Every specialist involved in preparing the installation and connecting equipment to the monitoring system should know what cables and wires are necessary to create a safe and reliable network infrastructure. This is the basis for the security camera system to function efficiently and without the risk of failure. So what cables should you choose for the prepared home or office building monitoring installation? Check out the installers' guide and learn more!
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What material should the cable for surveillance cameras be made of?
The ideal cable for surveillance cameras is a twisted pair or a typical hybrid cable, which allows you to simultaneously power the device and send the signal to the cameras via POE installations. In practice, such cables are made of a steel core covered with copper. Thanks to this, telecommunications cables maintain optimal values.
To prepare a complete monitoring system, you need, first of all, high-quality cables and wires that will allow you to create the necessary network infrastructure from scratch.
Before you decide on cables for your home or office building monitoring system, remember 3 tips:
- Select cables with appropriate impedance, typically 75 Ω for CCTV systems.
- Pay attention to the quality of shielding to minimize electromagnetic interference.
- Choose the insulation type that best suits your installation conditions: PVC for interiors, PE or gelled for exterior applications.
The better you match the type of power and transmission cables, the better the reliability of the prepared monitoring system will be.
How many wires are needed to connect a surveillance camera?
In professional monitoring systems, not only ordinary coaxial cables are used. Important are cables that will also be able to power devices recording image and sound. The optimal number of cores in cables is 4. This type of cable has integrated power cores with transmission cores. Thanks to this, preparing the installation is cheaper, and connecting cameras is much easier.
For IP cameras, twisted pair cables are usually used , which contain eight wires, or four pairs of wires. Such cables allow both data transmission and powering the camera using PoE (Power over Ethernet) technology.
The isolation of transmission elements also plays an important role. An additional screen allows data transmission and IP monitoring to function without the risk of electromagnetic interference negatively affecting the way the entire system functions.
In order to transmit data as efficiently as possible, it is important to use copper wires. The key parameter affecting the quality of the transmitted image and sound is the diameter of the wire - in the case of classic coaxial cables (wire) it is about 0.5 mm. This is enough for the free operation of the image and sound recorder along with the possibility of transmitting data to computers in real time.
Did you know that…? In home monitoring systems or in commercial buildings, fiber optic cables also play a key role. Such cables provide access to a super-fast internet network, which allows you to connect to the IP camera system without having to be physically present in the building – of course, without delays and disruptions.
Which monitoring cable is better? Twisted pair or coaxial cable?
The material of the transmission and power supply wires is extremely important, as is the outer coating, e.g. protecting against electromagnetic interference. Choosing the right cable is important in the context of high-resolution image transmission without delays.
The most commonly used options are:
- Ethernet cable – twisted pairs come in different versions, e.g. shielded and unshielded. Such a cable allows, for example, to connect a surveillance camera to a router or a computer that captures the image directly from the device.
- Coaxial cable – a cable that is used in monitoring systems to transmit signals over short distances, e.g. between internal devices of the building's network infrastructure. The key function is to transmit analog signals with a wide frequency band.
For modern IP monitoring systems, a better choice is a Category 5e or 6 twisted-pair Ethernet cable. If you are opting for classic solutions and only need a locally functioning monitoring system, then you can choose coaxial cables, although this is an increasingly rarely used solution due to the difficulties in scaling the network infrastructure.