Technology – Riveted

Power Made Easy – Airship’s Electrical Upgrades

Kevin Morris — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 04:14:19 +0000

Before our 5-month trip up the Inside Passage to Alaska aboard Airship, we did some major upgrades to Airship’s electrical power system. Now, after five solid months on the boat – mostly away from marinas, here is a summary of how the system performed, what we learned, and what our “ideal” power system might look like.

SPOILER: It was AWESOME! We could not be more thrilled with how robust, reliable, and easy to use the new power system proved in five solid months of harsh use.

BONUS SPOILER: For the first 3 weeks of our trip – from Anacortes, Washington up the Inside Passage to Ketchikan, Alaska, we never once ran the generator or hooked up to shore power. We never once turned off the inverter or the water heater. We basically had all the power we wanted or needed without having to flip a switch, read a meter, or think about “how much power do we have?”

BONUS SPOILER DISCLAIMER: We said we didn’t “have” to read a meter or worry – but we did anyway. We’re data nerds. We looked at the meter about 15 times per day “Wooooo – look at that! We’ve still got 94% of battery left. Whoa! check it out – our solar array is pumping out 30 amps! Wow, we haven’t had to start the genset or hook up the power cord for WEEKS!”

OK, here is Airship’s system and the philosophy behind it.

We think of the power system in terms of power sources, power drains, and power storage. Power sources include the main engine alternator, the generator, solar panels, and shore power. Power drains are things like the refrigerator, freezer, water heater, lighting, laptops, and misc appliances. Power storage is the house batteries.

Airship 2016:

Power sources:

150A 12V engine alternator
5KW 120V Cummins/Onan Generator
Two 260W Solar panels with dual BlueSky charge controllers and IPNPro Remote display
30A Shore power cord connected to Magnum Inverter/Charger – 125A 12V charge rate.

Power Drains: (note, we are only counting “house” power – not including the navigation instruments, engine electronics, bow and stern thrusters, windlass, etc.).

Major: Water heater, refrigerator, deck-top chest freezer (These account for the majority of daily power usage.)
Medium: Nespresso coffee machine, laptop chargers, hair dryer, Wallas diesel heater fan (These account for noticeable usage, but aren’t significant.)
Minor: Lighting (Airship is all LED), phone chargers, entertainment devices (stereo, TV, etc). (These things use so little power, you almost don’t need to think about them.)

Storage:

600Ah 12V Lithium battery array with battery management system from AM Solar

Our philosophy is to set things up so the batteries can power anything and everything for one full day.

Why?

When we are traveling, we often spend only a single night at an anchorage or marina, then cruise several hours the next day to another destination. In that situation, we’d like things to be as easy as possible – no hooking up to shore power, no running the generator, just nice silent trouble-free battery power. And, we don’t want to be constantly worrying about how much power we’re using, turning things (like the water heater) on and off all the time, etc. That means we need a big enough usable house battery capacity to handle one day of our normal use, with a little to spare. And, we need an inverter big enough to handle any AC loads we might have without running the generator or hooking up shore power.

We calculated our daily usage while we were cruising around the San Juan Islands in the winter and spring. It looks like we use up to 450Ah of 12V electric in a typical day – if we leave the inverter and electric water heater running 24/7. (It turns out that the water heater accounts for OVER HALF of our total power usage on Airship).

NOTE: Don’t be put off by the electrical terminology. “Ah” stands for amp-hours. If that’s too unfamiliar, pretend that electricity comes in “gallons” and substitute that in your mind. “Airship uses 450 gallons of power per day.” Pretend that the battery is a fuel tank, and it holds a certain number of gallons. Pretend that the power sources pump a certain number of gallons per day into the battery. You’ll be just fine.

For that reason, we decided that a USABLE house battery capacity of 600Ah would be perfect for Airship. Note the word USABLE there. For normal lead-acid or AGM batteries, you should not regularly discharge more than 50%, so a 600Ah usable capacity would require 1200Ah of total battery capacity. For lithium batteries, however, they are typically rated for 100% of their listed capacity (some companies rate for 80%), so a 600Ah battery capacity gives 600Ah (or 480Ah if 80% rated) of USABLE capacity.

So, with a 600Ah usable battery capacity on Airship, we should be able to run everything just fine for a full day without adding any power to the system and without doing anything particular to conserve.

Now, once we’ve done that, how do we refill the battery for the next day?

Time to talk about our Power Sources:

First, there is the solar. Our two 260W solar panels don’t ever put out even close to 260W each. Solar panels must be rated by a marketing guy who stands in the Sahara Desert pointing the panel directly at the sun exactly at noon. No solar panel in the real world ever comes close to its rated output. Second, even in the Land of the Midnight Sun, it’s not always sunny. You only get a few hours of good, solid sunlight per day, and most of those are at a steep angle, not with your panel pointed right at the sun. Clouds, rain, and fog all cut down significantly on your power output.

