Updated: 28/03/2021
What Is A Drain Inspection Camera?
The word 'inspection camera' is a broad term that includes various types of drain or sewer inspection cameras, borescopes or perhaps endoscopes etc.
Some drain inspection cameras are also referred to as snake cameras. They are small and flexible enough to slide down into narrow and hard-to-reach spaces that otherwise are very difficult to access.
Drainage Survey Cameras
Inspection survey cameras usually consist of a miniature camera attached to the end of a long, flexible probe along with a handset and a digital screen.
They are mainly used as testing and diagnostic tools that help you explore and visualise spaces that are very difficult to see with the naked human eye.
Diagnostic Problem Pipe Camera
Inspection cameras have a wide range of applications in various fields of life. The pipe cameras are extensively employed in medical, diagnostic, and mechanical areas. They save a great deal of time and money by locating issues and problems.
View Images And Live Video
The drain video inspection equipment works in a much easier and faster way, which would otherwise be impossible. Besides this, they also allow users to have detailed images and live video broadcasts from challenging locations to access and perceive.
Based on their utility in different fields of life, they are usually classified into various categories. Some of the significant types of CCTV drain cameras, along with their brief description, are discussed below.
: SanyiPace Pipe Inspection Camera 20m
These types of pipe inspection camera assist you in inspecting areas, particularly those that are difficult to visualise, like pipeline interiors, spaces behind the sewer or drain walls, or even inside the drain.
They facilitate the maintenance personnel to accurately look for plumbing problems without digging the floor or carrying out any other digging activity.
Drain Blockage Problems
Different types of inspection cameras come with their own merits, and their utility dramatically varies with the scope of work. Drain blockage often causes severe problems for maintenance personnel to accurately look for the presented backup.
Therefore, to cope with such problems, drain cameras with specially designed CCTV systems are available that provide you with real-time footage of the drain's interior.
Video Recording And Data Storage
Besides these, several other high-quality inspection push rod cameras also come with a wide range of features like high-quality video recording, audio recording, data storing and sharing, tracking, etc.
Based on these features, there are several types of sewer toilet unblocking and inspection cameras commercially available. Therefore, before buying a suitable camera for looking down drains, you must exactly know the scope of your work.
: TesLong HD Industrial Inspection Camera
For this, you must answer the questions like; What exactly you are going to do with your camera? Whether it should be water or chemical proof or not? How long the probe of your inspection camera should be? Etc.
Answering these questions will help you choose and identify the inspection camera that best suits your affordability, interest, and working requirements.
Wireless Inspection Cameras
The term Wireless inspection camera includes both borescopes and endoscopes. Nowadays, these types of inspection cameras are in great demand because of their wide range of applications in both medical and mechanical fields.
These drain inspection cameras are very useful in specific environments or plastic pipe locations where access to wire or probe-containing cameras is impossible.
Broadcasting Live Streaming Video
The overall design and essential components used in these waterproof pipe cameras are almost the same as other inspection cameras. They utilise WiFi or Bluetooth technology for broadcasting their live streaming videos and real-time images to remote viewers.
Video Boroscopes For Inspection
Borescopes are now considered an essential tool in mechanics because they are very effective to visualise the places within the machinery that are otherwise very difficult to spot.
Both rigid and flexible borescopes allow users to choose between scopes that best suit their interests. Using these cameras for CCTV drainage survey, you can easily detect and find solutions to your problems without dismantling anything.
Diagnosing Pipe Problems
Endoscopes perform the same function as that of borescopes but within the living body. In medical sciences, endoscopes are extensively used for diagnosing problems that are very difficult to diagnose otherwise.
Flexible And Slender Scopes
They are more delicate, expensive, flexible, and slender than borescopes. They are extensively used to look in detail into various body parts. They are waterproof and can be used anywhere inside the body without getting affected by body fluids.
Diverse Uses Of Inspection Cameras
One can quickly found the utility of handheld video inspection cameras in every field of life. In engineering, they are widely used by the name of borescopes. Simultaneously, in the medical field, endoscopes make the diagnosis process very easy for healthcare professionals.
