Summer weather brings new challenges to the school bus cameras installed in both public school bus camera systems and Private Service Contractor Charter Transport Compliance Bus Camera Systems.

Generally, electronic equipment suffers a shorter service life and higher incidence of wear, tear, and breakdown when subjected to high heat environments, which is why most computer servers are housed in A/C environments to help with their processor overheating issues so they can perform more efficiently.

In the early days of school bus camera systems, we utilized massive VCR-based systems that featured large VHS tapes to store the school bus camera pupil interaction files. Many of those in extreme heat woud melt together, the tapes woud stretch, causing massive video image distortion, and in extreme cases, the tapes would melt, rendering the entire system useless.

Prison Bus Cameras, Police Patrol Wagon Suspect, Prisoner & Inmate in-Custody Transport Cameras all suffered the same issues in the late 1980s or early 1990s, but some federal funding permitted some to protect their VCR based recoreders to be placed in a large box that had additional ventalation holes and a forced air fan to help draw the heat away from the recording unit.


While many customers requested the large VCR-based school bus camera video recorders to sit on the dash as they were often too large for under seats, this created another unexpected issue. The radiant heat from direct sunlight caused the VCR to get so hot it could not keep the video tape within the tape cartridges from sticking together or melting.


Special Needs Wheelchair School Bus Camera Surveillance Systems are often installed in buses that have A/C to help keep those children who require special attention from overheating. This helps reduce the temperature when the buses are transporting children, but this does nothing to prevent the buses sitting on black asphalt during summer months from reaching temperatures in excess of 158 degrees, which on my meat thermometer, shows that “Pork is done”


The older cameras sold in the 1980s used rubber “O” rings. Over time, when the heat was high, the rubber would dry out, allowing the seal to be broken and permitting moisture to enter the cameras, causing fogging and erosion of the PC contacts, even without the camera itself being used.

The advent of newer technology, such as silicone “O” rings, has made this less of an issue. As a result, American Bus Video Inc. can now offer a 10-Year Warranty standard on all school bus cameras we sell, given the extremely low fail rate.
The advent of digital memory storage has eliminated most og the issues with the high heat damaging the memory storage. What remains are some of the same overheating components on the PC boards and their components.

High heat environments for the modern school bus camera systems now call for environmentally sealed SD memory cards or SSDs to help ensure the constant high heat does not create condensation issues when they go from cold to hot over and over, permitting moisture to accelerate the corrosion of the electronic contacts on the SD carss and on the SSD pins.

Recommendations for School Bus Camera Mobile DVR location:
Do not mount the DVRs on the dash or in direct sunlight
Do not place the DVR where the school bus heater will blow on the DVR.
Do not install the DVR near the heater core or lines running to it.
Do not install the DVR in a totally closed, small, sealed enclosure.

The same can be a good guideline for Medicaid & Rural Area Ride Share Paratransit Vehicle Camera Recorders.


Should you have any questions or concerns or require more information about Testudo Lifetime System Warranty School Bus Camera Systems, various applications or School Bus Student Transportation Video Camera Recorder configurations, please let us know. We will be happy to offer our 35+ years of market experience in sales and service of digital recording devices to respond to your concerns or questions.


​