Drying a camera

The club has a Hikvision camera mounted up high, looking out over the bay. We call it the Slipcam, because the main view is our slip and pontoon. Last weekend, the image went all foggy – it’s a unit that apparently doesn’t have any kind of fan or vent for condensation – and I picked it up yesterday to check what was going on.

After getting the spiders out of the holes, it came apart pretty easily – three screws on the back, then detach the ribbon cable and power cable. Undo the three screws holding the sensor assembly to the front half of the camera, tap gently to get the circuit board to slide out, and all of the condensation was easy to see.

Left it to dry overnight, and put the front glass piece on the radiator to try and get moisture out of the foam (in case there was any in there). I don’t think I can prevent this kind of condensation easily – there’s no room for a silica gel pack (which would need changing periodically), nor room to add a blower fan and exhaust.


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