Finally, after almost a year of constant Searching, I found a used windshield camera, & now the fun begins:)

[Geor99]

A used windshield mounted camera for the Clarity was next to impossible to find. I searched every junkyard that I could find that posts parts online. I contacted them all to let me know when they get a Clarity, and I have been scouring places like eBay several times per week. Never any luck until recently.

Being a thermal engineer, I have already developed several cooling systems, and the part hasn't even arrived yet. The general consensus in online forums is that this part fails due to overheating.

Of course, I will replace the thermal paste with extremely high quality thermal paste. I am trying to decide between a liquid cooled system and an air cooled one.

Both would have a bimetallic thermal switch that will automatically turn the cooling system on when it heats up to around 102F and turn itself off when it cools down to the low 90sF. These cost around 80 cents and can be wired in line with either line of your fan.

One can get 12V directly from the battery or 5v using the car's USB. The air cooled version will use around 0.500- 0.750 watts and the water cooled one will use approximately 4.5 watts.


Or I could get fancy and use air cooling until it hits 110F, and then have water cooling kick in if it gets hotter than that.

Or....I could throw a thermalelectric module onto the case where the chip is to try and go sub ambient with the temp. And either water cool it's heatsink or heat pipe it to air cool it's heatsink. But this will run around 12 watts , which is a big pull on the battery when parked.

I definitely want it cooled when parked, and a cooling system ready to go whenever it heats up 24/7.

The thermal switch turning everything on and off at 102F and 92F respectively will help preserve the battery big time.

I'm not thrilled about long runs of water tubes to a place to cool the warmed water though. There's no good place to hide it and muffle the pump/fan noise.

So, I might get boring and add a good low-profile heatsink attached to the case with very thermally conductive thermal adhesive that is extremely strong, and have a low profile blower fan, like used on Mac book pros blowing air through it, of course using the thermal switch so it's only on when needed and not on constantly.

I believe that I can fit the entire air cooled system under the existing cover.

I'll keep you guys posted

 

[Robert_Alabama]

Why not use a peltier and a heatsink?

 

[Geor99]

Why not use a peltier and a heatsink?

A thermoelectric module is another name for a peltier module. As I mentioned above, it'll pull perhaps too much juice from the battery. I'm calculating as much as 4x as much as the water cooled system and 15+x as much as the air cooled.

But yes, thermoelectric= peltier.

There's just no space to cleanly house such a system. Id need to heat pipe the waste heat to a more spacious locale for the heatsink/fan assembly, etc.

 

[Geor99]

I actually designed and manufactured a personal cooling product using a peltier or thermoelectric cooling module, that I sell online, or try to sell

I'm sure posting ads is against the law on the forum, but pm me for the website if you want to check it out.

It's a actually about the exact size of this camera and it would produce enough cooling power to keep this camera chip nice and cool, but it uses 12.5 watts of power; and you'd have to get creative with how it would look mated to the camera and protruding thru the plastic housing on the windshield.