The following information is courtesy of Pixcontroller Inc.
Why use Trail Mode™?
Trail Mode™ is the perfect feature for a Trail Camera setup over a "trail". The idea of a "trail camera" is to capture all of the animals traveling down a trail together, and not just the first animal. As most of us know after spending hours in the woods watching deer from a tree stand for example many deer travel in groups. Whether this be a doe with several fawns in the spring, bachelor groups of bucks in the summer, mature buck following doe in the fall rut season, or deer herded up in the winter. The problem is that most of the popular commercial game cameras made today have a minimum PIR delay of 1 minute (this means that the 2nd photo can't be taken for another 60 seconds), and most are very slow to take the first photo upon a motion trigger, which makes them rather useless for a "trail camera". Even if your trail camera setup has a PIR delay setting of say 10 seconds chances are you're still going to miss many of the animals moving down a trail together, and especially so if they are moving fast since the camera will have to power back up and be made ready to shutter the photo. This alone can add an additional 3-4 seconds. Note: This is not "Burst Mode" or "Double Photo" mode. Burst Mode on some of the commercial systems will take 2-3 photos within seconds of each other. This means every time an animal walks by you get 2-3 quick photos, and thus you end up with a lot of unwanted photos! This only takes the photos you want - of that next animal.
How it works
When your PixController board is setup in Trail Mode™ it will capture the first photo upon a motion event, but it will leave the camera powered up and in a mode where it can take the second photo within 1/10 of a second upon a motion event. It will keep the camera in this mode for a 30 second period of time, and if no motion event happens within this time it will power you camera down. However, if there is a second motion event it can take a photo within 3 seconds from the first photo and trigger the second photo within 1/10 of a second upon the motion even trigger. If this happens the 30 second window is bumped out another 30 seconds to capture the third animal in the same manner. This will not effect battery life much since at most it will add 20 seconds or so to the time the camera is actually powered up. It should result in no more than a 2% - 3% reduction in camera battery life.