What am I doing wrong?

[broadhead]

I’ve had a couple cams set up for about a month now and had the same problem with both. I must be doing setting something up wrong. I first checked them after about three weeks in an area with a lot of thick mesquite growth next to a pretty good sized open area with long grass. First I put both cams on trails in some modestly thick cover and when I checked them, one 32 gb card was full with more than 4000 photos and the other had over 1500. Obviously they were almost entirely false triggers. The catch is there were no false triggers at night - they were almost all between 10 and 3 during the day. Moved the cams to areas with less cover and checked after a week to see if that helped and the same thing happened, except both cameras were full of blanks. There were legit triggers too so the cameras weren’t completely malfunctioning. 
The obvious correlation is the time of day which I would attribute to the rising temp. There was a lot of wind at night while they were up and not a single false trigger happened from branches or grass. 
Wondering what’s going on and how you guys get around this. The area is in the southern units south of Tucson of that helps. Thanks!

[trphyhntr]

I’m still betting wind 

[broadhead]

Why would they only go off during midday and not at all at night even during windy weather?

[AzDiamondHeat]

The shadows will set them off in the wind. 

[broadhead]

Combination of warmer surroundings from the sun and blowing grass and branches maybe?

[CatfishKev]

Did you buy the cams new?  I got some cheap cams off camofire that i believe were refurbs. Some seemed to act like that. 

[ThomC]

It takes a lot of hard work and hunting skill to place cameras and get good pics.   

[creed]

I have seen the relationship to the sun set off cameras. Also wind.

[broadhead]

Thanks for the replies. I did a little more digging and found some interesting information on how the passive infrared (PIR) system works on most modern cams. The way it looks, it has less to do with wind than it does with shadow. The most common condition that makes this happen is bright, clear days in areas with little to no overhead canopy (sound familiar, Arizona?) that result in prominent shadows cast. The cam picks up the change in the nearby IR signature as the shadow moves both from the wind and as the sun moves across the sky, hence endless false triggers during those hours and absolutely none after the sun drops below a certain point in the horizon. So in effect, the wind by itself isn’t enough to cause the false triggers in this case. Mostly it’s the changing IR signature, compounded by windy conditions. 
I’m going to try a few experiments near my house and see if I get different results. Frustrating but if there’s a workaround I’ll find it. Thanks again!

[trphyhntr]

I remember Grayghost85 saying he put tape around the outside sensor and that helped. Pretty much guaranteed it’s wind, wind usually lays down some at night 

[broadhead]

Well we’re gonna find out. This morning I set them both up in my backyard with one facing the wall and the other on top of the wall facing the street corner with no vegetation to trigger it or cast shadows.  
After a few hours the one on top of the wall had no false triggers. Just cars and people. The one facing the wall was another story. My toddler found it and moved it so it was catching the corner of the grill cover blowing in the wind. 779 photos in three hours haha. I repositioned the one on top of the wall to within view of an ocotillo at about 15 yards facing west as the sun moves around on a day with a pretty good wind. Experiments are fun if nothing else. 

[broadhead]

Okay, well interesting results from my entirely unscientific experiment and miniscule sample size. I set up both cams in a couple positions. I covered sharp shadows as the sun moved around and set up right in front of an ocotillo that was moving in the wind. I fully expected to have at least one setup give a bunch of false triggers, but to my surprise none of them did. So that’s good since it tells me the problem is avoidable. Thanks guys. 

[AzDiamondHeat]

So what did your entirely unscientific experiment determine the issue to be?

[broadhead]

1 hour ago, AzDiamondHeat said:

So what did your entirely unscientific experiment determine the issue to be?

Well I’m not certain yet but I was able to rule a few things out. It wasn’t triggered by shadows moving across the ground as the sun moved across the sky, and it wasn’t set off repeatedly by the ocotillo swaying in the wind or the shadows from it. Next thing to test out is if a higher number or concentration of branches swaying combined with warming temps are the cause. What is also likely is one of the cameras was simply too close to patches of tall grass, which warmed as the day went on and triggered the camera as they blew around. That is really hard to avoid out there if I want pics of those travel corridors. I’ll have to figure something else out.