Has anyone tried using a dahua starlight ip camera on a boat? Not for security but as a navigational aid during the night? If so is there a tablet of monitor I can use to view it without a NVR or network?
I think this is a cool idea. You can use it to see how close your bow or stern is to something without leaving the helm. Or just to see what's coming up behind you. You might consider starting with a cheap board camera from ebay. If you ruin it, you're only out 30 bucks or so. You could get focus dialed in and then embed it in clear epoxy, and not worry about water getting in.
You can get IP board cameras, both poe and regular, but you can also get other communication protocols - usb, hdmi, sdi, etc. If your boat's not too long, you could get a hdmi camera and plug it into a portable monitor of the sort people mount on cameras. I have a couple 'Feelworld' brand ones that work pretty well on 12v, and you just plug in the hdmi directly from the camera. No network necessary.
So let's say you mount the camera in the bow, maybe inside a little housing. You'd bring the cable back to your monitor in the helm. A switch on the helm would control power to the camera and the screen. It'd be pretty simple.