the summer's big research question, perhaps answered

as you might already know from a march post, i have been building autonomous little singing robotics. since our relocation, i have (naturally) been re-inspired by the pernicious environment of Florida. so much so that i wish that my artificial life-forms take place in the outdoors. which in turn, brings the question of how do electronics survive in a place where the humidity is so thick that metal will egregiously oxidize from contact with the air itself. i have several tools that I have owned for 15 or more years which never showed any corrosion that have turned completely rusty in the year we have lived here.

the obvious solution is to encase the the structures in a protective box, but i felt hesitant to employ this solution. there are formal sculpture qualities emerging from the component architecture which i find stunning. likewise, immersion of my babies(!) into blocks of resin seemed to cheapen the contours and assemblages of circuitry. and both of these ideas present all manner of problems to mounting of the piezoelectric transducers, the voices of my bots!

after a little web crawling i have discovered a likely solution:CorrosionX, a product used by the marine industry and RC hobbyists for waterproofing their electronics. the bonding technology sounds good, water and corrosion resistance seem to have a long life, promises dielectric properties up to 20Kv, and an invisible coat. the order has been placed and i look forward to my tests of the product. if this works well, i may realize my vision of truly embedding the critters into the environment for somewhat of a feral life.