jrowell

I will be installing a wireless camera soon, outdoors in a lightning prone area. It's at a resort in the forest at the edge of a lake, and they get a lot of lightning there. The plan is to mount the camera on the side of a tree. It's a wireless cam so there will be no signal cable for lightning to travel down. But there will be a power cable. I envision running the power cable down the side of the tree through conduit that would then run under the ground to the nearest electrical hookup. My concern is protecting the camera from a lightning strike, and also keeping the lightning from running down the power cable. Would it be best to use a plastic housing for the camera and PVC conduit for the power cable? Or would metal be better? Is there a device I should place in the electrical cable to keep lightning from entering the power line? Would I need a good earth ground? Or should I even be concerned, seeing it would be just a small camera mounted on the side of a tall tree? I'm really a noob when it comes to lightning, so I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks!

Based on the responses so far, I was starting to think along the same lines myself. It seems very unlikely to me that lightning would hit the camera directly, most probably it would hit the tree first and then arc over to it. So if I enclose the camera and cable in plastic and then run an earth cable up the opposite side of the tree as atropine is considering, it should direct the lightning safely to ground while keeping it far from the camera, right? In case it helps I'm planning on placing the camera about 15 feet up, and the tree is much taller than that. It's a wireless cam with built-in antenna, so no data cables to worry about. VTS_Man and Rooney care to weigh in on this idea? Thanks to each of you for your thoughts so far, I'm learning a lot already.

I'd recommend the Stardot netcam - www [dot] stardot-tech [dot] com/netcam/ - it's basically a plu-and-play solution as they offer a camera with embedded web server. I believe the company also offers a dial-up modem option which integrates with the camera. The system can be programmed to dial in and upload a new image to a website at predefined intervals. I know of one person who used this camera with his own home-built modem circuit. It's a remotely located webcam that accesses the internet by phone line to upload its images: www [dot] mk-webcam [dot] net/