AJAX JUNCTIONBOX (118) - MOUNTING BOX FOR IP CAMERAS

What this is and what it is actually for

JunctionBox (118) is not a camera and not an electronic device but a mounting and connection box that goes onto the wall underneath an Ajax camera and takes over the messy part of the installation. Inside it hide the RJ-45 connector, the power joints, the spare cable loop and every leftover tail that would otherwise dangle on the facade or end up wrapped in insulating tape right under the camera body. The camera itself is fixed on top of the box lid, so all anyone sees from outside is a neat rectangular block with a camera on it, with no cable loops and no visible splices. The box has no influence on the image, holds no electronics, needs no power and adds no functionality to the system: its work is mechanical and climatic protection of the point where the cable meets the camera. That is why its value is judged not at the moment of purchase but a year or two later, when comparable installations without one start dropping out because of corroded contacts.

Why an outdoor connection is the weakest link in the system

Ajax cameras of the TurretCam, BulletCam and DomeCam Mini families are rated IP66 or IP65, meaning the camera body itself is sealed — but the connector on its pigtail is not. On an exposed facade that connector goes through a heating and cooling cycle every day, and even where direct rain never reaches it, moisture from the air condenses inside the joint. From there the story is predictable: oxidation of the RJ-45 contacts, rising resistance, sporadic loss of link and, on PoE, unstable supply voltage with the camera rebooting for no visible reason. The nastiest part is that the fault does not look like a cable fault at all — the owner sees a camera that drops out now and then, blames the network or the recorder, and spends time diagnosing the wrong end of the system. Tape and self-amalgamating wrap only postpone the problem; after two or three seasons the same moisture sits under the wrap, except now it is invisible and impossible to dry.

The PG21 entry, the seal and the earthing terminal

Sealing is provided by a PG21 cable gland with a rubber grommet sized for one or two cables — either a single PoE run or Ethernet and 12 V power kept separate. The gland does more than keep water and dust out: it clamps the cable and stops it bending sharply at the entry point, and a broken conductor beside the connector is the second most common failure after oxidation. The supplied plugs close off the unused opening, so with a single cable the box stays properly sealed instead of breathing through an empty port. Inside there is an earthing terminal, a genuinely useful feature for a metal enclosure on an exposed wall, particularly where no lightning protection is nearby — it should be connected by an electrician in line with local wiring rules rather than improvised by the owner. Together these three elements — gland, seal and earth — are what deliver the declared IP65 rating: full dust protection and resistance to water jets.

Material, dimensions and operating conditions

According to the manufacturer's specification the body is cast from ADC12 aluminium alloy, and that is not a cosmetic detail: metal does not age under ultraviolet, does not crack in frost and does not deform in the sun, unlike cheap plastic boxes that crumble at the first touch of a screwdriver after a few years outdoors. At 152×117×59 mm and 468 g it is roughly palm-sized, with enough room inside for a loop of spare cable rather than just the bare connector. The −40…+60 °C operating range and tolerance of up to 90 % humidity exceed the conditions the camera itself works in, so the box never becomes the thermally weaker link. Four mounting holes are designed for concrete walls, ceilings or columns, and the kit already contains screws, plugs, 3 mm and 2 mm hex keys and blanking inserts for the gland, so nothing extra has to be bought. One small thing installers appreciate: the lid is held by a retaining wire, so while you work on the connections it does not hang from the wires or fall from height.

Which Ajax cameras it fits

The manufacturer declares compatibility with three outdoor Ajax families — TurretCam, BulletCam and DomeCam Mini — and that covers both the standard versions and the HL models with hybrid illumination. In practice this means the box suits any of the relevant items in this catalogue: TurretCam HL at 5 MP for 6, TurretCam HL at 8 MP for 8, the basic TurretCam at 4,999 and 6, and every BulletCam HL and DomeCam Mini HL listed here. The camera bracket seats on the box lid as designed, with no adapters and no extra holes to drill, because the mounting pattern is matched to Ajax brackets. Indoor devices do not need it at all: IndoorCam at 8 is rated IP20 and plugs into a socket inside the building, where there is no moisture to protect against. For cameras from other brands in this catalogue — Hikvision, Dahua, Reolink — the box can technically serve as a plain sealed enclosure, but the bracket holes will not line up and the installation will need improvising on site.

When you need it and when you can genuinely skip it

You need it almost any time the camera sits on an exposed vertical surface: a facade with no overhang, a post, a column, a fence, the end wall of a building, a metal canopy — anywhere the cable leaves the wall and is immediately outdoors. It also earns its place wherever the camera may be repositioned later, because the spare cable stored inside gives you several dozen centimetres of freedom, whereas without it moving the camera a metre sideways means pulling a new run. You can reasonably do without it when the cable enters the wall directly beneath the camera and every joint is made indoors — then there is simply nothing outdoors left to protect. The second such case is mounting under a deep dry eave or on the ceiling of a covered car park, where neither rain nor driven snow reaches; the risk there is minimal, although condensation during sharp temperature swings still exists. And an honest third argument against: for a single camera on a temporary site for one season, the expense is hard to justify — the box pays off on permanent installations.

What it gives you besides a seal

Serviceability is the advantage people notice after the installation rather than before it: reaching the connection means opening a lid, not taking the camera off its bracket and losing the viewing angle you carefully set. The second is tidiness — on a private house facade or above a shop window, cable loops and twisted joints look careless, and the box removes them from sight entirely. The third is fewer failure points: one protected joint instead of two or three taped splices means fewer places where oxidation will appear within two years. The fourth is resistance to interference: getting at a cable inside a metal box on a wall is noticeably harder than at a pigtail dangling below the camera. And the fifth is purely financial — 1 is about 15–18 % of the price of the camera it serves, while a single call-out to diagnose a camera that keeps disappearing costs a comparable amount and fixes nothing permanently.

How it compares with a generic junction box and with no box at all

This is the only mounting box in this catalogue, so the comparison has to be with two alternatives from outside it. The first is a universal IP65 plastic enclosure from an electrical shop at: it will keep rain off the joint too, but it has no PG21 entry for a thick outdoor cable, no earthing terminal, no lid retaining wire and, most importantly, no mounting pattern for an Ajax camera bracket — so the camera ends up fixed beside it and half the point is lost. The second alternative is no box at all, with the joint sealed in heat-shrink and self-amalgamating tape: cheap, and it works for the first season, but such a joint cannot be serviced without cutting it open, and replacing the camera means redoing the whole job. Against that, the branded box looks like the expense that makes the installation repairable rather than merely sealed. The limit deserves an honest mention as well: JunctionBox makes no camera better, adds no function whatsoever, and is unnecessary for anyone mounting cameras under a roof with all joints made indoors — in that configuration those 1 are better spent on better camera optics.

If you are unsure whether the box is needed on your particular site, tell us where the cable comes out and whether there is any shelter above the camera, and we will point out the positions where it genuinely helps and the ones where it would be redundant.