Hello all, Any that know me well enough know that I swap out my packets at least every other year and for some cameras every year, with that said one of my other sons sent me his 2496v2 that he liked but said he liked the 1046EW-AI better seeing it was color and put that back up.
So Before I put it up I thought I would get that Silica Packet task out of the way before installing to find out I need to anyway (I am sure it was fine) I just live in high humid area and nothing worse then a foggy camera..
I removed the sun shade, Then looking at the front there is nothing visible so I removed the slot screws where the reset button is and Micro SD slot and no screws there, (I have larger camera that is where 2 screws are to remove front not on this one) this tells me that it must be under the front cover. So looking at that there is a small slot at the bottom, taking a Guitar Pick I gently lifted the bottom just enough to slip another under the area and slide it around to remove the cover from front to expose 2 IR leds at the bottom and 4 screws one at each corner. Remove the screws using H1 Philips bit, This exposes the camera and LED wires that connect to the front, Remove the front being careful not to damage the wiring, Then there is 2 more screws that hold in the camera to the base, Removing them screws exposes the wires and Silica Packet that is tucked and taped into the housing. I removed the old packet and installed a new one using some extra duty double sided tape.
Then installing the camera back together is just the reverse of taking it apart and making sure the front plate is firmly in place if double sided tape is bad replace with some good new extra heavy duty tape I didn't I just reused what was there for now..