beware of faulty SD Card on/off switches

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Mark Goebel

My two spartan cameras are deployed at a remote off-the-grid ranch on solar panels.  The reliability of these cameras is so important to me because they take so long to get to - and fixes must work first time.  I went through the usual learning curve with ATT, service credits, solar panels and highly recommend these cameras.  They are working beautifully. 

My last challenge was very hard to find - a faulty SD card on/off switch.  First I had to learn these cards have a switch!  My camera went offline for seemingly no reason.  Spartan support was helpful and recommended an op system reload.  When I retrieved the camera and ran my own tests I received the SD card locked error - but the switch was on.  After forcing the switch to stay on, the camera booted up ok but later failed again as the switch moved on its own.  I inserted a new card and the camera is working great.  Back to the field tomorrow. 

Between the occasional corrupted SD card and now this switch error, I am just going to replace cards every six months or sooner. 

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  • Steven Belies

    I think I'm having the same issue. I'm going to try swapping out the SD cards to see if that works. It's about the only thing I have not tried at this time so I hope that works.

     

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  • John Lockburner

    Steve, what problems are you having?

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  • Steven Belies

    I am not getting photos sent. I have 4 event photos that were working very well every day. Then they started missing a few each day and now they are not being sent at all. The power is full and I have 5 bars. I tried every trick in the book. I do get some motion activated pictures but that is all right now.  I have not changed the SD card and will try that next. I do believe I have a Micro SD card with adapter in there at this time. And it has worked for almost a year. It may have gone bad. 

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  • John Lockburner

    I would definitely get rid of that card with the adapter and get a class 10 16gb card for it. Do you have overwrite turned on in the settings? maybe the card is full?

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  • Steven Belies

    Yes, I have overwrite turned on and the card only has 1.22gb used so far

    I'll get out there this weekend and swap the SD card

     

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  • Steven Belies
    • Edited

    I was just curious to see if a recent change I made to turn on Power Saving had an effect since that was the only thing I changed. I turned it off last night and suddenly I am getting the event pictures again. 

    Could that have been what made this camera stop sending event pictures? 

    I've only received 2 events so far but that is all I had scheduled as of this time since the update was made to turn off the Power Saving.

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  • John Lockburner

    Usually turning off (unchecking) power save causes the problems in some instances. What camera model is it?

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  • Steven Belies

    It is a GC-V4Gb

     

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  • John Lockburner

    Maybe it's a combination of the micro SD card and power save being on

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  • Steven Belies

    Maybe, I'll see what SD card I have in there this weekend.

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  • Steven Belies

    I had a full size SD card in that GC-V4Gb camera... so it seems the only thing that corrected this issue was to turn off the Power Save. It's been working ever since I did that. 

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  • John Lockburner

    Steve, I just want to clarify that the power save box in the settings has no check mark in it and it's working better?

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  • Steven Belies

    correct. Now I am getting all the event pictures.

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