Dome camera funnies

Jun 10, 2016 27 Replies

Whilst looking for something which I put in a safe place in my stocks(no. I didn't find it!). I found that somewhere in the past few years I had purchased a small dome CCTV camera. As one of my cameras was very old and not very sensitive, I decided to fit the dome camera in it's place. The theory was OK, but I found that the camera had interference patterning and vertical blooming when operating. I checked the operating voltage, it was a bit high, so hooked the unit up to my bench psu to see if this had any effect. No, over a range of 9 to 15V the behaviour was the same. Then by accident, I switched off the study lights and found that the interference patterning was apparently being caused by the CFLs radiating into the unscreened camera. Subsequent testing didn't remove all the vertical blooming effects, so I'm still looking into that. I replaced the old camera with a spare modern metal cased outdoor unit which I had in my stocks and it all worked OK. It appears that some plastic cased cameras can pick up radiated interference from CFLs and fluorescent lamps. Anybody else found this?



The PSUs required came from my stocks of it may be useful one day items!


An awful lot of people have found this. It's why we have RFI legislation.

NT

which came via the EU. The RA of the DTI didn't seem to know what to do.

Yes I've seen this.

Bill

There were instances of a two way radio system in use on the London underground where florescent lights interfered with the radios around the 440 MHz mark IIRC.

Bet someone else who writes here will know more about that!....

That must be some kind of record. In three lines, we have: PSUs RFI EU RA DTI

for a record you need EP & LP.

Haha. That was good actually.

Further up the thread, we have CFL and CCTV, but not EP or LP.

On the original subject, when I worked in industry, any two-way radio keyed near a Honeywell PID Controller would send it crazy, with corresponding effects on the process, which were usually in car factory paintshops. And I could not wear hearing aids in a room with lots of fluorescent lighting, the resulting buzz was far worse than loud tinnitus.

Sudden thought: How many people reading this don't know what an EP or an LP is?

There was already UK legislation in place before the EU, just not quite as complicated. Mobile radio had very,very tight specifications for radiation leakage from transmitters in the 1970s, before the EU directives. I can remember equipment failing the tests on a regular basis. Getting it right was prone to trial and error. Very few engineering departments have testing facilities good enough.

78?

What did I win? ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Never got that with Foxboro pneumatic PID controllers ;)

There may be a reason for that...

Shure, that would give me the needle. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

That's your 2 grams worth, or is it 2 cents? Though for the record I get the feeling we're going round in circles.

NT

Which everymanufacturer in China ignores totally of course ruining any kind of radio use in built up areas on am and shortwave.

Not sure this is all due to pick up, surely its got to be getting in via the power cables in some way. Not sure what vertical blooming would look like. Brian

Quite, we know how to actually do things. People too young to know about EPs or LPs don't and either throw things away and buy another or get an oldie in to fix it.

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required