Pat Malone

The packaging was nice. I just wish the implementation was a good. It was easy to set up and deploy. But the implementation of both the device and the app are disappointing. Considering the app: The user interface is not well thought out and is cumbersome to use. The visuals and announcement elements seem more oriented towards the 8–15 year-old range than most adult birders. Rainbow explosions and campy teasing notification messages are not appealing to me at all. One major issue I have with the app is that you cannot zoom in on photos presented. When asked to confirm a sighting, you have a small, dark picture that you cannot expand and zoom in on. Given the poor exposure done by the camera, I have many photos the app asks me to identify but they are just very dark outlines. They should have a ‘nocluebird’ as an option. I mis-identified some visits, but now there is now way to delete collection. Considering the device: Filling it with bird seed, even with the provided scoop, is difficult and makes a mess. That filling door is just a design fail. Birds will just not come in at the sweet spot regularly, but that is the only way they device will take a ‘postcard’. On initial filling or tweaking you can get the bird seed pushed to the front middle to get the birds in the sweet spot, but after and hour of feeding, the birds will do what is best for them and not the camera. For me, with initial firmware and updated firmware, it misses 90% of feedings. The camera exposure quality is poor. I tried several directions over different times of the day, but unless there is a direct sun-lit sweet spot, most exposures way too dark. I am not sure why they picked red as the perch color – it causes a red reflection up to the bird that I’m sure impacts the identification software. As noted by others, be prepared to charge the battery regularly. Why does it burn so much battery at night?