HomeBlogCamera Trapping TechnologyDeep TechRepairing Browning Trail Camera that Won’t Trigger

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Repairing Browning Trail Camera that Won’t Trigger — 22 Comments

  1. Great post!
    Recently a number of freak downpours flooded the ranch. Water rose six feet in a canyon in a few hours.and 4 BTC 7E hp5 cams were submerged. I tried to dry a couple of them in rice but were unsuccessful. I wish I had known to use isopropyl alcohol as a last ditch effort.

    • A colleague had a 7E HP5 submerged 5’ under water for 2 weeks, assumed the worst. Let it rest on a sunny window sill , tray and SD removed, door open, and allow dry air to penetrate internally to naturally dry out for 4 days. Camera is perfectly working.
      I’ve heard drying in rice is a myth for cellphones and not to be tried. Sorry yours failed to revive.

      • Wow — sound like they were lucky. Gently heating in sunlight is a good way to dry things out. I wonder if being all the way under water for so long allowed the batteries to short themselves out, thus saving the PCB. In any case, who can argue with success? 🙂

    • Sorry to hear about your cameras. I remember the sinking feeling of returning in the spring to a beaver wetland where we had set a camera up the previous fall on a tripod, about 3 feet off the “ground.” We paddled into the area in kayaks, and I remember thinking the water was *way* up. We were relieved to see the camera still on the tripod, but now only 3” above the water line.

      Isopropyl alcohol is a good technique for removing a little oxide. But, as I confirmed, it can’t rebuild traces that have corroded away completely. With ample water, and plenty of electrical energy in the batteries, it’s likely that too much electrochemistry occurred inside your HP4s for them ever to work again.

      Without the electricity from the batteries driving the chemical reactions, it’s possible that simply drying the camera out might have saved it. Unfortunately, the normal state of the trail camera is to have some portion of the camera powered at all the time, and therefore the batteries are always electrically connected to the circuit board.

      One solution would be to include a “water activated fuse” in the camera, which would disconnect the circuit board from battery power in the presence of moisture. I couldn’t find such a thing off the shelf, but I did find this:

      https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/174245/a-fuse-that-blows-upon-liquid-exposure-instead-of-overcurrent

      Even if such a thing existed, and were relatively cheap, it’s unlikely that camera manufacturers would want to increase their BOM on every camera even by a few cents to cover this unlikely event. Especially when the alternative is that the customer buys another camera to replace the failed one.

  2. Fun! Very clearly written and easy to follow.

    Weirdly, I am now have a mental image of a tiny 20-legged dog raising one of his legs to pee. 🙂

    • Thanks, Josh. I had several mental images while I was working on this camera, when it was unclear whether the camera would ever work again. None of them involved dogs. There were several cat visits near mealtimes 🙂

  3. Hi Bob,
    All your videos and posts are really informative and useful, thank you! (Especially for people like me who know nothing about this stuff!) I have got a Browning spec ops advantage camera from 2018 so well out of warranty. It still works fine but the screen is completely white so I can’t access the menu or see the screen when setting up the camera…do you by any chance know what is causing this and if it is fixable? Any advice very much appreciated, thank you,
    Daisy (from Scotland)

    • We’re glad you enjoy our blog!

      I can think of a couple of possible problems that could cause the LCD on your 6-year-old camera to behave this way. If you are lucky, the contacts on the flex cable connector between the LCD and the main circuit board are a little corroded from slight moisture damage. This can be repaired, as in my new video at https://youtube.com/shorts/SP50hRAYWZc?feature=share by carefully wiping down the contacts with a cotton swab and isopropyl alcohol. For a longer video showing how the whole camera comes apart, see: https://youtu.be/w4oodswC9Ho

      If this doesn’t work, the LCD module itself may have failed. It may be possible to find an exact replacement online, but I have not tried. It would be tricky, since any differences in physical form factor, or electrical pinout will prevent a “nearly identical” part from working. Unless you can get a replacement from a “parts camera” in the Advantage series, I think I would recommend a new camera .

      If you try repair above, let us know how you made out.

      • Hi Bob,
        Thanks so much for your detailed reply, and the videos which were very easy to follow and gave me the confidence to attempt repair. I tried wiping the contacts as you suggested but unfortunately it didn’t work so I think it must be the LCD module itself. It was definitely worth a go and I learnt stuff in the process, so thank you! I’ve had a quick look for spare parts but they seem quite difficult to come by in the UK so I will probably have to get a new camera. Thanks again for your help,
        Daisy

        • P.S. I’ve also got a Bushnell core DS camera (I saw you’ve done at least one video on these cameras) and it keeps going into a ‘test mode’ which can only be sorted out by taking the batteries out for a week or so which forces a factory reset. The people I got it from say they’ve never come across this problem before and I can’t get a reply from Bushnell as to why it’s happening…have you ever come across this? It’s a bit of a mystery! Thanks 🙂

          • I’ve not worked on the firmware of the Bushnell cameras, so I’m not sure exactly how things work. Assuming the internals are similar to the Browning cameras I’ve worked with, here’s what could be going on. In addition to the clock, a small internal battery powers a few 10’s of bytes of non-volatile memory that needs to be accessed immediately when the camera wakes up to take a picture or video. It sound like in the Bushnell, this small amount of memory holds a bit which puts the camera into a test mode. By removing the main batteries, and waiting a couple of weeks, the internal battery drains, and the firmware resets the contents of the non-volatile storage.

