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stop webcam from misting up

Hardware/software/hints and tips/discussion/webcam links etc
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hills
Posts: 690
Joined: Sat 26 Dec 2009 8:52 am
Weather Station: Fine Offset WH1091
Operating System: Raspbian Buster
Location: Crafers, South Australia
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stop webcam from misting up

Post by hills »

I thought I'd share this as it has worked better than I expected.

My weather cam is just a USB connected webcam in an external CCTV Security Camera Housing Enclosure on the roof, like this one
housing.JPG
and as I live in a fairly cold part of the hills here in South Oz most mornings it is misted over... so I bought one of these

https://www.testar.com.au/products/zwo- ... dew-heater

and attached it to the inside of the screen and ran the wiring down to a 1amp 12v DC transformer, via a relay that is controlled by the raspberry pi where I run Cumulus.

I tested it manually this morning and this was the image at 7:35am - if you look today 26/7/20 (or in the next 28 days before it is ages out) you can see the transition on the replay.
before.JPG
and this was the image at 7:55
after.JPG
I have written a shell script which will just turn it on 30 minutes before I start catching images for 30 minutes, but am in the process of adding the functionality to that script so it will only turn it on if the over night apparent low (which should be the temperature of the camera enclosure) is less than the current dew point.

Next I'll see how it copes with rain on the screen and turn it on when it heavy rain is recorded.

If I still ran Cumulus on Windoze :) I would have just used a timer to turn it on during the colder months as I know very little about that OS, but as a Linux Engineer I can add the extra functionality from the Pi.
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champ101
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri 13 Mar 2020 7:50 pm
Weather Station: davis vantage
Operating System: windows 10

Re: stop webcam from misting up

Post by champ101 »

I had the same issue with my CCTV camera which I was using to monitor weather for our local weather page. I purchased some CCTV housing from this site https://www.dtsdigitalcctv.co.uk/Camera-Housing.asp which has a built in heater which prevents condensation and misting of the cameras lens.
hills
Posts: 690
Joined: Sat 26 Dec 2009 8:52 am
Weather Station: Fine Offset WH1091
Operating System: Raspbian Buster
Location: Crafers, South Australia
Contact:

Re: stop webcam from misting up

Post by hills »

Nice!! thanks for the link
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