JVC Condensation Error , I Finally manged to fix it...

Good afternoon,
This is my first forum entry and I hope its a good 'n'.

After recently buying a second hand JVC camera off of ebay ( a small Mini DV cam with a light on the front), about a week later, and having taken it no where wet, moist, or even out of my flat it came up with the dreaded 'CONDENSATION ERROR', which stops you from doing anything, mine would'nt even charge the battery anymore when plugged into the mains, so I ended up buying a new battery and separate charger off of ebay, this time new and from Hong Kong, this works fine as a charger and the spare battery should always be useful, very cheap as well at 9 pounds...

After searching loads of forums and realising it is a common problem I finally tracked down the 4 different methods people have used to fix the 'condensation error' all of which I tried and eventually it has worked...sort of.

So I thought I'd list them here for other people to help avoid the big search....listed from easiest to hardest.

1. Hit the speaker on the side of the camera hard lots of times, (some people have said this works really well you just have to do it now and again, I tried this along with the other 3 methods so may have helped though I cant be sure)

2. Spray a can of air inside the camera (Buy a can of air from any proper computer shot, and spray into the innards of your cam, and try and clear the sensor bit which is causing the problem.)

3. Open up the camera, leave plugged into the mains and and leave it on, so in play, or camera mode, and leave open in a warm dry area, I put mine near a radiator, after completing step 4, and it sprung to life, it had not worked before when I'd tried it though..

4. THIS IS A FINAL RESORT, only do if you dont want to pay a shop 200 quid to fix it and dont mind if it all goes wrong...

Unlpug camera from mains and detach battery...

Get your small electric philips screwdriver out and get ready to take your camera to pieces, by removing only 7 screws, I was able to take off the plastic casing around the enclosure where the battery sits, enabling me to get a screw driver into the mechanism inside the camera. ...it should all come away easy when the correct screws are removed.
When inside the camera, there is a small yellow (yellow in my camera) box which is the sensor (One website said to clean the sensor with rubbing alcohol, i never tried this), below the yellow box there are two screws, the lower of the two, is a hard reset, if it is undone, and then redone up it should reset the camera, I left mine out for good and it seems to of worked.

(Sorry the instructions are a bit vague, if someone is desparate I can write a more thorough walk through, and also what the camera number model is.)

Once you have completed the above steps, put the camera back together, turn it on and hopefully voila, mine took about five minutes after taking to pieces and leaving open, as step 3 says before it sprang back to life...

Anyway I hope thats of some help to someone.

Cheers for all the forums especially this one, for helping me get my camera back up and running in time for 2008.

Experience has shown that a high percentage of "D" (followed by two digit) models can suffer from this fault due to what can only be classed as a design deficiency, albeit this not acknowledged at any time by JVC.

The only "permanent" cure for any camcorder that frequently suffers from this annoying problem is by disabling the sensor, of course this being qualified by the fact of the camcorder "not" at any time being used in an environment that is liable to encourage condensation, e.g:- like using in a cold outdoor environment then attempting to use it immediately afterwards indoors etc.

This of course this being the only resort left if there is no difference after having tried cleaning the dew sensor using the "proper" method, the word "proper" being emphasised as the sensor is very delicate and easily damaged, which is something that unfortunately is a very frequent occurrence, albeit unwittingly done!

There is a so called "hard reset" which in some cases works, although this can only ever be classed as a temporary measure, as the reset only blanks out what is stored the camcorders memory at the time so it can re-occur at any time, experience proving it frequently does!

If anyone is interested in the details of the procedure used to clean the sensor, or should this fail to cure the problem carry out the sensor disabling mod, both procedures tried and tested over the last three years! I am willing to send them on provided they supply a direct e-mail address (via the private message facility) because as well as the accompanying text being quite involved there are also approx (dependant on model) nine JPEG's for illustration purposes.

Needless to say although the dew sensor cleaning procedure can be carried out by anyone exercising an element of care, the modification referred to should only really be attempted by people who are acquaint at working with small and intricate precision pieces of electro-mechanical equipment and possess a quality pencil tipped soldering iron, as the mod involves soldering two pins together on the inner PCB, the pins referred to being extremely close together necessitating the use of a fine tipped soldering iron.

Hi Draper3000,

Please explain further; did you take out and left out the reset screw or take out both screws and removed the sensor? And if you removed the sensor, did you have to do anything else or just went on and operate the cam as is w/out the sensor?

Thanks
Jaime

I realise that you posted the question to draper3000, however I can advise you that you "CANNOT" remove the sensor on most of the "D" followed by two digit models as the sensor is part of the loading motor.

The "ONLY" way to completely cure the condensation problem is by the method I mentioned in my 2008 posting, and a method that has been tried and tested by numerous people with complete success over the last three years or so.

Noting of course the advisability of attempting qualification!