Review on Enhanced Brinno TLC200 Pro Time Lapse Camera with Extended 42-Day Battery Life - Creates High-Quality HDR 720P Timelapse Videos - Ideal for Indoor Projects of Limited Duration by Steve Campbell

Update: May 31, 2014 I have been using this camera as a security camera and pet surveillance camera for a few months now. I still have endless problems playing .avi files. camera does. VLC player and Brinno files seem to work occasionally, more often not. It freezes on the first frame while the player counts down the seconds. I've tried different players for Apple computers, most of them don't even play the files. I convert them and it works sometimes, but it's another step, it's unreliable and tedious. I converted the files to .mov files using WonTube Free Video Converter (which I downloaded for YouTube videos, works fine). Lasts forever and has one bizarre feature: It fires one shot per second that lasts one second. Strange and useless. Maybe AVI and Brinno work better on Windows. Who knows. I assume that large files (hours of footage) and the timelapse format are behind the problem. Some camera settings work better than others. I have 1 frame per second, I don't want 1 frame per 5 seconds, etc. It's that 1 frame setting that most likely won't work properly later on. I fixed some exposure issues, but this camera is far from Hero quality. I've been using this camera for a week now. I am not satisfied. Setting up is a pain. It's to press this button, then this button, then. I always go in circles. There doesn't seem to be a way for the camera to capture night (city lights) and then dawn without completely overexposing the scenes as it gets lighter. I don't know how they filmed the pictures used to advertise the camera. Image quality is ok but not great (cannot compare to GoPro), no infinity setting to focus the lens. I focused and blocked it, but somehow it still got out of focus. (Focusing is frustrating but not totally impossible, you move the focus back and forth, back and forth and find that the central part is a little better than blurry, the tiny monitor isn't good enough for any sort of accuracy - hence the die Focusing to infinity is above default would really help.) VIDEO CLIP: The motion detector works fine if you move your hand a few inches away, but it obscures the image. Two large crows that landed two feet away failed to activate it. I have a lot of videos where I'm building, testing, and then some inexplicable image, and everything, cars, animals, goes right in front of it. Nothing. I'll try to attach a video that the crows missed. In the very foreground is food that crows are eating, but Brinno can't shoot until they leave the frame. The vignetting is caused by mounting a motion detector on the lens - a completely inadequate construction. What really bugged me is that at night I was filming the fog, then the sunrise, then I moved the camera to film a group of guys cleaning up the street. Court. Not a single frame. I've had one for a week now, I'm a professional, I build cars - at some point it's not my fault, it's an inadequate design. The good thing is that it can be set up and will last for several days on one set of batteries. An interesting device, but I don't think it's ready for prime time. Update 2/24/14 Tried to contact Brinno:1. The camera doesn't seem to be taking more than a still picture, it's "recording" so I have many minutes of static recording - no change, timestamp doesn't change either. 2. Is there a way to update the firmware using an Apple computer? I have several other problems. The motion detector seems almost useless. Crows, cats, daylight scenes get within 2ft of the camera - but no images or a lag after they've gone. Cars don't seem to activate it. Your site could not send the email. Not good. I want to get some use out of this camera, so many problems. I also found it almost impossible to find a menu item to adjust the interval between shots. These binary two or three button controls seem designed to be almost impossible to use. I can't even follow the simple instructions on the website. Is the ASAP interval only available with a firmware update? Or is it buried in the menu? I have a few weeks before I have to decide whether to keep the camera or return it.