I have spent hours (literally) trying to set up my Birdbuddy (received as a gift 9 months after it was ordered!). Eventually got Bluetooth to connect after multiple attempts (including deleting account and app, reinstalling, and doing a factory reset on camera module). I then proceeded to try to connect to WiFi (following instructions carefully). App found my WiFi and said it would take up to 5 minutes to connect. After 5 minutes (there’s a countdown count), message indicated “hit a wall” and could not connect. Solution is to contact customer service. After reading all FAQs, I discovered the unit will only work with a 2G WiFi network - article says to select 2G version of your WiFi. I only have one WiFi option to select, and it’s 5G. Totally frustrated and annoyed with this entire process! Unless support gets back to me with a resolution, I’ll be returning this product for a refund.
I’m really enjoying this thing. The hardware does what it says, but the app needs some work.
First thing I would do is make the postcards optional. Opening card after card is time consuming and tedious. They should give us the option of a postcard per species, or just one long feed of all the visitors.
Second thing I would do provide the ability to block specific species. The majority of time in the app is spent opening and deleting pics of starlings and grackles. I have deleted way more pics of starlings and grackles than all other species that I’ve kept. Since the software recognizes species, it would be nice to not have to open and delete pic after pic of species I don’t want.
App and camera starting working shortly after set up and I began receiving “postcards” on my phone. So fun! The animations are clever and the identification of birds is pretty darn accurate. I love seeing which bird is visiting my Bird Buddy feeder. Make sure when you place your camera it’s not facing the sun so you won’t get backlighting. We mounted ours on a flag pole that we stuck in the ground, but you can hang it in a tree. You can slightly rotate the feeder until the photos are well-lit. We put ours in the flower bed just outside the kitchen window. Photos and videos are super clear and sharp, even when I zoom in. Great camera, great app, fun for bird lovers!
Update: So, an update made it so I at least get the postcards (photos). Still no live feed. App is working, but biggest complaint is the “postcards” for new birds. If you have a birdfeeder, you will get dozens per day of instances. About half the time (no fault of the app) it can’t identify the bird because they’re blurred moving quickly or mostly turned away. But that means you have to open their “present”, then some animations, then sort through each picture with a bunch of “no”s. It takes a long time. Could work much faster if they could thumbnail the 4-8 pictures on each visit to just ditch the batch quicker. The unit works fine, although does burn through battery rather quickly. I’m not complaining about the wait time. I was fine with that. The app is really bad. I bought it for my wife and I can’t check the live feed and it was a real difficult set up. Very hard to initially set up and the app is just not good.
UPDATE UPDATE:
Yeah, I got like 31 dumb little treasure chests with animations and several pictures in each one, this would take at least an hour to go through. Tighten it up.
We just got our Bird Buddy for Christmas, and I’m very happy with it! The quality is solid and it works as advertised. Haven’t had a single problem. My biggest complaint is with the app. And hopefully this is just because it’s version 1.0 and will be improved with future releases. But the “postcard” workflow is just too much. I was busy yesterday and didn’t have time to address my bird Buddy notifications. This morning I have 26 unread postcards. It will take me at least half an hour to go through all those, because you have to open each one, wait for the animation, verify each “visitor”, then save/delete each photo. There’s no way to skip them. And if I don’t get “caught up” it will rapidly become a backlog that I will never get through. At first it was exciting to see each one. But now getting 12 postcards about House Sparrow per day, and 8 blurry photos of squirrel ears is starting to feel like a chore…
I was excited to receive this for Christmas. But here I am several weeks later without a functioning Bird Buddy. Contacted customer support via sending a ticket (I don’t think this company has customer service…no phone number). I received an email back several days later suggesting I read the articles I had already read for troubleshooting on the app and website. They requested I delete the app and reset the camera, which I had already done, but did again. They said if that did not work, send pictures and they would like send a new camera. I did, only to the sound of crickets. I followed up with two more emails with no response. I have given up and will return the defective product…hopefully we can get a refund. Support was awful.
I was worried after buying this for my wife for Christmas and seeing a bunch of bad reviews. Didn’t know what to expect and was prepared for the worst. That worry was unfounded. We got our BirdBuddy out of the box, powered it up, I added the solar roof, and we got it up and running and out in the yard within 15 minutes. The battery life is exceptional with the solar roof, but you have to
position it correctly to catch the sun. It took a
couple of days before we got a bird, but we were so excited to get our first video and photos. The clarity and detail is AMAZING. We’re in love, and my wife is really happy with it, which is a win for me :)
My daughter spent extra money on this feeder to get the solar version as a gift to me and we waited one & half years for it to be delivered. It did not pair nor connect to internet. We are savvy on tech, have the latest phones /internet service. Tech support was impossible as all is done with standardized emails that did not pertain to the issue. Repeated email attempts to request replacement of the faulty module were ignored. All service and cmu is done through the app which is extremely limiting. My service ticket was passed from person to person without resolution. No way to communicate or solve issue. Now we are stuck with a bird buddy that never worked from the start and no recourse. Do not waste your money.
Am enjoying the photos. It was very easy to set up. Nice that I could check best place to setup thru the app with best internet connection. I am not a tech person. Have had no problems with photos, info, & connection. Took awhile for the birds to find the feeder, but visiting a lot now. I really like the app but it needs more explanations It’s not easy to find info I need. I would like more info about icons & info. Why are some photos unlocked, why are some just postcard? How is the gallery set up? Why is there a ribbon on some postcards? One bird was misidentified. Don’t see a place to delete this. I AM SO GLAD I RECEIVED THIS FOR CHRISTMAS.
Edit: it’s clear that the developer is now resorting to buying fraudulent reviews on the App Store. This app saw an influx of high ratings over the holidays, and many of those user names have “bb” in them - clearly fake accounts created to juice their otherwise terrible rating. Buyer beware, this company is a hot mess, and continues to offer zero support for customers, and a very buggy product.
The reviews which mention wifi connection problems are spot-on. The developer has chosen to do some odd custom interface for connecting the device to wifi, rather than use iOS’s built-in tools for this, presumably because they thought it would be more cross-platform. But it absolutely does not work. I’ve worked in tech for 20 years and am very familiar with getting finicky IOT devices onto wifi, I pulled out all the stops, and still can’t connect because of the custom interface they insist on putting on top of the process. My home network is the latest from Eero, a very popular consumer router, and even using Eero’s tools for badly behaved devices, nothing works. And contacting support does nothing, they’re clearly drowning in support tickets from the preorders finally shipping. Great idea, absolutely abysmal execution. As soon as I can get a response from support, I’ll be returning this failure of a device. They’re going to have a very rough holiday of returns and angry gift givers.
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