            But this begs the question of why the “test bit” is being set in the first place. It’s possible the firmware has become corrupted somehow, causing it to mistakenly set this bit to the wrong value.

            I would check to see whether there are any firmware images available from Bushnell for this camera model. If you find one, load it into the camera per Bushnell instructions. If the cause is flaky firmware, this should fix it.

            If this doesn’t fix it, the problem most likely lies is the chip that implements the clock and the non-volatile memory.

          • Thanks for the ideas about the Bushnell camera, I will try to contact them again re firmware updates. I’ll let you know if I get anywhere. You have been very generous with your time and expertise, it is much appreciated, thank you!
            Daisy

  4. Have a trail camera that won’t power on with new batteries,the Stealth cam is 3 years old.Tou think a alcohol swab may simplify? Thanks,Joe

    • Maybe… I would start by opening up the camera and looking for any obvious sign of corrosion damage. If this exists, you may be able to remove it with isopropyl alcohol. I would also use a volt meter to check that power makes it though the wires in from the battery compartment to the circuit board. Look for a red/black pair coming through the hinges (I believe, on these cameras). They should be soldered to the PCB. Sometimes, these wires break off at the circuit board. If the PCB is getting power, I would look to validate the 3V supply (probably there is a pad on the PCB labeled “+3V” or “VDD”). If that’s there, I would look at the on-off switch. From here on out, diagnosis gets more complex. If you look, let us know what you find!

  5. Great article. I found you on YouTube and using your advice, I repaired one of my Browning trail cameras that had issues with the IR lens. I do have a couple of questions regarding Browning cameras.

    1) Do you know if there is a way to perform a software reset? Pulling the batteries will clear the volatile memory, however, it won’t clear non-volatile memory if that is used to store information. I’ve tried several things such as holding down one or more keys prior to turning on the camera. So far, I haven’t found anything that worked.

    2) Do you know where you can get the latest firmware for these cameras (even if there hasn’t been an update)? I contacted Browning and they were no help.

    I’m looking for this information because I’ve had issues with cameras and I wanted to try the most simple solution first – a complete reset to ensure the software wasn’t corrupted.

    Thanks so much for all the information you provide.

    • I’m glad the YouTube video helped you, and that you found our blog. Regarding your questions:

      There are two ways I know to clear (non?)volatile memory in the camera:

      1. With the “Restore Default” menu item. This resets the settings (stored in an internal file on the EEPROM) to their factory state.
      2. Re-installing the firmware using the “Firmware Upgrade” menu with the appropriate firmware image installed on an SD card. This completely overwrites the (non-volatile) EEPROM

      In addition to the EEPROM, there is some non-volatile storage that is powered by the on-board battery. This contains information like the exposure settings for the previous image capture, which is needed before the EEPROM-based file system can be mounted. To clear this, you could remove the main batteries, and let the camera sit until it loses track of time (also powered by the internal battery). The time it takes for this battery to discharge depends on the age of the battery. You could try waiting 10 minutes, then checking. If clock has been reset, you’re done; else wait twice as long and repeat, doubling the wait time at every subsequent check that the clock is still working.

      Browning supports firmware updates for a limited number of models. These updates typically cover fixes major bugs (i.e. bugs that are costing Browning more than an acceptable return rate). See: https://browningtrailcameras.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/200943558-SOFTWARE-UPGRADES

      As part of my work hacking the SpecOps and ReconForce models, I have posted both factory and hacked firmware images for models: BTC-{7,8}{E, E-HP4, E-HP5}. You can find these at https://github.com/robertzak133/unified-btc-reverse

      Hope this helps.

      PS: See also my continually updated “How (some) Trail Cameras Fail” post, which covers symptoms, debugging, and fixes for problems I’ve run across with our (mostly Browning) camera collection over the las 5 years or so. https://winterberrywildlife.ouroneacrefarm.com/2021/06/30/how-some-trail-cameras-fail/

  6. Hi Bob, thanks a ton for the additional information, I will check these things out. To learn how the Browning systems works, did you pull their software and reversed engineered the code or, did you learn these things from another source?

    30+ years ago I was given the task to replace the core memory on a AMF automatic scoring machine with solid state memory. In order to do this I hade to pull their eprom and then use machine language to determine how they were using the core memory. That was very laborious and time consuming to say the least. That is why I’m curious how you are doing this. Thanks

    • I had to look up “AMF Scoring Machine” – some sort of automatic system for tracking bowling scores? Cool!

      My reversing work on these cameras is in two parts: In part 1, I started with binaries (extracted from firmware update files; or from EEPROM) and used Ghidra to disassemble; decompile into C; and then to hand markup the c-code. After all this, I have a fairly readable view of the “interesting parts” of the reconstructed source code.

      In part 2, I identified unused portions of the binary (unused functions, and unused data segments). Using the symbol tables from Ghidra, some tools I wrote in Python, and my understanding of how the factory code works, I am able to patch in new functions which allow me to add features, fix bugs, etc.

      I’ve lost track of how much time I’ve spent on this project, but it’s a lot – order person-years. I am documenting my process in a serialized set of posts, starting with https://winterberrywildlife.ouroneacrefarm.com/2024/06/30/deep-tech-hacking-trail-camera-firmware-1-overview/

      I’m in the middle of this series now, but knowing that there are a least a couple folks out there who might be interested is motivating 🙂

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