A method for insulator location and selfexplode detection is designed. The recognition and location algorithm firstly uses the Otsu method to segment the insulator, the moment invariants of insulators are extracted. Finally, Adaboost classifier is used to locate the insulator. According to the shape features of selfexplode insulator, a detection method is designed by calculating Euclidean distance of adjacent insulators. The selfexplode detection method works well in dealing with multiple explosion point. The method accurate rate reached 87%. Through the experiment, the accuracy of this method is better, and it is more suitable for practical application.