Probe Cable And Housing Care
Despite the reason you are using plumbing camera inspection, some critical aspects must be kept in mind. Any mishandling will lead to the damaging of the probe cable or housing unit of your inspection camera.
: ROTEK Drain Inspection Camera Colour LCD
You must have to be aware of the thickness of the probe cable or lens aperture of the housing unit before using an inspection camera. Because most of the inspection cameras come with a flexible probe cable and a firm housing unit.
Some Precautionary Aspects
For instance, if your working site contains sharp edges, you must use the Wireless inspection cameras available with a large housing unit and flexible probe cable. This is just an example of precautionary measures that you must follow before using an inspection camera.
Find Out How To Use The Drain Cam
Many people are new to snake cameras and do not know how they work or how to utilise them properly. Suppose you are looking on the Internet for any of the reasons mentioned above for using inspection cameras. In that case, this article will serve as a user guide for you.
Your Research On Device Features
However, it is still advisable to do your own research on the drain camera's unique features for sale that best suits your interests. In this way, you can effectively utilise your inspection camera without causing any damage to it.
The utility window of inspection cameras is limitless. A wide variety of inspection cameras with multiple features left no place inaccessible to sanitary workers and carpenters.
: AQOTER Waterproof Borescope Pipe Camera
Different sanitary machines and vehicles equipped with inspection cameras are used in drainage pipes, flues, chimneys, vents, and gutters. Similarly, carpenters also use them for void detection under floors, behind walls, in ceilings without affecting their integrity.
Mobile Phone Camera Usage
As different cameras are designed to serve different purposes in everyday life. Smartphone cameras are utilised for daily life images and official purposes. In contrast, other cameras are used for high-quality images, video creation, and for surveillance purposes.
Using A Borescope For Engineering
Similarly, inspection sewer cameras found their utilisation in looking into hard-to-reach places, the places which are unreachable to the human eye, or average security cameras or smartphones. In the engineering field, inspection cameras as borescopes doing phenomenal work for engineers.
Flexible Wire Extending Camera
Engineers can examine a machine or engine components quickly without touching them. Primarily borescopes consist of a soft arm and a rigid arm. The soft arm is basically a flexible wire-like extension that makes the cam's movement around the edges and voids smooth.
Observe Hard-To-Reach Zones
While rigid arm has a fixed camera mounted on it and can provide you with a quality view of these hard-to-reach places. These borescopes' designs maximised cameras at the business end while its manual usage and controls at the human destiny.
: AnyKit Drain Snake Inspection Camera Probe
An inspection camera mainly consists of two parts, a housing unit and a flexible arm. The housing unit is 'the brain unit' of an inspection camera that controls all the camera's essential functions, including the attached sensors and LED lights.
Pipe Cameras With Illumination
The camera and LED lights are attached to the housing unit through a cable. LED is mounted on the camera to provide illumination in dark voids so that the camera screen can capture all the minor details of an inspection site.
Real-Time Viewing Display
Primarily, optical fibres are used for mounting LED lights as they are flexible and easy to bend. At the viewer's end, an eyepiece is used to manually inspect sites in simple versions of drain inspection cameras.
While advanced versions come with a connected monitoring screen for real-time viewing and recording of inspection sites.
High-Resolution Camera Output
With continuous advancements in this field, inspection cameras have been equipped with different sensors according to their usage. These electronic-encrypted sensors enable inspection cameras to detect precise locations and take high-resolution images of inaccessible places.
: AnySun Sewer Pipe Inspection Camera DVR
The miniaturisation of camera technology also playing a pivotal role in extending the boundaries of inspection camera usage in everyday life.
These small flexible inspection cameras with lights are very economical and enable users to transfer their data through USB connectors and Wireless technologies.
Inspection Cam TV Display Monitor
This transferred data can be displayed on the TV monitoring screen attached to these inspection cameras. Other accessories like side mirrors can also be mounted in some inspection cameras to view sideways.
