"How much does a CCTV camera cost?" has no single answer, because the camera is rarely the largest line on the quote. This walks through what actually drives the total for a Chennai installation, using real prices from our own catalogue rather than a range pulled from the air.
The camera itself
Fixed 4MP dome and bullet cameras — the bulk of any installation — sit between roughly Rs 3,400 and Rs 4,600. A 4MP Wi-Fi unit starts around Rs 3,100. At the other end, a 5MP AHD PTZ speed dome runs to about Rs 47,573, because it adds motors, zoom optics and a much heavier housing.
That spread tells you something useful: one PTZ costs roughly ten fixed cameras. PTZ earns its price where one controllable camera genuinely replaces several fixed ones — a warehouse floor, a large yard — and wastes it anywhere a fixed camera would have done.
You can see current prices on each model across our CCTV camera range.
What people forget to budget
The PoE switch
PoE cameras draw power from the switch, so the switch has to cover every camera at once. Sixteen fixed cameras at 8 W peak is 128 W of draw; add cable loss and headroom and you want a total PoE budget near 170 W. That is a specific switch, not the cheapest one with sixteen ports.
The mistake that costs money later is buying on the per-port rating. A switch can advertise 30 W per port and hold a total budget of only 150 W — fine on paper, cameras dropping offline at night in practice, when infrared raises every camera's draw together. Our PoE switch range lists total budgets, and the full calculation is here.
The recorder and the disk
Channel count should exceed camera count so you can add positions without replacing the recorder. Disk is the part that surprises people: it follows camera count multiplied by bitrate, recording hours and retention days. Thirty days of continuous 4MP across sixteen cameras is a very different order from seven days of motion-triggered recording.
The cabling
Every IP camera needs a run back to the switch, inside the same 90-metre limit as any other Ethernet link, terminated at both ends. On a sixteen-camera site that is sixteen runs, plus jacks, patch panel ports and patch cords. See our Cat6 cable range.
The rack
Switch, recorder and power distribution belong in a cabinet rather than on a shelf. A 9U wall-mount rack covers most sixteen-camera sites, with a PDU and cable management. Our racks and cable managers cover the sizes.
Where resolution changes the price
Resolution costs twice: once on the camera, again on the disk. Almost everything we stock is 4MP because it identifies a face at an entrance or a number plate at a gate without an unreasonable bitrate.
Going higher everywhere is how sites end up buying storage they did not need. Spend resolution where identification matters and use lower resolution where you only need to know something moved.
A realistic sixteen-camera budget
Fixed 4MP cameras across the site, one PoE switch with adequate total budget, a 16-channel recorder with disk sized to your retention target, sixteen Cat6 runs with jacks and cords, and a 9U rack with PDU. The cameras are usually 40 to 50 per cent of that total — which is why quoting on camera price alone is how projects overrun.
What we need to quote you properly
Send a floor plan, or just a list of the positions you want covered and roughly how far each is from where the rack will sit. We will work out the camera mix, switch capacity, recorder channels, storage and cabling as one specification with bulk pricing and GST invoicing.
Star Networking Services has supplied networking and security products in Chennai since 1998, across more than 300 projects for IT companies, hospitals, factories, offices, retail and contractors.
Browse CCTV cameras, see the installation and setup guide, or send your requirement for a quote.