Monday, February 23, 2009

Waterproofing electronics

For those out there who wants to bring electronics out to sea, I have to say that unless the unit is waterproof in itself, there are few storage containers that you can trust for submersion.

Aquapacs
Reputed to be the best stuff around, but I personally drowned 2 phones and a set of walkie talkies encased inside them before.

Boxit
About the only thing I trust for submersion of phones, but you got to sacrifice usability when using your phone and live with its bulkiness. No flip phones or smart phones or phones with jog dials allowed, and call volume is much reduced.

Sealline
I saw this one with a roll-top, definitely a no-no. Roll top style bags cannot be submerged! (But they did say it only afford watertight protection.

Pelican Micro Cases
I bought it thinking it was waterproof, but every time I used it water will find its way in without fail; you only need to slosh it around an inch of water at the bottom of your kayak and it'll be wet inside. I went to the product website and scanned the entire site - nowhere on the site does it use the word 'waterproof'. Caveat Emptor!

D&G
I bought this green medium sized bag recently for $10 only at Beach Road, and stored my Solio charger in it. It has a 'ziploc' closure which then rolls down and is velcro-ed fast in that position. Inside, there are two thin plastic flaps which seals up together when pressed against each other, and can presumably keep any water from touching the stored items, quite a cool concept. Don't think I tried submerging it for long, should try someday.

And on waterproof electronics...
Pentax WP-series camera
Proved itself to be really good in operating underwater, never had problems with it. Picture quality leaves much to be desired though, even to my untrained eye, but maybe the newer models nowadays have better lens/processor.

Garmin GPS
My Garmin 76cx is supposed to be waterproof, being designed for boating use, but I had never dared to use it without protection - it's too expensive a toy! I am quite comfortable in using an Aquapac over it though.

And maybe I'll try waterproof mp3 players soon...

2 comments:

Wanderlust said...

I've seen a few smokers putting their precious oxygen sticks in Pelican cases though.
Or maybe they used Otterbox?

Wolfie said...

Hm...think some used this small card carrier plastic case thingy...maybe that really works?!