Looking for low-light camera recommendation to use as navigation aid on a boat

Depening on your boats construction you also risk bi-metal corrosion of either the boat or camera housing is not properly physically isolated from each other, if they're different metals. Even bolts / screws can cause this although their are compounds available to coat and isolate the threads.

Hello,

Just thought I'd add my .02 to this conversation... By the time I found the BoatEye360 I probably could have bought 2 of their cameras with what I had spent in time/money trying to get a security camera to work the way I wanted. I know people have had some success with IP/CVBS cams - that's how I got started and pursued all sorts of chipsets(starvis, etc) & camera types - from cheap <$50 to $200-$300 cameras. I mostly failed as it was hard/impossible to get any sort of quality while underway (for me anyway - I had ghosting, reflections, etc - To be fair, I did not try a hikvision specifically). I went pretty far down the rabbit hole and turned back - I even designed/3d printed a turret for mounting a bullet cam. The cam itself is a great sony exmore based security cam with autofocus/zoom but underway had all the issues I noted.

I've had the BoatEye360 C1080 HDMI since September 2024 and ran it a couple times in the dark in October then took it out in December for some boat maintenance and re-wiring the camera/monitor. Did 24x7 week long bench burn in test on it. No issues that I found, it's solid (build quality 316L stainless... and stability wise, nitrogen purged housing, etc...) and I don't have to worry about relying on Garmin 8612xsv MFD real-estate since I have their provided monitor. Wiring it up for 12v is dead simple, and for me there are no other components to really worry about (poe switch/network cables, etc - which was important to reduce clutter/failure points).

Anyway, to wrap this up - I spoke with the owner/developer (Dhru Shah) of the camera on a Sunday morning... he answered all my questions - technical and otherwise, so I was confident in placing my order.
The screenshot below is from Jun 24, 2025 - basically doing a shakedown of my installation/rewiring in preparation for taking friends out for July 4th fireworks cruises. Raw video out on YT:

The image on the bottom is what it looked like.


Here's how I mounted the camera. Boat is a 2022 Worldcat 255DC. 3D printed base to raise it up and provide a channel for the cables, I had a concern about reflection off the hardtop, but didn't want to mount it towards the edge or under the top... Maybe unfounded, but I did not test that.

The BoatEye360 external monitor setup... Getting an HDMI cable through the channel provided would have been a challenge without some surgery to things. I can keep my head pointed forward - just glance up. Sorry the boat is looking so grubby!



Anyway, I hope this post helps someone!

Best,

Perry

My only observations as feedback for Boateye, is maybe it would benefit from software image stabilisation to remove / minimise the boat sway & maybe progressive video instead of interlaced to reduce the issues with the railings producing a jagged, moire effect (I'm presuming it's interlacing that's doing this). Very impressive night vision though and very impressive overall. Kind of curious as to what sensor is used given the apparent amazing nightvision and whether it holds up to movement at night or is the product of a long shutter speed. The night vision does have some noise, but not going to knock that given the amazing picture retreival from such a dark situation. On a boat it's a game changer to be able to see like that at night.

CCTVCam said:

My only observations as feedback for Boateye, is maybe it would benefit from software image stabilisation to remove / minimise the boat sway & maybe progressive video instead of interlaced to reduce the issues with the railings producing a jagged, moire effect (I'm presuming it's interlacing that's doing this). Very impressive night vision though and very impressive overall. Kind of curious as to what sensor is used given the apparent amazing nightvision and whether it holds up to movement at night or is the product of a long shutter speed. The night vision does have some noise, but not going to knock that given the amazing picture retreival from such a dark situation. On a boat it's a game changer to be able to see like that at night.

Click to expand...

I wonder if adding stabilization would add processing lag? There is virtually no difference between what I am seeing when driving the boat and glancing up at the screen, so the rocking/angle of what I see on the monitor is the same as what I'm feeling/seeing in realtime in front. I think it would be odd, maybe even sea-sick inducing... to have the image stabilized on the monitor? Also, I may need to play with my hdmi to sd recorder (zowieREC box) to see if I can get closer to the true hdmi output i.e. Maybe I can improve my captured output. On screen in realtime it looks fine to me. I'm not staring at it constantly.

I do have some vibration in my hardtop that I need to address, and I know I have to torque the nuts a bit that hold the camera to my 3d printed base. I may not need the riser base to be as high as I have it, but with my other camera attempts I was getting a glare /reflections from IR emitters - this cam does not use IR emitters (it can take advantage of IR spotlights (not floods) but it does not require or provide them). So, reducing that riser height would have some slight affect on the perceived rocking. I suppose I could try to gyro/gimbal mount it?! A pan/tilt base would be cool and I've thought of modifying a pan/tilt spotlight to do so.

I'm an Opensource ethos kind of guy and he was extremely willing to engage and share. In my initial conversations with Dhru, I speculated the chipset was starvis2/exmor based... He was rightfully non-offensively slightly cagey about it and didn't outright say 'yes you're correct...' but he didn't say I was way off the mark either. So, it's something in the same league or better. From our conversation nearly a year ago he did say it takes a lot of testing, tuning, and hardware/software dev and tradeoffs to get the results. I also like that he is a start-up, has a great product, very customer focused and responsive, it is very much Made in the USA and is realistic about what it's capabilities are and it is very affordable. I don't feel the need to take it apart to see for myself because it just works great for what I need it to do the areas where I boat.

Best,

Perry

The other 'stated is a starvis/exmor' cam I was working with... (not 100% sure on it's guts to be honest) The is a BNC security camera with IR emitters. It is good as that... but too many issues - fogging, requiring a UTC config process, not as much image control as I hoped for this application. My whole security cam setup at home is all IP based, so messing with the BNC's wasn't really appealing, but the garmin supports BNC directly and I figured that'd be more realtime.

The camera here is a Outdoor CCTV Camera, Outdoor Infrared Surveillance Camera . I don't recommend for this application (neither did cctvcamerapros, but it was an experiment for me).

Printables for the turret I designed. YMMV, been a while since I've played with the model. 75mm Security Cam Turret by PC | Download free STL model | Printables.com , but might be usedful for someone.