The dirt or dust coating you describe used to plague the fielded systems sold to the US Gov. And those systems contained circuit boards all coated with a transparent layer of protection, but the dust still raised hell. Can't think of the fancy name for it, so dirt will do. The worst case was deployment in a tomato field. Hope readers take heed. I always blow off my rider best I can with a low pressure air hose, including the instrument dash backside. The dirt spider webs are tiny jumpers and the overall coating a resistive film which can confuse the circuit board components. Glad you found that solution and shared it.