Universal 10m to 60m CCTV Camera Cables

Video and power down one cable.

The camera goes on the shed corner. The recorder lives inside the house. Between them is thirty or forty metres of dirt, and that is where the job stalls — because now you are looking at pulling a coax for the picture, a separate lead for the power, and crimping a BNC on somewhere in the middle of it.

So the camera ends up mounted where the cable reached instead of where you actually needed it looking. Then something happens in the yard, you go looking for the footage, and the corner it happened on was never covered. That is the real failure — not the gear breaking, the gear pointing at the wrong thing because the wiring was too hard.

This is a pre-made siamese lead. The video coax and the DC power pair run inside one black PVC jacket, with the plugs already fitted on both ends: BNC for the picture, a DC barrel for the power. Pull it through, plug both ends in, walk away. Nothing to strip, nothing to crimp, no BNC tool.

It is not a magic wire, though. Every metre you add costs you a bit of signal and a bit of voltage, and the supplier publishes nothing that would let us tell you how much. The Limits section is the honest version of that, and it is the part worth reading before you pick a length.

What It Does

• Carries both: the video signal and the camera's DC supply run inside the one jacket, so it is one pull through the roof space instead of two.
• Plugs straight in: the connectors are already fitted and moulded on at the factory. No stripping, no crimping, no compression tool, no electrical tape.
• Ends are labelled: the sleeves are printed TO DVR SIDE and TO CAMERA SIDE ONLY, so there is no guessing which way round it goes once it is in the wall.
• Six lengths: 10 m, 20 m, 30 m, 40 m, 50 m and 60 m, so you can buy the run you need rather than joining two shorter ones together.
• Suits analogue kits: the standard BNC-and-barrel wired camera and recorder setup, the sort sold as a four or eight camera package.

Key Features

• BNC male both ends: one goes into the recorder's video input, the other onto the camera's BNC tail.
• DC socket at the recorder end: the red female barrel is what the plugpack pushes into. Marked TO DVR SIDE.
• DC plug at the camera end: the red male barrel pushes into the camera's own power tail. Marked TO CAMERA SIDE ONLY.
• Siamese construction: coax and power pair bonded side by side under a single outer jacket, so they cannot separate mid-run.
• PVC jacket: black polyvinyl chloride, per the supplier's own material listing.
• Moulded strain relief: yellow boots behind the BNC ends and red boots behind the DC ends, so the pull goes into the boot rather than the solder joint.
• One continuous run: no couplers or joiners in the middle to corrode, fill with water or pull apart.
• Free delivery: Australia and New Zealand. Allow 10 to 14 days from the day you order, and up to three weeks to remote areas.

Limits

Voltage drop is real and we cannot size it for you

Pushing low-voltage DC down a long thin conductor costs you volts. The longer the run and the hungrier the camera, the more you lose. A camera that is browning out gives you a picture that drops in and out at night, right when the infrared lamps switch on and draw the most current, which is exactly when you needed it working.

How much you lose comes down to the conductor size, and the supplier does not publish a conductor gauge, a current rating or a voltage rating for this cable. So we are not going to print a maximum run, and we are not going to tell you it will be fine at 60 m, because we cannot work that out from what we have been given. On a long run the common approach is to power the camera locally from a supply at the camera end and use this lead for the video only. That is a call for whoever is doing the install, not for a product page.

It will not work with IP or PoE cameras

This is an analogue lead: BNC for video, DC barrel for power. If your camera connects with an RJ45 network lead, or takes its power over that same network lead, this is the wrong cable entirely and no adaptor turns it into the right one.

The quick check is the back of your recorder. A row of round screw-on BNC sockets marked VIDEO IN means analogue and this fits. A row of network ports means IP, and it does not.

No shielding, weather or fire rating is published

Nothing the supplier provides states a shield type, a braid coverage percentage or a screening figure, so we are not calling this a shielded cable. A shielding claim is either a measured number or it is nothing, and this one has no number behind it.

There is also no IP rating, no direct-burial rating, no UV rating and no cable fire classification stated for it. Plenty of people run leads like this outdoors inside conduit and get years out of them, but that is not the same thing as us telling you it is rated for the job. If the run has to be buried, sit in full sun, or satisfy a building or electrical requirement, that job needs a cable with the rating printed on the jacket, and this one has nothing printed on it.

The two ends are not interchangeable

One end is printed TO DVR SIDE and carries a female DC socket for the power supply. The other is printed TO CAMERA SIDE ONLY and carries a male DC plug for the camera. It only goes one way round. Work out which end lands where before you start pulling it through a wall cavity, because turning it around afterwards means pulling the whole run back out.

Connector sizes are not stated

The DC ends are the common barrel type used across analogue CCTV kits, but the supplier does not publish the pin and sleeve dimensions, so we cannot promise it mates with one particular plugpack or one particular camera tail. Compare the plug on the gear you already own against the close-up photos on this page before you settle on it.

Q & A

Is that one cable, or a set of them?

The supplier does not state a pack quantity anywhere, and the listing is priced by length rather than by count. Every supplier photo shows a single coil with one set of ends on it, so treat it as one lead for one camera. If you are wiring four cameras, that is four of these.

Does a power supply come with it?

No. Nothing in the listing includes a plugpack. The DC socket on the recorder end is there to take the power supply that already came with your camera or your recorder kit.

Will it work with my WiFi camera?

No. A WiFi camera sends its picture over the network and takes power from a socket near where it is mounted, so there is nowhere on it for a BNC plug to go. This lead only suits wired analogue cameras.

Can I join two together to get a longer run?

Both BNC ends are male, so two of these will not screw into each other without a female-to-female barrel adaptor. Every join is one more thing to fail and one more place for water to find its way in, and the longer the total run gets, the more the voltage drop in the Limits section starts to matter. If you need 80 m, it is usually cheaper to move the recorder.

How do I work out which length to order?

Measure the route the cable will actually take, not the straight line between the two boxes. Up the wall, along the ceiling, around the door frame and back down adds up faster than people expect. Then add a bit of slack at both ends so you are not stretching a plug half out of its socket. Coming up short is the expensive mistake here.

Can I run it outside or bury it?

No outdoor, UV or direct-burial rating is published for this cable, so we cannot tell you it is suitable for either. If it has to go outside, conduit is cheap insurance.

Specs