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Part 1 - Your CCTV Camera
Ok, you've got a CCTV camera in the mail. What do you do with it? Hook it up using the instructions here - you'll see it's very easy to do, and the only hard part will be deciding where to place the camera and the monitor.
Figure 1 shows what you get from us when you order a STI-556 mini dome surveillance camera (minus the protective packaging material).
Figure 1. A Boxed Mini Dome Camera from Q5 USA
Open the box up and remove the camera and cable and manual. Sometimes the cable will be attached to the camera, sometimes not. In this case, as shown in Figure 2, it is not attached.
Figure 2. Camera and Video/Power Cable
Part 2 - Remove the Dome
Let's attach the cable. You will have to remove the clear dome to reach the camera. With the STI-556 model mini dome camera, you can remove the dome by removing the screw in the base. Sometimes you can remove the clear dome without going through this step. You can check most dome cameas by firmly holding the base and rotating the clear dome left/right until you feel its built-in tabs disengage from the slots in the base. If they don't disengage, or the dome won't move at all, then remove the base. Figure 3, below, shows the screw in the base. Figure 4 shows the camera disassembled.
Figure 3. Bottom of Dome Camera
Figure 4. Dome Camera Parts
As it turns out, I didn't have to disassemble this camera to attach the cable. But, now that I've done it, I'll go on from here (I love making simple jobs harder, it seems).
Part 3 - Attach the Cable
Route the cable through the access holes in the base and carefully attach the connector to the connector on the board camera. The plastic connector is keyed to make sure you don't attach it backwards. Just take care and don't exert TOO much force and it will go into the connector without any undue problems, like most connectors of its type. If it doesn't want to fit don't force it our you're gonna have problems - try it again in the other direction and it'll probably fit just fine. If not look closely at the connector - maybe a bit of crud or packing material got stuck in there, or maybe the plastic connector is mis-shapen (never seen one get misshapen, but in the world of things that could go wrong I imagine this is possible).
Figure 5 and Figure 6 show the connector and cable attachment.
Figure 5. Dome Camera with Cable Routed through Base
Figure 6. Attaching the Power/Video Cable to the Connector on the Board Camera
Part 4 - Reassemble the Camera and Attach Power Supply & Monitor
Now, since I was an idiot and removed the board camera from the base, I have to re-attach the base. Don't be an idiot like me - test the dome first to see if you can remove it before you make yourself extra work. After re-attaching the base I put the dome back on the camera. Before doing so I removed the protective lens cap (which you can see in the photos above). You won't see video without removing the lens cap.
Now I took my camera to my test bench and did the next step, since my power supply and monitor are there. Hook up the cables as shown below.
That's it. You're done. The tough part now is deciding where to place your camera, and where to place your monitor. I'll offer suggestions in a later series, or you can visit our blog for ideas.
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