Where to start

In your dashboard at mytrailcamera.pro, open My Trail Camera → Add Camera (/dashboard/cameras/add). The form on that page creates one trail camera record at a time.

You can keep coming back — after saving, you are redirected to the dashboard with a success notice, and the next time you open Add Camera the form is empty again.

Required fields

Only two fields are required to save:

  • Device ID — a unique identifier for the trail camera. It's stored uppercase (so cam-001 becomes CAM-001). The plugin refuses to save if another trail camera already has the same ID. Anything you type in the placeholder style (CAM-001) works.
  • Location — free text. Example placeholder: Big Fatra.

Everything else is optional. Leaving a field empty simply means that piece of metadata isn't stored for this trail camera.

Basic info

  • Camera model — a search-as-you-type dropdown populated from the built-in profile list (80+ models across Browning, Bushnell, Reconyx, Stealth Cam, Spypoint, Wachman and more). Picking a profile lets the plugin auto-fill battery capacity, power draw, and supported video resolutions. If no model matches, leave it on custom.
  • Price/Value (€) — base price of the trail camera body. Used in total-value calculations and, later, in the recovery-score summary when a theft happens.
  • Accessories — six optional items you can tick and price: 🔋 Batteries, 💾 SD Card, 🔒 Lock, 🛡️ Metal Box, 📍 GPS Security, 📶 SIM Card. Each ticked accessory has its own price input. The total is shown on the edit screen later.
  • Serial Number and IMEI — free text. The IMEI field appears only for trail cameras that have (or will have) a SIM — either because the selected profile is a 4G model, or because you tick the SIM Card accessory.

Dates and GPS

  • Purchase Date — pure metadata, no side effects.
  • Deploy Date and Deploy Time — when you physically installed this trail camera in the field. If you fill the date, the plugin writes a separate "deployed" entry to the trail camera's timeline.
  • Planned stay in field (days) — how long you expect to leave the trail camera out. 0 means no limit. The dashboard uses this to warn you when a trail camera is overdue for a check.
  • GPS Latitude / Longitude — decimal format, many decimal places accepted (placeholder: 48.95739612, 18.79786309). GPS is what unlocks:
    • Map views on the dashboard and locations pages
    • Battery estimation weighted by local weather (PRO)
    • Automatic "stolen trail cameras nearby" warning on save (PRO)
    • Settlement-proximity risk check (PRO)

Status at save time

Two radio buttons:

  • 🏠 At home — default. The trail camera is in your inventory but not deployed. Fields tied to active deployment (battery estimate, recording settings, planned-stay countdown) are hidden until you move it to the field.
  • ✅ In field (active) — this trail camera is currently installed and recording. Deploy date and GPS become load-bearing.

Security layers

Two categories of checkboxes, all independent of each other. The plugin does not generate files from these checks — they're tracked so the dashboard, the detection email and the PRO PDF report can show what protection was in place.

Trap files (the anti-theft core):

  • 🌐 HTML — standard HTML trap file with JavaScript fingerprinting
  • ☎️ Tel — a trap template that captures a phone number via a fake PIN reset form (PRO template)

Physical layers:

  • 🛡️ Metal Box, 🔗 Cable Lock, 🔐 Padlock, 🔑 Password, 📷 Monitored by another trail camera

GPS Trackers you've placed on the device:

  • 🍎 AirTag, 📍 Tile, 📱 SmartTag, 🔵 Other

Checking "HTML" here is a record that this trail camera will get an HTML trap file in its next generated ZIP. The actual trap files are built on a separate screen — this form just records intent and metadata.

