What's your practice for putting surge protection on camera wiring? Do you always use it for outdoor cameras? In the cases where you use it, what products do you like? Thanks.

Some cameras, like these have built in surge protection
[Link: nuvico.com]
For analog cams i also run then through a power/video balun like this, that plugs into a rack mount surge protection unit
[Link: easterncctv.com]

Well, here's another reason to use a regulated supply: the regulation circuitry works to snub surges and minimize their effect on the output voltage.

Be careful... "surge protection" always brings out that one nut job who knows that all other surge protection companies are morons and rip off artists but not him...his company know everything and hes basically only in business to help people.

39, do you have a suggestion as to product, or, say, minimum price to believe you're getting something helpful and maximum price above which you should roar with laughter?

I think the maximum was $50 spent at Home Depot.

Oh, come on...
It's not surge protection, it's surge suppression.
Anything over a $7 piece from Monoprice is overpaying.
Besides, that's what homeowner insurance is for, right?

I dare someone to take me seriously on the last two points; the answer for my first point is 'fiber'.

Thats great for huge surges that take out all kinds of stuff, but does absolutely nothing for the smaller surges that hit your electronics on a more frequent basis and slowly damage them. How you going to make that insurance claim?

How do you know that happens?
Have you seen warnings from camera or other CCTV manufacturers that their equipment should be used with surge suppression to keep "slow damage" from happening? I haven't.

That makes me think it doesn't happen, but if a camera that's not well made fails after a year or so, it would be a wonderful thing for the manufacturer to not accept blame for poorly made stuff by claiming after the fact that "it must have been surges," followed of course by "we've never heard of that happening before" ! !

I have not either. But I have read plenty of articles on surge protection, some from biased sources and some from "less-biased" and enough of them have discussed this that I believe it to be fact.

Here is a State Farm piece
[Link: learningcenter.statefarm.com]


Probably why you dont see manufacturers suggest some supression.

It's definitely a fact... that it sells surge protectors.

I wonder what kind of engineering degree is held by


who wrote that piece.

In it he talks about arc-overs that would slowly degrade performance. I suppose that's possible. Ed Miller, one of the founders of Sherwood and The GAS Company, once told me that an arcover took out an entire system. The thing is, the arcover occurred inside the main power panel in the back of the car wash that he owned at the time; the panel was always just a bit less than totally dry, and dust laid down a path over time, eventually allowing arc-over of his three-phase power. I doubt that it's the same inside a video camera.

bcf1963, what say ye?