Finally, for boats and RVs in particular, there is a HUGE issue with solar that most people are not aware of – PARTIAL SHADE/SHADOW. In a normal solar panel, if you cast a shadow on JUST ONE of the little square cells (many panels have 50-60 of these little squares) – you have just cut the output by as much as 90%! Yep, you read that right. Casting a shadow on something like 5% of the panel almost completely shuts the panel down. And, on a boat, there is usually not a place you can put a panel where it won’t often be shaded by some part of the mast, antennas, or some other rooftop protrusion. Add to that the boat swinging at anchor, and you realize you just have to live with the fact that your solar panels will often be severely under-performing.

On Airship, we have a mast with a radar dome and several antennas. That means that at least one of our two solar panels will almost always have partial shade. If you have two panels on a single charge controller, that one panel will cut the output of BOTH panels significantly. So, we chose to have a separate charge controller (called an MPPT controller) for each panel. That way, when one panel is shaded and the other is in full sun, each one will have its output separately maximized by the charge controller. But – if you’re adding solar to a boat, RV, or whatever – REALLY pay attention to partial shade. Even a seemingly-small shadow is NOT OK!

We have now measured the output of Airship’s solar system over a wide range of conditions – from winter in the San Juans to mid-summer in SE Alaska. We have seen our total daily output range from 80Ah to almost 200Ah. Now, remember when we said our normal daily usage was around 450Ah? That means our solar provides something like 20-50% of our daily energy needs.

Second, there is the engine alternator. Airship has a 150A engine alternator. When we’re cruising, about 100A of that (on average) makes it into the house batteries. So, if we put 100A into the batteries for 4.5 hours of cruising, we’ve replaced our daily 450Ah that we used from the batteries. If we factor in 100Ah per day or so from the solar, we could cruise as little as 3.5 hours and end up with the batteries full again – just from the solar and engine alternator.

So – what if we don’t cruise 3.5-4.5 hours per day with some sunlight to boot? That’s when we need the generator or shore power. If we stay at anchor for more than one night, we need to run the generator to replace what we used each day. Our generator (using the “charger” part of the Inverter/Charger to charge the batteries) gives us a 125A charge rate. So, we’d need to run the generator between 3 and 4 hours per day to refill the batteries. If we have a good solar day and the solar pitches in 125Ah or so, that cuts an hour off the generator run time.

One thing we love about the lithium batteries is that they can be charged at full speed directly to full. Regular lead-acid or AGM batteries have to be charged more gently, slowing down the charge rate as they approach full. Our friend Steve says he thinks of it as pouring beer into a glass – when you get toward the top, you have to slow down to let the foam settle. So, with regular batteries, you have to run the generator much longer to charge them completely. You get to 80% or so pretty fast, but then the charge rate slows way down. Generators like to be run with heavy loads, though. It’s not good for your generator to run “easy” with light electrical loads. Lithium batteries, then, let us run our generator for a shorter time, and under a much better load than if we were trying to put the same charge into conventional batteries. It’s win-win.

Finally, when we’re at a marina for more than one night, we can plug into shore power. This year, our power system was so good, and we so seldom stayed more than one night at a marina, that we hardly ever needed to get out the shore power cord. It was wonderful! (This also means that we saved a few bucks in marina power charges. Power can be expensive in BC and AK since marinas often get their power from generators. Power alone can add $20/day to your moorage fee.)

One thing we did here was reduce the charge rate for shore power. Usually, when you plug into shore power, you have plenty of time, so there’s no need to rush getting your batteries back to 100%. And, if your 30A shore connection is using most of its capacity to recharge your batteries, you can easily trip the breaker if you try to run “other stuff” at the same time. So, we tell the charger to go slowly on shore power, and save some of that capacity for other things – like making coffee.

The one thing we’d maybe upgrade on our system at this point is to change our Inverter/Charger to one of the new “Hybrid” models. These new units have the ability to sense when you’re using more than the available shore power, and actually dip into the battery reserves to boost the output. It can be almost like having 50A power available, even though you’re plugged into only 30A. Then, when you’re using less power, the Inverter/Charger goes back to recharging your house batteries. It would be a nice upgrade.

One final note, for expedition cruising, this system also gives a nice measure of redundancy. If the generator fails, we still have solar and engine alternator to give us power. If the charger fails, we have a second battery charger that can step in. If the engine alternator fails, we can divert power from the generator and solar. It’s a very robust system that (so far) has served us extremely well.

