Bird Buddy: Tap Into Nature

I received this as a gift. Easy to set up and I enjoy seeing the various birds that visit!

Amazing app, unbelievable how well the feeder and app work together. My family and I are having so much fun watching the birds close-up. I shared videos with my friends and two of them have bought Bird Buddies. Love! Highly recommend!!

Where to begin? This product was developed for enthusiasts who suffered through their product development, and so might have learned what it was supposed to do, and maybe even what it would take to get it up and running. But anyone new to it has yet to discover the potentially complicated router setup revision - or even replacement - according to their [non-existent] up-front guidance and requirements. For example, they contradict Apple guidance to use the same SSID for two bands, saying the SSID can’t be the same for both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. They had no good answer when I asked ‘Why? It’s 2.4 GHz only, so can’t see what the 5 GHz band is doing’. They seem to think you’ll be ok mucking about with your router settings just “because they say so”, without regard to what else on your home network could get messed up in the process. Neither do they have an overview of product setup, or explain that it has two different phases, each of which could well take hours. Or what to do when it gets stuck attempting a firmware update, which it might attempt when first turned on. I found myself stuck, told strongly to touch nothing until it finishes. How long are you willing to wait before concluding it really is stuck, quitting, and preparing to repeat installation again from scratch? Problems? Oh, just call us at 1-800-we-won’t-answer. (I waited 45 minutes on hold until I gave up.). Not keen to do that again. I submitted a support request via their webform, providing the detailed info it required, only to get form-letter e-mail ‘we haven’t forgotten you’ for 7 days, then being advised to do everything I had already done -twice, (except for the part about mucking around with the router, which has worked perfectly for several years). The support is a web form submission, so there’s no copy of what you sent. They have no overview of what this thing is supposed to do, as if its behavior were intuitively obvious to the casual observer. Nothing even basic. Everything you can find in the phone app FAQs is scattered like buckshot. Their home webpage only sells, it has nothing like an overview of how you should treat it. Turn it off? Turn it on? How? Why? Why not? God only knows! And he’s scratching his head, wondering, too. Perhaps this criticality stems from its use of an iPhone, with limited capacity to provide readable documentation. But there is absolutely no excuse for the lack of this on their website. It’s reasonable to wonder why I bought it. I didn’t, It was a gift from my daughter, so I’m trying real hard not to disappoint her, or make her feel bad about the wrenching experience with it thus far.

It took three weeks and different placement to get the birds to come. Once they do, it is wonderful to finally know what birds I have around my home. I do love seeing birds all over the world too.

Extremely slow and buggy. Trying to connect to new Bird Buddy on Christmas Day. Their servers must be overwhelmed but shouldn’t they anticipated that? This is not enjoyable. Might return if doesn’t improve significantly. Update: Left a message with BirdBuddy customer support 4 days ago. Have not heard back from a live person yet.

I have enjoyed Bird Buddy all summer. I have certainly enjoyed the BB TV. I get to see video clips from around the world. A fun technology for all who enjoy birds.

Awesome pictures and very entertaining to see the world!

I have purchased this as a gift to my spouse. She configured it, updated to the latest firmware, purchased the subscription, and added me as a guest user for her camera. 1. Security and Privacy concerns. I actually see on my home screen photos/videos from other cameras. It is not clear to me, if every video that the camera records are going to be shared with everybody, or just the videos that I approve. 2. It took a few days for birds to notice the feeder. Now, in the morning we saw maybe 30 times birds to visiting our feeder. We got 3 ok-ish postcards with birds and one tail of the squirrel. Not sure if this is their filtering service, or just camera’s motion is not the top notch. It is ok gift. But for what it is $300 camera, and $100 subscription is not even close to what they advertise. I am surprised to see so many 5-star reviews and high rating for the app, which makes me think, that they might be fake to drive sales. If you expect that you will get an app/camera that will snap photos of various birds that will visit your feeder - NOPE. You will get various videos from other cameras (and a LOT of the same in the BirdTV feed), and your camera might snap maybe 5-10% of the visitors. Developer, if you reply to this message with generic “I am sorry - please send us email or call us” - just don’t bother, I would understand right away that you don’t care.

I love watching the birds at my feeder.

Love seeing the birds up close ‼️ have had 5 brand new species .