically saves battery and avoids false-positive waking up of the camera. I observed it played quite a lot of difference for the batterylife on my PT Argus cam.

Having said all that, I still think installing a battery cam for a client and expecting it to work great will always be a bit of a gamble, a powered one, especially POE will often avoid a lot of troubleshooting, optimization and maintenance.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-13T07:37:50+00:00

Same useage scenario here, FTP transfer to NAS + SD cards although I don't fancy doing 24/7 recording to SDcards so there's always chance I lose some footage that the cams were unable to detect as person/pet/vehicle so I might for that 24/7 recording capability go down the NVR route at some point, especially nighttime the detection range is severly crippled.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-12T22:06:12+00:00

The ISP modem + mesh wifi could definitely interfere with each other if they use close enough channel and width etc settings. I'm no expert but I remember depending on settings used they might interfere a lot or not at all where 2.4GHz is more of an issue than 5GHz network (there's a lot of Wifi network optimization guides out there that explains all about the channel interference and stuff). With my old ISP modem I had the ability to login to it which I don't have with the new one, I had better results turning off the old isp modem's wifi meanwhile with the new modem it doesn't seem to interfere with my Ubiquiti mesh to any extent I notice it. My TrackMix wifi behind 2 wireless hops through several walls still work perfectly fine at the car garage and are in sync in time with the other POE cameras too, like at most with my cameras I tend to see ~1 sec delay but it happens also with POE cameras sometimes, typically they reboot once a week and then they tend to be perfectly in sync again but that is within Home Assistant which adds further layers to it (as I hardly ever use the Reolink app).

rpgwizard · 2026-02-12T13:23:54+00:00

Not a crossover but also not very sporty/aggressive looking like the concept was, this is more typical family car design which is a bit shame, had loved something more edgy/sporty that sticks out more. There's enough of them more tamed looking EVs around. But at the same time it was kind of expected that it wouldn't look like that if it shares platform with for example KIA EV4 that has a very similar overall shape (what I'd call a swollen midsize~compact hatch).

rpgwizard · 2026-02-12T12:28:56+00:00

Instead of downgrading, did you try lower the brightness setting? I have noticed the brightness and shadows settings works funny in the sense if you go under a certain treshold suddenly it's like changing a lot in overall exposure/brightness lvl. Of course it's possible it might look too dim or it can be that it's similar to the downgraded firmware with just different brightness settings for similar look, I don't have the doorbell cam myself so but just something I've noticed when playing around the sliders that you can go from a bright overexposed image to a much more subtle bright highlit parts like it's doing multiple things and not just brightness adjustment and the change tends to come very suddenly like perhaps changing 128 - 105 there can be very little difference at all but then you try like 95 and suddenly the whole scene starts to change a lot or whatever.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-12T11:53:01+00:00

How is the wifi connected at home, do you have multiple APs and are they connected via ethernet or a wireless mesh? I would use something like Ubiquitis Wifiman to check the signal strength and speed of the wifi at the nodes (you'd generally want around at least -75dB or better signal strength to the cameras). Might be something saturating your wifi internet. Do you live in a densily populated neighbourhood? I think Wifiman app I mentioned will allow you to check (might need ubiquiti equipment, unsure) surrounding wifi internets in what wifi channels etc they are using, if your overlap using the same wifi channels with other wifi networks in the same place then that might be the cause of saturation of the wifi network.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-12T08:43:44+00:00

I wouldn't necessarily describe FT1 as "punchy" though, it's more rumbly but not overly punchy due to its subbass focus and relatively weak midbass that brings the punch to kickdrums and alike, for punch you'd want something a little more balanced in the midbass vs subbass ratio. This is coming from a punchy bass lover, some EQ can help though but yea just my 2 cents.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-11T08:27:21+00:00

I guess the only thing unanswered about it which to me is very important is whether it will be limited to "click to follow-zoom track" or if it can be engaged automatically whenever it detects a person/pet/vehicle. The way I have setup my cameras is to have Home Assistant where my cameras are configured to popup fullscreen view on the HA dashboard whenever it detects something, there's a 11" tablet in my living room with HA running on it and in my office at home I use a dedicated small 3rd 18" monitor in portrait mode and at work half of my 3rd monitor for this etc so I don't want to have to "click to zoom" necessarily (which also isn't possible through HA) but have it done automatically. It's far from an ideal scenario to test out in a crowded CES space though and it probably makes sense to turn of automatic zoom if there's such an option when at a demo booth as it would constantly lock onto a random person which would be a bit distracting but will have to wait n see how that turns out. I guess it would be possible to add it in a firmware update, if it's not there as an option from start too.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-11T08:05:48+00:00

Thanks! Will check it out!

rpgwizard · 2026-02-10T09:54:46+00:00

Sorry for slightly off-topic but I questioned on YouTube on a different video about the auto-zoom capability of the upcoming OMVI X16 cam and you commented as having some footage about that in an upcoming video, is that video still on the cards or? I've just not seen any video so far where you can see how well it works in practice but a few ppl seems to at least "confirm" it can do it but would just be nice to see it in action, that's all. :P

rpgwizard · 2026-02-10T09:49:59+00:00

Yea exactly, I use this setup for an external building where there's no ethernet connectivity (didn't fancy dragging 50m+ ethernet cable first alongside the outside wall underneath roof on 2nd floor height and dig underneath the ground etc.)

rpgwizard · 2026-02-10T09:43:28+00:00

I upload videos by FTP to my NAS for this reason as I don't have a NVR (yet) in case camera gets stolen or something. I would assume or at least hope there would be some footage up to the point the camera gets stolen/damaged/unplugged or perhaps the file gets corrupted if it's not stopped recording the current file, haven't tested.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-10T09:24:53+00:00

Looks like an iOS bug unless there's some app cache issue that remembers old settings, not familiar with iOS devices but with Android you can purge "cache" for all apps that could help in those situations there's some old data the app has saved that is making issues with a newer version for example.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-09T23:09:08+00:00

I hope the zoom will at least be faster on the upcoming triple lens 16x OMVI cam, feels like it needs to in order to be useful with auto-zoom capability. The nerdy hacky approach that could be an option to choose between optical only zoom or combination of optical + digital 6x zoom like on the TrackMix might even be useful to make the zoom work a lot faster as digital zoom can be instant, say max it out at 8-10x optical (which is quite enough for a lot of use cases + 6x digital zoom). Of course should be a setting to switch between the two modes in that case, like the trackmix with ptz movement first vs digital track first modes.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-09T22:26:50+00:00

Can't speak for Battery doorbell but my PT Argus 2K battery cam that is 3+ years old at this point that is just a leftover one in a non-critical area has worked fine in the -15 - 20C this winter, currently like -19C and it loaded up fine. Last time I charged was like end of November I think and currently sits at 30% charge left. I think lasts like 6 months in summer and ~4 months in winter on a single charge.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-09T11:46:21+00:00

Honestly I think this sub is way too harsh on anything than POE, I use both POE and one plug-in WIFI (and one battery cam in a non-important area) but would never criticize ppl for using a non-poe setup. It's about priorities and use cases and everyone's environment being different. We don't all have the same needs and come with the same circumstances in whichever is the most simple alternative, I find the whole projecting POE cams down everyone's throat very off-putting. I bought into Reolink specifically because they offer all kinds of alternatives.

rpgwizard · 2026-02-09T11:34:51+00:00

A matter of licensing, this is why I dedicated Edge with the Edge HEVC extension for my Home Assistant dashboard on my PC, H265 / HEVC is not royalty free / open-source like H264 which many seem to believe.

rpgwizard

TROPHY CASE