Overall, we are thrilled with the major electrical upgrades we did to Airship this year. As we said, probably the only additional thing we’d change would be a swap for a “Hybrid” style inverter. If you’re on a larger boat with 240V AC power and/or 24V DC power – all these same principles apply, you just need bigger (and more expensive) versions of the same equipment.

The New Best Mobile Internet

Kevin Morris — Tue, 19 Apr 2016 00:10:13 +0000

A couple years ago, we wrote that we had found the best-ever mobile internet solution for our boating and RV adventures – The “Moovbox” from SinglePoint Communications. We have used our Moovbox on both our boat and our RV over the past couple of years, and it has performed brilliantly!

But, time and technology march ever forward and it was only a matter of time before something better came along. Now, SinglePoint Communications has a new family of “WiFi In Motion” solutions specifically for RVs and boats. Their “WiFi In Motion – Max RV” and “WiFi In Motion – Max Marine” solutions are comprehensive – including routers, antennas, mounting and wiring hardware, and even competitively priced service plans – all from one source. SinglePoint has partnered with PepWave for the router part of the solution to develop capabilities that are tailored to the RV and marine crowd.

We’ve been testing Max Marine the past few weeks on Airship as we cruise the San Juan Islands, and our initial experience has been superb. We were skeptical that we could be persuaded to replace our Moovbox this soon, but at this point it looks like the new WiFi In Motion – Max Marine has bumped Moovbox from our upcoming Alaska expedition.

As those who have followed this blog for awhile know, we’ve tried a lot of internet options over the years for our work-from-the-road/water lifestyle. Since we spend the majority of our time traveling while working and running an internet business (and this blog), our mobile internet setup is mission-critical for us.

So, what about Max Marine moves us to retire the Moovbox?

First, there is WiFi speed. Max Marine supports the latest WiFi standards, so the local WiFi network (assuming your client devices support it) can take advantage of significantly faster local speeds.

Second, the LTE backhaul (the speed at which the router can connect to the internet using a cellular SIM card) is – in our testing, significantly faster. (NOTE: We have only anecdotal comparisons and accurate performance testing is very difficult and requires a complex setup. We just sat in the same place and compared “speedtest.net” results between the two with the same SIM card.) The results? Check this out:

Yep, you are reading that right. 60.29 Mbps download. Upload was unusually low on that particular test, (it is usually in the several Mbps range) but download is generally the most important factor for most people’s use.

Third, ease of use. The admin console on the Max Marine device is easier to use, clearer, and more capable than we had with the Moovbox – including a number of features that we either did not have or could not find on Moovbox.

Fourth, WiFi as WAN. This is a big deal. It means you can introduce your Max Marine/Max RV router to the WiFi in the marina or RV park, and the system will use that for an internet connection if it’s available, automatically falling back to your cellular data plan when you pull away or the Marina/RV Park WiFi is unavailable. This lets you save data from your data plan, using it only when other WiFi is not available.

So, why use your Max Marine/RV to connect to marina/park WiFi rather than just connecting your devices directly? The Max Marine/RV is using an external high-gain antenna, so it will have stronger/faster signal (often a huge problem in parks and marinas when the antennas are far from where you are parked. If there is a charge for the WiFi service, you only have to pay it once, and all your devices can share a single connection. You have your own secure, fire-walled network so you won’t get hacked by any bad guys who happen to be on the same marina/park WiFI. And, you don’t have to reconfigure all your devices – they can continue to just be connected to your own local Max Marine/RV network, even when you’re using marina/park WiFi.

Here is our device connected to marina WiFi.

Then, when we cruised away from the marina out into the San Juan islands, Max Marine automatically transitioned to our Verizon SIM card.

Fifth, unlike Moovbox, Max Marine/RV allows you to easily swap and manage SIM cards. Going to Canada and want to buy a local SIM and pop it in? No problem. Got one of those old grandfathered unlimited-data Verizon SIM cards/accounts? (We do). Just pop that card in for unlimited data awesomeness. (We did, it was awesome). Or, if you have a T-Mobile account that doesn’t charge international roaming, slip that baby in when you head up to Canada. The plan provided by SinglePoint is (we believe) served by Verizon. In our experience roaming around the country, Verizon has had the best coverage – particularly in remote areas. The only exception we’ve found to this was SE Alaska last summer, where AT&T was the clear winner.

Sixth (and we haven’t tested this yet) you can easily set up a “captive portal” that would allow your friends or traveling companions use your connection to check their e-mail on a limited basis, without fear that they’ll clobber your data plan or have access to your private network. This feature might make you the most popular RV in the trailer park.

