Over the weekend my kids and I were in a very public city ran place, I will not share the name, when I saw some of their surveillance system. They have 4 cameras in the same area and they are all installed the same way. The cameras are mounted outside at about 7 feet up above the ground. When I showed the picture to other people that are not in the security field they didn’t really notice anything wrong. All they could do was comment on the fact that the location had camera’s.
When I noticed the camera’s my first thought was “Whoever installed these cameras should not be installing camera’s anymore.” The obvious reason is because of the wires going to the camera. From the ground you can see the connectors for both the power and the video feeds and you can see that they are corroded after spending a season or two in the elements. The second reason is that any average height person can easily reach up and grab the wires and damaging them making the camera unusable until it is repaired. If the damage power wires get “shorted”, the positive and negative coming in direct contact, it could damage the power supply to the camera. The last thing I saw was inside the dome cover of the camera. There is dust and a little debris inside the cover.
All of these problems wouldn’t be problems if the camera was installed properly. The particular mount on the camera is suppose to be installed on a metal box to contain all the wire connections. The box needed is not any type of special box, any of the hardware stores we have in town have them in stock. With the box installed, all of the wire connections would be in there out of the elements. They wouldn’t corrode and need to be replaced already. The box would also keep the wires out of people’s reach to save from vandalism and damage. If the camera was installed on a box it would make the camera a complete sealed environment so nothing could get blown in such as dust and debris.
One simple and inexpensive thing could save this location a lot of headache and money on repairs. All I can do is speculate on why the installer of this system did not install the system correctly. The installer could of been inexperienced or lazy, either way is or will be causing this location down time on the cameras and maintenance. A properly installed cctv system should run years without this kind of maintenance.