What happens on Save

When you click Add Camera:

  1. Validation — Device ID and Location are checked first. On failure, an error notice is shown and the page is re-rendered with your values preserved.
  2. Duplicate check — if the Device ID already exists, save is rejected.
  3. The trail camera is inserted into the mtcam_cameras table with the fields above, plus:
    • an internal timestamp
    • a fingerprint of the admin who added it (IP + user agent — used later to detect if you yourself accidentally opened one of the trap files during testing)
    • the manufacturer, inferred from the selected profile
  4. Timeline entry — a created event is written to the trail camera's timeline, with the location in the description. If you filled a Deploy Date, a separate deployed event is written too.
  5. Nearby-stolen check (PRO) — if GPS is filled, the plugin scans existing trail cameras within the alert radius (default 1 km) and, if any of them were previously stolen, a warning banner about those prior thefts is passed to the dashboard.
  6. Settlement proximity check (PRO) — if GPS is filled, the plugin queries the Overpass API for buildings, roads and residential areas around the coordinates. If the risk level comes back as anything other than "low", a banner is added.
  7. Redirect to the dashboard with a green success notice: Camera CAM-001 was successfully added!

Configuring a trail camera later

From the dashboard, click the trail camera row to expand it and then open its edit form. The edit form is wider than the add form — several sections only appear once the trail camera is in a state that makes them relevant.

Always-editable

  • Location — same field as in the add form.
  • Power type dropdown — one of: 🔋 Lithium, ☀️ Solar, ☀️🔋 Solar + Lithium, ☀️🪫 Solar + Lead-acid, 🔌 External power. The set of options is filtered by the trail camera's profile (e.g. a pure-battery model won't offer Solar + Lead-acid).
  • Status radio with four options: ✅ In field, 🧪 Test, ⚠️ Stolen, 🏠 At home.
  • Stolen Date and Reported to police — appear only when the status is set to Stolen.
  • Price & Accessories — same fields as in the add form, editable. The sum is recalculated as "Total" at the bottom.

Security and GPS trackers (edit)

Same checkbox blocks as in the add form — you can toggle them after the fact (e.g. after you add a cable lock to an already-deployed trail camera).

Recording Settings — only when the trail camera is active in the field

  • Recording Mode — 🎥 Video or 📸 Photo.
  • Video Resolution — selector populated from the trail camera's profile (typical options: 4K, 2K, 1296p, 1080p, 720p, 480p). Defaults to 1080p.
  • Video Length (seconds) — 5–300, step 5. Default 110 seconds (the stock value for the Wachman Solar Pro).
  • Day recordings — expected number of day events per day (default 1).
  • Night recordings (IR) — expected number of night events per day (default 2).

Day/night counts feed directly into the battery estimator. A higher count means faster depletion in the prediction.

Battery Status — only when the trail camera is active

  • Current battery (%) — the value from the trail camera's display at your last check (0–100, step 1). For non-solar setups this is read as "the reading at deployment or last battery swap" and the estimator counts consumption from that date forward.

PRO, only when power type is solar:

  • Solar panel power (W) — the wattage of the panel (0.1–50, step 0.1).
  • Terrain — how much sunlight actually reaches the panel: 🌲 Meadow / clearing (70%), 🌲 Light forest (45%), 🌲 Dense forest (35%), 🌲 Deep forest (20%).
  • Panel direction (°) — compass azimuth 0–360 (0 = N, 90 = E, 180 = S, 270 = W). Used in the solar-gain calculation.

Below the fields, a live battery estimate is rendered whenever GPS is present: current percentage, a bar, consumed mAh, solar gain mAh, and the weather the estimate is based on. The PRO version includes terrain and azimuth multipliers in the same line.

Hidden fields when the trail camera is "At home"

Setting the status to 🏠 At home clears all deployment-specific data in one go: location coordinates, deploy date and time, planned stay, recording settings, battery state, solar state, terrain, last-check date. The GPS, Deploy Date, Planned stay, Recording Settings and Battery Status sections disappear from the edit form — an at-home trail camera doesn't need any of them.

Save changes

At the bottom of the edit form:

  • 💾 Save Changes — writes all fields, including any status transition, back to the database.
  • Cancel — goes back to the dashboard without saving.

A practical note on Device IDs

Because Device ID is permanent after creation (the edit form shows it as a disabled field), pick a naming scheme early. CAM-001, CAM-002 works; a location-coded FATRA-01 works; whatever you choose, it's what appears in every detection email and every PDF report for the lifetime of that trail camera.