Seventh (list is getting long, huh?) There is an App. (The screenshots above are from the iPhone app). This makes it super convenient to check the status of your router and connection, make any required changes, and get notifications when something important changes (like maybe you transitioned from campground WiFi to your metered cellular data plan.) Oh, and that’s not all – if you like notifications and you have an Apple Watch, you can get the notifications on your watch. (I discovered this by accident when we pulled out of the marina and my watch tickled my wrist with a notification that we’d left marina WiFi.) Here are some screenshots from watch notifications:

Finally, the box is smaller and lighter than the Moovbox – and appears to be similarly rugged, with an all-metal enclosure and high-quality connectors.

One question people often ask us is – why spend money on a heavy-duty solution like Moovbox or Max Marine/RV rather than using one of the available mini-routers like Jetpack, MiFi, etc. There are a number of advantages (most of them listed above) but the most compelling for people like us who camp and boat in remote areas is range/coverage. The combination of external high-gain antenna, high-quality radios, and the ability to use SIM cards from multiple carriers, you’ll get internet in a BUNCH of places that your MiFi won’t reach. The antenna alone is a huge deal, since many RVs and boats kill a lot of signal just because the device is inside with no external antenna. The high-quality solutions also bring “real” full-featured WiFI routers that can handle a large number of devices and provide true firewall security – unlike most of the small portable solutions.

We found the Max Marine switched smoothly and automatically between marina WiFi, our Verizon SIM, our T-Mobile SIM, and our AT&T SIM as we traveled through zones with different coverage. (Yeah, we have a lot of accounts, shush.)

We’ll report more as we stress test our WiFi In Motion Max Marine over the summer – traveling up the Inside Passage through British Columbia to SE Alaska. By the time we’ve done that, we’ll have a lot more first hand experience to share.

Electronics…Upgraded!

Laura Domela — Sat, 12 Mar 2016 23:48:00 +0000

Earlier this week we headed over to LaConner to have our electronics upgraded. Here's what we got: Garmin 7616xsv chart plotter, GHP Reactor autopilot with GHC20 control, GXM52 Sirius XM weather receiver, GMI20 marine instrument, Garmin gWind wind and weather sensor, and downview/sideview CHIRP sonar transducers, GST43 speed/temperature transducer.

Out with the old:

Hauling out for a couple hours to install the transducers (much different than our haulout in Juneau):

It's always fun to see the boat out of the water. The hull looked great…we did a quick pressure wash ("we" meaning the guy who hauled us out) and replaced one zinc…the one on the bow thruster.

Downview/sideview transducer on the starboard side:

Water speed, temperature, and depth sensor:

It was great…they hauled and hung us at the end of the day (a very windy day when most haulouts had cancelled) and we were able to get back in the water last thing so we didn't have to stay the night in a hotel.

Yesterday afternoon we took the boat out for some sea trials to set up the new equipment and test that everything was working as it should. It had been so stormy previously that there was a ton of wood in the water, so it made it a bit tougher, but we managed.

Back into LaConner at dusk:

Look at all those logs ahead!

Everything checked out well and we're super happy with the new stuff!

Random daffodil field on the way to Best Buy the other day (blurry, taken not with my fast camera/lens):

This morning I took Airship back over to Cap Sante while Kevin drove over in the truck. It was definitely not as windy as the other day (and I had almost a 2 knot current helping me along, woohoo!) Hey! Look at those shiny new electronics!

Once back in Cap Sante we mounted the iPad holder and iPad. We run Navionics on the iPad for some redundant chart plotting.

Looks great there, doesn't it?

Our new wind/weather instrument mounted on the mast:

And while I'm up there, here's another shot of those huge new solar panels:

This afternoon was windy and rainy, but late in the day the sun poked through and the light was beautiful against the gray sky:

This new gear will give us a lot of capabilities that we didn't have before. The satellite weather will let us get marine forecasts, precipitation, wind and wave heights ANYWHERE, which will be super useful as we make our way up to Alaska again this spring/summer. The new wind and weather and speed sensors give us a lot of information about conditions where we are: what the winds and currents are actually doing, etc. The new autopilot will steer a much smoother course with less wear and tear on the hydraulic pumps. The new sonar will give us much more information (with way cooler images of the bottom — we'll show you some images once we have some). The 16 inch touchscreen is a LOT nicer and easier to use than our previous 12 inch non touchscreen monitor was (pinch and zoom! pinch and zoom!!) We can connect to the new system with our smart phones via Wi-Fi (and even mirror and control the display via iPhone). And…it all just looks more modern and cool.

Fun stuff! Now to go try it all out some more!

Working on the Water (Day Job)

Laura Domela — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 13:52:30 +0000

Sometimes when I'm driving the boat and Kevin's working on his laptop next to me in the pilot house, this is what he's working on:

Most of his articles are written for professional engineers and fall toward the more tech/nerdy side, but this one will be accessible by many, so I thought I'd share it.

