A janky underwater camera for ice fishing: waterproofing with cast paraffin wax.
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There are lots of really cool all-in-one underwater ice fishing cameras for sale commercially. Unfortunately most of them cost about $150 minimum (without most features), and more like $300-$400 typically. I decided to assemble my own from parts. My system ended up consisting of a vehicle rear-view back-up camera, 50ft RCA+power extension coxial cable, 12v portable digital video recorder, 7 inch LCD monitor, and a 12v 7amp hour sealed lead acid battery. Everything is done with NTSC video over RCA coaxial cable. My system ended up being comparable to the lower end Aqua Vu camera's like the Micro Stealth 4.3 (~$200) with the difference that my system can record video and it can handle 2 underwater cameras at once. I tested them head to head out on the ice and they are very similar in functionality and quality.

The waterproofing was the interesting part, otherwise it was just all plug and play with power and RCA cables. My first step was removing all screw holes from the camera by filling with baking soda + super glue. I then sprayed silicone conformal coating over the plugged camera multiple times over three days. For the RCA connections in the extension cord I also did one spray of silicone conformal coating but most of the water proofing comes from melting paraffin wax and casting it as blocks around the standard RCA plugs. To do this I cut up some cardboard tubes and used them as molds around the plugs/cable. This was very janky looking but it worked for many hours down 15ft underwater. I recommend paraffin wax as it's easy to use and remove: unlike, say, hot glue or epoxy.

I ended spending about $125. For this amount I probably could've bought a smaller chinese device already "assembled" but such devices don't have the capability to record video. And unlike my setup they cannot use two cameras at once for 360 degree vision. The only downsides of using such cheap ($5 shipped) cameras was the they have the vehicle back-up lines overlayed on the video. It's aesthetically displeasing but functionally it makes very little difference. Video quality was about the same as the $300 commercial system but when I use the 50ft extension cord I do get slight interference lines. I aluminum taped over the very bright white LEDs on the back-up camera since I couldn't disable them.

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