trail camera;'s go BAD, plain and simple, they work great till one day they don't
I have run cam's for almost 25 yrs now and have owned many brands and models from high end one's to cheap junk , and many worked great till just one day they started acting up, and then went down hill as more time passes!
its just the way they are(well unless there NEW and under warranty, then send them back to the maker and let them resolve, they mostly just give you a new cam, rather than try and fix, or that's MY experience!)
some advice/tips!
as you have to consider things, like the elements there working in 24-7-365(I run cams all yr)
weather tends to play heck with electronic's sooner or later
things I also found over time, is IF you Do NOT continue to use the exact SAME SD card in the exact SAME camera ALL the time, camera's go bad sooner
ONLY using the same card every time in one specific camera does seem to net the most life out of the camera's
second best thing is, to dedicate TWO SD cards to the same camera(as in take on SD card to camera to swap with one in camera and ONLY use the same two cards then for ever till camera dies in that camera)
and when you get a NEW camera, Use NEW cards , using older cards seems to cause camera life to be less!
and also, use brand higher quality SD cards, some camera's are very picky about what brand SD cards are being used
and if you swap in a card it doesn't like, it tends to shorten the camera's life
Just this past 6 months I have had 5 cam's on me , magically stop working or working at will,
worked great for a 2-4 yrs, running 24-7-365 and then just got erratic, to some not working at all now,
it happens
what I do with dead camera's is use them as BAIT to help stop folks from stealing them, as will some time place them in area's with trespassing and things getting stolen and place another working camera set to capture those that mess with camera's in the more open on PRIVATE ! hurts a lot less when a jerk steals a dead cam than a good working one!!
another tip, I find is always run good name brand batteries and when ever you replace them replace ALL of them at same time with NEW one's
I have found if you don't, many times, the lesser powered batteries will just drain the new one's fattier to balance them out
and or , it can again cause funny odd issue's to pop up on camera's sooner than expected!
in MY experience, most camera's will run for me 24-7-365, about 3 yrs before they get iffy, some times longer, some times less, all most all camera's of low to mid high price ranges
on some of my top end cam's I have gotten about 5+ yrs on average
so, hope this helps
but due to they costs so much, I honestly don;'t buy as many , due to I get far too many stolen , and can run 3-4 cheaper cam's for 3 yrs without issue's most times!