Moovbox – Our New Favorite Mobile Internet Solution

Kevin Morris — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 14:27:52 +0000

We depend completely on being connected when we are on the road and on the water. Because we run a virtual company which is an internet business, we can (and do) enjoy traveling extensively – even while working full time. While our blog posts focus on the adventure side of our travels, what you don’t see are the long days sitting at our laptops, running a complex company remotely from the road. Without reliable, high-performance internet, there would be no adventures. Our blog posts would be “Woke up at home this morning, made coffee, went for a hike, worked all day in the office, had dinner, watched TV, went to bed.” That’s not what we want to do (or write) and we’re pretty sure it’s not what you want to read, either.

For years, we’ve struggled with the technology to keep us connected and working while we travel in the Airstream. We’ve tried just about every option available, and we’ve had friends and traveling companions who have tried just as many. We have learned a lot from their experience, as well as from our own. Since I’m an electronic engineer, a journalist and an analyst covering electronics technology, I figure I’m more qualified than the average Joe to locate the best way for us to stay online during our adventures. However, it’s been an ongoing challenge – even for me.

We have tried everything from the obvious to the exotic – (and we have written about our experiences before)… Campground (and marina) WiFi is notoriously unreliable and slow, and it is a rare occasion indeed when we get a stable, fast connection that will allow us to work productively using the WiFi at a campground, RV park, or marina. Of course, we have tried USB modems, and portable 3G/4G/LTE devices such as Mi-Fi. Those are by far the simplest, most affordable, and easiest-to-use solutions. Their limitations are coverage (particularly inside an RV or boat), speed, and data plan limits.

We have also tried portable satellite internet… No. Just no. (See Option 3 – Satellite Internet, in this post.)

When outfitting our new Nordic Tug “Airship” – we wanted something that would be flexible, trouble-free, fast, and reliable. We wanted something that would give us far greater range of coverage than we could get with consumer-grade devices. Since this is our business, we wanted a business-class solution. That’s what led us to Moovbox. We bought ours from SinglePoint Communications (the same company we bought our WiFi-in-Motion setup from several years ago).

So far, we have been extremely pleased.

Moovbox is a commercial-grade mobile router. It is designed for applications like providing public WiFi on mass-transit – busses, trains, etc. It uses cellular data modems – similar to the one inside your smartphone – to connect to the internet. It then creates a private, secure Wi-Fi network for you using that connection. Picture an industrial-strength MiFi powerful enough to be used by a bus-load of people all at once. It is ruggedly built and is made to withstand the rigors of the road – vibration, temperature, etc. It is also scalable – the M340 model we got can handle up to four modems with two SIM cards each – for a total of eight SIM cards. Obviously we don’t need that many, but we did want at least two modems – one for Verizon and one for AT&T, so we’d have coverage wherever either of those networks reached.

With multiple modems, Moovbox can automatically switch between them – or it can “load share” where it distributes your internet traffic between the two connections when both are live. This can effectively double your bandwidth if more than one person/process is using your internet connection at the same time. Speaking of bandwidth, the Moovbox modems are fast – MUCH faster than what we’ve seen with consumer-grade devices. We get better LTE speed with a single modem in Moovbox than we’ve ever seen with our conventional devices. Check this out:

To get long-range reception, you need an external high-gain antenna. Check. Moovbox comes with a matched external antenna (with built-in GPS) that can handle two separate LTE/4G/3G modems. We had ours mounted on top of Airship’s electronics mast where it would have the best, unobstructed line-of-sight view to cell towers.

We mounted the Moovbox unit itself inside the electronics bay in the top of the pilothouse (behind the boaty instruments). Moovbox is made to be hidden away and forgotten. There are no controls on the outside, and it will be a rare day when you need to think about or look at the status LEDs on the front.

There is a web-based interface used for initial configuration – setting up your WiFi network name, your password, and so forth. It’s all pretty simple and straightforward, and the technical and product support from SinglePoint Communications is top notch. Singlepoint installs the modems and SIM cards in the unit at the factory, and sends the whole thing out ready to install. You mount the antenna, hook up the antenna wires and 12V power, configure your network name, password, and preferences, and you’re done.

It just works.

When we go in and out of coverage for Verizon and AT&T, it magically and seamlessly maintains the connection with whichever is available. The range is FAR longer than we get with our phones or our old USB datacards on our laptops. So far, in the first month, we have been all over the farthest reaches of the San Juan Islands – to the booniest of the boonies like the rock-walled Active Bay on Patos Island in the uppity-tip-top corner of the US – almost surrounded by connection-cash-sucking Canada and miles from any US towns or infrastructure, and we had good, solid connections the whole time.

