Coldness, condensation and its detrimental effects on gear

At practice today we were using our Allen and heath GL2200 when we tried turning it on nothing happened:eek:....it wouldnt even turn on or light up just nothing

After we jammed we brought it back to the house and let it heat up and voila it started to work again.:hyper: (big sigh of relief very important gig coming up this weekend)

It was being left in the van but now its going to be brought in after every gig.

How else can we protect our gear from doing this again? Over christmas which is going to get cold, we have gigs up to 5 hours away and leaving it in the cold van for the journey then bringing it into the warmth can't be good for it.

Is there anyway to protect gear from cold to hot and hot to cold transitions

(maybe this would have been better placed in amps...I'm not sure)