The point is that you must have to be aware of your working needs and features of inspection cameras before buying any product for you. In this way, you can find a quality product that can serve you best in your work.
Snake Inspection Cams With LED
In the market, many high-quality snake cameras are featured with LED lights. These LED lights are basically used to provide illumination for a better working experience.
Better illumination is necessary to increase these cameras' working capacity as we used them primarily to inspect dark, inaccessible places.
With these cameras' help, you can zoom in and adjust the angle of your camera to get the best possible close-in view of your inspection space.
: PRANITE Pipeline Snake Video Endoscope
Inspection cameras are widely utilised for inspection purposes in plumbing, carpentering, and sanitation. All of these tasks involve the viewing of dark corners and cavities.
So, LED light-containing cameras to perform better in auto-diagnosis and void detection compared to inspection cameras without LED lights.
In the medical field, inspection cameras as endoscopes are utilised to detect different anomalies inside the human body.
Comparing With Endoscopes
The intensity of light illumination is very low in the human body and not suitable for precise imaging. That's why endoscopes are usually provided with light through optical fibres to enhance their functionality in human tissues and organs.
But it should be noted that the light intensity provided in these endoscopes is very low compared to the power supplied in borescope cameras.Push Rod Camera Engineering
As we know, borescopes are used for engineering purposes. Sometimes engineers have to work in dark places like tunnels or pipelines etc.
For such places, they require push rod cameras that have more sensitivity in dark areas. Therefore, these cameras are equipped with special sensors to provide quality imaging in low intensity of light.
Large Cameras Use Up More Power
Some inspection camera companies manufacture borescopes with more LEDs for engineering purposes. But these cameras are larger and heavier compared to ordinary cameras and often consume more power.
: ZOTO Industrial Borescope Snake Camera
To compensate for this, different companies now focus on developing borescopes with greater 'resolution power' instead of increasing the pipe camera size. For this purpose, high-quality sensors are being utilised in these cameras to enable them to provide high-resolution images.
Better VGA Resolution
Companies are making efforts to introduce HD technology by using 10 mm camera pipes with HD sensors. However, the problem is that the VGA resolution obtained in these HD cameras requires digital links for their proper functioning.
Commercially Available Snake Cams
These digital links are affected by various factors like distance, noise, etc. Moreover, the overall cost of these VGA signals containing HD cameras is higher than simple cameras. That is why no VGA or QVGA inspection cameras are commercially available in the market to date.
Inspection Camera Screen Size
The screen of a survey camera is responsible for providing you with the details of the inspection site. Screen quality is controlled by two factors: the screen's width and the resolution of the screen.
An inspection camera with widescreen and high-resolution power will provide you will a quality view of the inspecting site. Inspection cameras are equipped with different screens according to their price and utilisation.
For example, pro-models of inspection cameras are equipped with daylight readable monitor screens. These screens enable the workers to inspect minute details of the inspection site even in broad daylight.
: TesLong Semi Rigid Snake Inspection Cam
Image Capturing And Saving Platforms
Every passing time brings new advancements in the field of technology. Modern inspection snake cameras can now capture images or recordings at different resolutions and in various formats. You can now catch and save images in JPEG file format and video recordings in either MPEG or AVI file format.
Drain Inspection Via The Laptop
These cameras play a crucial role in making the daily work of inspection officers easy and reliable. Now they can just take the images and make videos of different places from their laptops using additional features of these drain video inspection equipment.
Sewer Or Drain Inspection Troubleshooting
These cameras are extensively used by engineers, contractors, plumbers, or other professionals associated with troubleshooting plumbing issues.
These cameras also make the reporting and verification process significantly easy for inspection officers. They are very reliable in terms of their working capacity.
Keyboard Input User Instruction
The Pro-models of inspection cameras are also available in the market that enables users to utilise keyboard controls. A keyboard can be used for manual input of instructions and commands while remote controlling these drain inspection cameras.