SinglePoint also can provide a nice, one-source data plan they call “SinglePlan.” (See a theme here?) You can bring your own data plan as well, but we opted for theirs because it lets us get one, auto-pay bill that spans both our Verizon and AT&T SIM cards. The pricing is comparable to what we were getting with our previous plans directly from Verizon and AT&T. We haven’t gotten our first bill yet, so we’ll let you know how the rest of that process goes as we get more experience.

Regarding our decision to use BOTH Verizon and AT&T – traveling all over the US, we’ve carried THREE data cards in the Airstream for use with the homebrew Franken-system we installed there (third-party external antennas, multiple antenna boosters, Cradlepoint 3G/4G/LTE router, and three carrier-supplied USB modems.) What we’ve found in many years on the road covering most of the remote areas of the US is:

Verizon has the best coverage by far – many places where there’s no AT&T.
AT&T has coverage many places where Verizon does not.
When Verizon and AT&T BOTH have coverage, AT&T is usually faster.
Sprint has coverage almost nowhere except in cities where Verizon and AT&T also have great signal.
T-mobile is weak but still better than Sprint.

That led us to the notion that to get the best possible coverage/speed combination possible, we wanted both Verizon and AT&T service.

In the Airstream, making that happen is a nightmare gordian knot of antennas, cables, modems, boosters, router – all jumbled up together in the upper cabinet in the rear of the trailer. Each time we arrive at a destination, I’m juggling cables to find out which modem works where we are, checking signal strengths and connection speeds, and fiddling around until we finally get what seems like the best connection for the location. When we move, the whole process starts over again. It takes from five minutes to thirty minutes each time we settle down in a remote area for me to get an internet connection I’m happy with.

With Moovbox, we just have internet. No fiddling or futzing or juggling cables. It’s fast, easy, stable, and omnipresent.

The next step is to get Moovbox set up for Wi-Fi as WAN. That means when we’re at a marina (or in the case of the Airstream it would be an RV park), we’d like to use the Wi-Fi there (if available) as the internet connection for Moovbox. Then, all our devices can stay connected to our secure Moovbox Wi-Fi network, but we can use the marina/campground Wi-Fi as the internet connection from there so we don’t use up the data on our plan. We’ll report on that step once we have it working.

Moovbox also has the capability to automatically switch to a Canada SIM card (if you have one installed with an activated plan) so that you can seamlessly travel to and from Canada without breaking the bank. So far, we don’t have a Canada data plan because we don’t spend enough time there to rate an entire dedicated account and monthly bill. But, it’s nice to know we could easily add that down the road.

How much does it all cost?

Well, if you consider it a business expense, it’s really pretty affordable. For the system, you’ll pay probably about what you’d pay for a decent laptop. That means it’s likely to be a four-digit number. The base-level system with only a single modem (we’d recommend Verizon in that case) costs only about half of the price of the super-expandable 4-modem, 8-SIM-card-capable unit that we bought. We like the idea of the future-proofing that it provides. If a new better technology comes out, they can just drop in a new modem. If we decide we want to start providing pay-Wi-Fi for the whole marina or campground wherever we go, it can support that as well.

Given our experience so far, I’m pretty sure we’ll be getting one of these for the Airstream also.

Internet on the Road

Kevin Morris — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 15:47:33 +0000

Lots of people have questions about our on-the-road internet setup. Here's the current state of affairs. (Warning – this gets a little technical and messy. I'm an electronic engineer, so I like that stuff.) There are some tips at the end for simplifying the setup to be easier to use and understand.

First, read our old blog post about getting connected…

Our current setup all comes from 3gstore.com (great selection of stuff, excellent service – been buying from them for years)

Starting on the outside of the trailer, we have a couple of these antennas.

We had the
Airstream dealer mount them and run the wires into the trailer. We used 10'
wires like these.

These wires are available in longer lengths
depending on your mounting location and so forth. 10' was plenty for us. These
cables have an "FME" connector (to connect to inside stuff) on one
end, and an "N" connector (like the outside antenna) on the other
end.

In this situation, I recommend NOT getting the
"Ultra Low Loss" cables. You can't really tell from the pictures on
the site, but those cables are HUGE – about the diameter of a (small) garden
hose. I didn't want to be drilling those gigantic holes in the trailer and I
didn't want to be trying to work with that extremely-thick not-too-flexible
cable. The cables above are just "low loss" not "ultra low
loss". They work just fine.

