Argus PT Ultra with Auto Tracking... Testing!

[KimchiGUN]

Finally had enough time to post my findings... but I had to give it enough time to soak into my network and whole cam system.

I have this mounted on old unused DirecTV pole in my yard. My home is a little weird, the front door is on the side of the home. From the back yard, you can see the front door. The pole is about 50 ft from my home and 75 from the front door. Mind you, this pole is on a slight incline in my backyard. For perspective, this cam is eye level when you're standing in front of it. I had a camera (TrackMix POE) on there with a direct burial CAT5E cable. The cable finally died a few months back, after 10 years. I've been too lazy to bury another one. So this cam has came in at perfect timing.

I have an enterprise network installed in my home with 2 enterprise Access Points to cover 2500 sq ft within my home. I have an outdoor Access Point covering most of my yard and beyond. I get great signal from this camera.

I have a southern facing home. The pole gets sunlight from 1pm-4pm every day. It has been on 100% since I installed it. Until yesterday (1/17/25), I'm on the east coast USA, Rain and Polar Vortex coming through (AGAIN). It has dropped down to 97%. Last week we had 10 degree weather and the battery held and was charging. Note, I fully charged the camera in my home for 12 hours, before launching it into production. It was sitting at 40% out of the box.

Since the front door is 75 feet away and my back door is about 50 ft away... I had to turn my PIR sensor up to MAX. If you walk out the front door and take a left, you will be walking towards the driveway, it catches that moment and 10 seconds afterwards. If you walk to the right, you will be walking towards the backyard. Almost into the direction of the pole. It picks it up and keeps recording. I had to play with the timeout to monitor point a bit. 60 seconds is a little too early, roughly about 2-3 mins sits better. Walking my dog, while I was sitting still there and wait for her to poop, it would move back to move back to the monitor point.

I don't see cars from this POV, so I can't comment on the car detection. But I do have a lot of wildlife running through my backyard. It's recording quite a bit. My kids playing in the snow recently.

All in all this cam worked great. It will take some time to tweak each setting to your needs. Took me a solid week to tweak the settings to my needs.

So far so good!

[Chopstix]

@kimchigun I am in SE Michigan. Weather has been similar, cold, overcast and rain with a few days of sun. Fully charged before install and today sitting at 52%. The 3W solar panel has never shown to be charging even on the few fully sunny days we have had. Average 1% drop on days with little to no detections, 2-3% on days that I play/test the camera.

Also, I am having an occurrence of recorded events being fragmented in to multiple videos, even with constant motion occurring. Even had one occurrence where the video fragments during a tracking event.

[KimchiGUN]

@chopstix

My cam shows charging when the sun is out. It shows a lightning bolt over the battery icon.

It hasnt charged since we are heading into another winter storm, polar vortex. Lots of cloud cover. Supposed to be sunny tomorrow but cold but we will see.

I did have a lot of fragmented recordings until I adjusted the monitor point timeout and raised my PIR to the max. it’s less now.

But this is my backyard, it’s not a highly active area. It’s really to cover my front and back door.

[Chopstix]

@kimchigun My battery has never shown the lightning bolt except during charge from USB wall charger. With panel connected, I get the sunburst icon but never the lighting bolt icon. I am wondering if I have a bad panel.

I am starting to play PIR sensitivity an other settings to see if I get less fragments.

[joseph_1979]

@kimchigun if the cam doesn't detect motion for about 10s it stops recording. Increasing the PIR will enable motion to be detected a bit farther away and so it continues to record on the same clip.

[Chopstix]

@joseph_1979 that's how it SHOULD work, but it does not. With this camera (at least with mine), post-recording time starts as soon as motion is detected NOT after the motion stops. I can jump in front of the camera momentarily and it will recorded the full 30 seconds. My son can do a 3-minute Fortnite dance in middle of the FOV and it will fragment after 30-seconds with multiple video fragments to follow. I have tried this repeated times and the initial fragment is 8, 15, 30 seconds respectively. I am convinced that there is a firmware bug.