Camera hardware rarely fails on its own. In our experience the system stops working for reasons that have nothing to do with the camera brand — and every one of them is predictable enough to design around.
1. Water, and where it actually gets in
Outdoor cameras are weather-rated. The joints usually are not. Water enters at the cable gland, at a taped joint someone made on site, or at the point where the cable enters the wall — then travels down the cable into the housing.
- Insist on proper terminations, not insulation tape
- Cable entry should point downward, or have a drip loop
- Junction boxes outdoors should be rated, sealed and mounted under cover where possible
A system installed in February that fails in July almost always failed here.
2. Power cuts and dirty power
A camera without backup power records nothing during an outage — which is often exactly when something happens. Worse, repeated hard power cuts corrupt recorder hard disks over time, and a corrupted disk fails silently.
Backup for the recorder alone is not enough; the cameras need it too, or you get a running recorder with no input. Ask specifically what is on backup and for how long.
3. Heat
Recorders are frequently installed in a closed cupboard, a loft, or a small room with no ventilation. Hard disks are the first thing to suffer. A recorder that reboots by itself in summer is usually overheating, not faulty.
Give the recorder air. It costs nothing at installation time and is expensive to discover later.
4. Dust and spider webs
The most common "camera not working" call is a camera that works perfectly and is simply filthy. Dust on the dome, or a web across the lens, reflects infrared light straight back at night — the daytime image is fine and the night image is a white blur.
This needs a cloth, not an engineer. It is also why scheduled cleaning is part of a proper AMC rather than an upsell.
5. Rodents
Rodents chew cable, and they favour exactly the places camera and network cabling runs: false ceilings, cable trays, panel rooms and ducts. The failure looks electronic and is not.
In warehouses, kitchens, server rooms and panel rooms this is worth designing against from the start — conduit rather than open cable, and ultrasonic deterrence where the runs are valuable.
6. Nobody is watching the system
The failure that costs the most is the quiet one. A camera goes dark in March and is discovered in September, on the day footage was needed. Nothing alerts you, because nothing is checking.
- Open the live view once a week and confirm every camera has a picture
- Check that recording is actually running, not just that cameras are live
- Confirm the retention period matches what you were sold
- Note the check in a register — it takes two minutes
What a good AMC actually covers
An annual maintenance contract is worth having only if it includes physical visits, not just a phone number. At minimum it should cover scheduled preventive visits, camera cleaning and focus checks, recorder and storage health, backup battery checks, and a stated response time when something breaks.
The systems that are still working properly in year five are almost never the most expensive ones. They are the ones somebody looked at twice a year.