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Camera power supplies: the most common failure point
Cheap power supplies are the single most common cause of CCTV faults. Symptoms include cameras dropping out at night when infra-red draws more current, flickering images, and a camera that works cold and fails when warm. A properly rated supply costs little and prevents most call-outs.
Night-time dropouts
Infra-red illuminators draw significantly more current than daytime operation. A supply that is marginal in daylight fails at dusk — which is exactly the symptom people describe as 'the camera stops working at night'.
Voltage drop over distance
A long thin power run loses voltage before it reaches the camera. The fix is thicker cable, a supply closer to the camera, or PoE — not a bigger adaptor at the far end.
Shared supplies
One adaptor feeding four cameras is cheap and works until one camera develops a fault, which then takes the other three down with it. Individual fusing avoids that.
Heat
A supply in a sealed box in direct sun runs hot and ages fast. Ventilated position, out of the sun, is worth more than a bigger rating.
Why do CCTV power supplies fail?
My camera works in the day but not at night. Why?
Almost certainly the power supply. Infra-red draws more current, and a marginal supply cannot hold voltage when it switches on. It is one of the cheapest faults to fix and one of the most commonly misdiagnosed as a dead camera.
Should each camera have its own supply?
Individually fused outputs are better than a single shared adaptor, because one fault does not take the group down. PoE achieves the same thing more neatly on IP systems.
Need this doing?
Security camera repair covers cameras showing no image, recorders that stopped recording, footage you cannot retrieve, and systems that lost remote viewing. Most faults are power, cable or configuration rather than a failed camera. Diagnosis is free, and we quote a fixed price before doing any work.
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