(meteorobs) Heat required to prevent dew in a box for allsky camera

[bob alongi]

Depending on where you live, just the heat from the camera and ancillary equipment should be enough to prevent dew formation. Chris Peterson, from Colorado, which to my recollection gets pretty cold at times, does just that "...a fan at the base of the enclosure that circulates waste heat from the camera and its power supply up into the protective dome to help prevent dew and frost from accumulating."
web site: http://www.cloudbait.com/projects/allskycamera.html


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On Mon, 11/3/14, rmbehr at istar.ca <rmbehr at istar.ca> wrote:

 Subject: (meteorobs) Heat required to prevent dew in a box for allsky camera
 To: meteorobs at meteorobs.org
 Date: Monday, November 3, 2014, 11:00 AM
 
 Koen, I'm interested in the heating
 method you use in the box for the  
 allsky camera to prevent dew.  During summer I often
 put my camera  
 (old Canon Rebel XT with wide angle lens) on a tripod and
 set it  
 outside for a couple of hours hoping to catch meteors, and
 have been  
 successful a few times.  I live in Ontario, Canada, so
 the summer  
 season is short.  I have made a small box with a window
 that can mount  
 onto a tripod, that has worked well.  I was thinking of
 building some  
 kind of box with some kind of heat that will prevent the dew
 from  
 steaming up the window and keep the camera above
 freezing.  I'm not  
 knowledgeable when it comes to electronics, I was thinking
 along the  
 lines of building the box big enough for a small heating
 pad, and have  
 the camera on a shelf above the pad.  How much heat is
 usually  
 necessary?
 
 Any thoughts anyone?
 
 Rose-Marie Burke
 
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