Those antennas are great for several things:

Boosting campground WiFi
Boosting 3G service
Boosting 4G/LTE service

They work over a broad frequency range so
they're good for all of those applications. However, you can't install any kind
of switch to let one antenna do all of those things, so you'll need to decide
if you want to run 1, 2, or 3 antennas (depending on what you want to boost) or
be swapping antenna leads around as you change modes on the road. I went for 2
antennas – one for WiFi and one for 3G/4G/LTE.

Inside the trailer, we have a PepWave
Surf-on-the-go WiFi router to create our secure, in-the-trailer WiFi network. This
lets all our devices (2 laptops, 2 iPads, 2 iPhones, Mac Mini, Xbox) connect to
the same, secure, private WiFi network all the time. We don't have to go around
changing all our devices every time we are near a different WiFi hotspot. All
our devices can use this to share one 3G/4G USB datacard. Ours is like this
one.

The good things about this router are:

It's small, reliable, and easy to set up.
It supports WiFi as WAN – which means it
can connect to campground WiFi and use that as the internet connection when it
is available. This also provides a firewall that keeps us secure from other
users on the campground WiFi.
It supports an external WiFi antenna. This
gives MUCH stronger signal on campground WiFi than we'd get on our laptops
inside the metal trailer. In our tests this weekend, that translated into
5x-10x faster speeds from campground WiFi and much better reliability.

Weaknesses are:

It doesn't support the kind of protocol
that would let you do file sharing between machines across the local WiFi
network.
It has only one USB port, so you can only
have one 3G/4G card connected at a time. Some other models will connect 2 or 3
devices at a time, and can load-share between them. (However, those other
devices all have some other limitation that disqualified them for me – like no
WiFi as WAN, or requiring 2 or 3 external antennas, or not supporting external
antennas at all.)
The user interface screens give pretty
simple and primitive information. I'd like to see more about my connection –
particularly whether I'm connected to 3G or LTE, for example.

In our setup, one of the external antennas is
connected to the antenna port on the PepWave. That requires an adapter to match
up the incoming antenna cable to the PepWave connector. 3G store will sell you
the right one depending on your setup. This means the PepWave is always using
the outdoor antenna for WiFi.

For data cards, we actually carry 3. Verizon
UML290 LTE/4G/3G, AT&T Sierra Wireless LTE/3G/4G, and Sprint… something. We
carry these because we want to have a shot at a good connection no matter where
we are. Having all three gives us a better chance, and also allows us to spread
our use out over multiple data plans so we don't go over our limit on just one
card. We work online every day from the road, so we use a LOT of data.

That being said, we are planning to drop the
Sprint card. We've been all over the US and the Sprint connection has always
been worse than the other two. More often than not, we can't get a decent
Sprint connection at all. Verizon is clearly the champ in our experience. We've
been all over the US except the Northeast (check our map) and Verizon beats
AT&T pretty consistently in terms of signal strength and availability. Sometimes,
though, it doesn't work at all and we're glad to have AT&T as a backup.

The datacard plugs into the PepWave (or 3G
store may sell you a USB extension cable that lets you put the datacard farther
from the PepWave router for better signal).

So, to recap where we are so far in our
discussion, we've got an external antenna connected to a PepWave router – which
boosts campground WiFi, and we have datacards we can plug into the PepWave router
for when we don't have campground WiFi.

Now, things get tricky, but we could also stop
here. The 3G/4G datacards will work just fine plugged into the PepWave.

But, we want more range and more speed. There
are several ways to get that and they're all a little ugly.

First, you could get another one of those
external antennas and the proper antenna adapter cable for your data card. Plug
the external antenna into your data card (which is plugged into the PepWave)
and you get stronger, better signal and a faster connection.

To take it another level, you can add booster
amplifiers. This part gets very very messy. Here's why:

First, you need to decide what you want to
boost. Sometimes you get LTE/4G service, sometimes you get 3G service. Sometimes
you get older-than-3G service (booooo). Different amplifiers are required for
LTE versus 3G and below. Only one amplifier can be connected to an external
antenna at a time. Only one can be connected to your 3G datacard at a time. So
– if you wanted to boost both 3G and LTE signals, you'll be swapping cables
around a lot – switching the external antenna cable between 3G and LTE amplifiers,
and switching the antenna cable on your datacard between amplifiers.

Making matters worse, most of the antenna
connectors on the datacards are tiny, clunky, and fragile. There's a special
note on the 3G store site warning how easy it is to break the connector on the
Verizon UML290 card. UGH. I'm careful.

