The ins-and-outs of adding cameras to your boat

One thing I found early on with Rendezvous is that a camera on the side of the boat seemed like a pretty important thing to have while docking. I’ve had a system in place now for a year and am very happy with the results.

I’ve had a lot of experience with cameras at home, multiple remote properties, and on the various boats. I’ve used AXIS, Mobotix, Dropcam/Nest, UniFi, Arlo, Blink, and a few more that I’ve forgotten about.

However, cameras seem to be as controversial or as personal as the best type of anchor, the best brand of engine, etc. These are my experiences and what I’ve found to work best after a lot of research around where I want to display them, and having spent a long time using a wide range of camera manufacturers. Nevertheless, a lot of the choice has to do with how I personally wanted them displayed and how I wanted to use them.

Defining my use case

I initially got distracted by the many cameras available in the market. I realized that I needed to narrow down what my real use case was, and chose the following criteria:

  • What – what did I want to look at?
  • Location – from where was I going to use the camera output?
  • Display – how was I going to look at the output?
  • Reliability & quality – what resolution and quality did I need?