Suggestions for drying out a camera <<insert guilty looking smiley here>>

[Bartman]

Hi all, yesterday was one of those days, the famous words "Let's make one more pass" led to the dunking of my heli and my beloved though lightly used Sony CX580 video cam. Amazingly enough, it wrote the file to the SD card as it went in and stopped recording, thank you little handicam!

The body of water that took my heli from airborne to aquatic was a shallow stream so I immediately walked in and retrieved the heli from about 18" of clear fresh water leaving it submerged for about 30 seconds.

I removed the battery as quickly as I could and left it in the airflow of my car's ventilation system so as to start the drying process. It's been in a plastic container submerged in rice ever since with a few of the plastic panels opened up to let out the moisture.

What else can I do though and how long should I keep it in recovery before attempting a power up?

Would there be any value in submerging it in denatured alcohol to displace the water that might be deeper inside of it? I'm concerned the BOSS stabilization may be too fragile to survive this watery encounter.

Opinions? Expertise based on experience?

Thanks!
Bart

 

[JimM]

Bart, have you considered asking Sony support if they have any particular recommendations in this scenario. As you say, the stabilisation is quite delicate. They may know what works and what doesn't. I have the PJ780. fantastic stabilisation for Aerial work! Do you know why it happened?
3 Days is the usual minimum drying out time I believe.

 

[Bartman]

Thanks for the reply Jim.

i had been moving closer to the bank of the stream as i was flying and the whole flight was done in carefree mode as i do this to allow the cam operator to yaw the heli making my two axis mount into a three axis at the flip of a switch. everything was going great but i needed to end the flight and getting back up the bank while flying was going to be difficult. at about the same time i started to work my way back up the bank i also switched off carefree leaving the heli in Manual (or attitude, no leveling assistance). there were hanging tree limbs everywhere, i really had myself backed into a corner in terms of what i was going to do as the heli had to follow me out the way i had gone in but i had to go out backwards and up the bank in order to keep an eye on the heli. so i was a bit preoccupied when i went from carefree back to manual and almost immediately dropped it into the water.

in hindsight i should have switched on GPS position hold and let it hover in place while i walked up the bank. there wasn't a lot of room along the stream and there was a pretty thick canopy so it might not have done that very well either.

regardless, i f'd up and in it went!

i guess i can call sony to see if they have suggestions. i could google it too i suppose.

 

[kloner]

the usual would be take all the screws out and get the water out, then lay the pieces up in rice...... no power till it's totaly dry

that sucks....

 

[jfro]

At least it wasn't the Movi M5 with a larger more expensive camera. When you going to do some more review and show some samples on the m5?


I'm done a small amount of flying on streams and would like to do more. So far though, when there is a canopy of trees and branches covering the river, I've only ventured out with gopro and small 550 quad. I periodically switch into gps mode to see if it will hold, knowing that many times it will not. Nice to have that safety blanket.

Never tried backing out the MR while backing out and up a bank. Don't think I could do it.

Good news is your healthy, bad news is it's not just the money to replace a few parts, but the hours of testing needed to see what works and what doesn't and then to figure out what can be trusted. For peeps making money doing this, it's probably advised to toss the critical stuff, but most of us our on tight constraints so we end up testing.

Keep us informed on what you get fixed. Camera's in the water don't tend to end well. Good Luck.

 

[Eddiethemartian]

Alcohol will strip out all the delicate lubricants so is definitely a no-no. If the water was clean and fresh there's nothing you can do except hope... Another good object lesson for us all, so thank you!

Sent from my GT-I8190N using Tapatalk

 

[kloner]

this game has so many unexpected hidden lessons...... and there never cheap....

 

[Bartman]

Alcohol will strip out all the delicate lubricants so is definitely a no-no. If the water was clean and fresh there's nothing you can do except hope... Another good object lesson for us all, so thank you!

Sent from my GT-I8190N using Tapatalk

i was thinking the same thing about the alcohol

@Kloner, I've got one side opened up, maybe i'll do some more prying and open up the other side. the container with the rice and camera is out in the sun at the moment, i'm hoping the warmth will force more of the water out.

Movi hasn't been flying a lot due to the weather. it will be though and we'll post it soon.

 

[Darson Hall]

I've had success drying out cameras by placing them in front of a fan for a half day or so—and then into the rice—then the fan and back to the rice. Fingers crossed...

 

[Bartman]

i'm almost ready to say f' it. i just tried to open up another panel and shook out 50 pieces of rice! it's in front of a fan and then maybe back into the rice, maybe i'll hook it up to my car battery and see if it likes that.

sometimes it's immediate, sometimes it takes a while but it eventually happens that you realize crashing sucks!

 

[Bartman]

amazingly enough, the helicopter survived almost 100%. i've got a small issue with the tilt servo on the mount but other than that everything appears to be back in business and ready for a test flight.

the video camera isn't going to make it i'm afraid. i attached the battery this morning, hit the power button, and it did absolutely nothing. i think i can probably find another for cheap on ebay or somewhere but it sucks to lose a camera after an otherwise successful shoot.

i think that the water being so shallow there wasn't much pressure to force the water into the nooks and crannies. The Hoverfly PRO/GPS and GIMBAL are all fine as are the receivers, ESC's, motors, Vtx, and other stuff.

all in all it turned out much better than I thought it would.

Bart

 

[Bartman]

spoke too soon! maybe the battery's dead, can't say for sure but i plugged the camera into a USB port to try to charge the battery and the charge light came on. so i hit the power button and sure enough the camera came on and recorded video for me! i can't believe i'm almost 100% back in business with this helicopter after pulling it from total submersion just a few days ago.

un' freakin' believable.

 

[SleepyC]

Go play the lottery... Use the last file number.