Not only are different amplifiers required for
3G vs 4G/LTE, but different amplifiers are required for Verizon LTE and
AT&T LTE. Each amplifier is around $200. Knock yourself out…

http://3gstore.com/product/3580_cellphone-mate-direct_connect_4g_lte_amplifier.html

http://3gstore.com/product/3877_cellphone-mate_att_direct_connect_4g_lte_amplifier.html

http://3gstore.com/product/156_wilson_3-watt_2g_3g_direct_connect_amplifier_811201.html

For 3G (and also cell phone) boosting, there
is another option. Instead of connecting the amplifier to your datacard with a
cable, you can get a signal booster that uses a little indoor antenna that you
put near your data card (or cell phone) to boost the signal. These don't give
as much boost as direct connect, but you're also not futzing around with tiny,
fragile connectors on datacards.

Hopefully, they'll get this sorted out
eventually. For now, we have 3 amplifiers:

An LTE amplifier for Verizon
A 3G-and-below direct-connect amplifier that
will work for Verizon or AT&T on 3G connections (but doesn't help on faster
LTE connections), and
A 3G signal booster to use with our cell
phones to help us get cell service when we're out in the boonies. The 3G signal
booster is actually our old Wifi-in-Motion setup (which has its own little
roof-mounted antenna) so altogether we have 3 antennas on the roof for
3G/4G/LTE/WiFi/Cell phone boosting.

I have to first fire it up and find out what
kind of signal we're going to use:

Verizon LTE: Use the Verizon card connected to
the LTE amplifier. Connect the external antenna to the LTE amplifier.
Verizon 3G: Use the Verizon card connected to
the 3G amplifier. Connect the external antenna to the 3G amplifier
AT&T LTE: Use the AT&T card connected
straight to the external antenna (since I don't have an AT&T LTE amplifier.
AT&T 3G: Use the AT&T card connected
to the 3G amplifier. Connect the external antenna to the 3G amplifier.
Sprint (hah, pretty much never): Use the
Sprint card and the 3G cell phone booster (old WiFi in Motion).
Phone calls: Use the 3G cell phone booster to
extend range.

Advantages: With this setup, we get really
good speed, range, and reliability in a bunch of different places, we have the
ability to get maximum advantage from campground WiFi when it's available, and
we can spread our data usage across several plans.

Disadvantages: We have a spaghetti mess of
cables, amplifiers and boosters in our cabinet, and I'm constantly having to
juggle cables between antennas, amplifiers, and data cards to adapt to our
situation. It gets pretty complicated.

This can be simplified if you only go with one
data card, and/or if you skip the booster amplifier. It can be simplified
further by forgoing the outside antennas and just using the PepWave with the
data cards. In that scenario, you're almost ahead to simply use a MiFi or
similar 3g/4g portable pocket router. The only thing those don't do as well is
the WiFi- as WAN for campground WiFi.

I forgot to show you this new thing I can’t live without

Laura Domela — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:32:12 +0000

Thanks to Tiffani, we now are in the club of people who can see inside this dark cupboard. I bought two of these a while back but only just installed this one yesterday. It's the Dioder LED battery-operated lamp from Ikea ($14.99). It's got a sensor, and when you open the cupboard it goes on for 15 seconds and when you close the cupboard it goes off after 5 seconds. It lights the cupboard all the way to the back, which is awesome.

Hey! Let’s go to Miami! (via New Orleans of course)

Laura Domela — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 11:05:09 +0000

Last night after I picked Kevin up from the airport (he had a quick business trip to San Diego this week) we met up with his mom and her husband for dinner at La Hacienda de los Barrios. We sat outside in the large patio area…it was warm with a slight breeze…there was a guitar player…the food was good…cold margarita…it was just perfect.

We stopped on the way back to the Airstream and got some gas (not at Buc-ee's) and added a touch-free drive-through car was onto the tab. So now the truck is clean (the Airstream is not) and today we're heading to Lafayette, Louisiana, then New Orleans, and then to Miami to hook up with Kevin's brother. Oh. Didn't I tell you? We decided to head to Miami before going home…since it's, well, not on the way at all. (Get ready with those map stickers!) I think we'll be about as far as possible from home at that point.

We'll stay in New Orleans for a few nights and then not sure of the route we'll take to Miami yet. If you have any favorite spots on the way, let us know!

Also, I thought you might like to see the photo I took last night while we were sitting in the car wash. These are our cool lighted cup holders in the new truck. And by "cool" I mean six different colors of cool. Change the color of the cup holder light to suit your mood. An important feature, don't you think?

Stainless Steel Brick Flip Alarm Clock Would Look Good on my Airstream Nightstand

Laura Domela — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:41:19 +0000

Love the simple design of this stainless steel alarm clock by Northern Icon.

I don't love the price though. ($352 at Northern Icon)

Resource Conservation

Laura Domela — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 19:54:57 +0000

We've been asked a few times now if we have any good tips for conserving resources while dry camping or boondocking. Since we seem to be pretty good at it (according to ourselves anyway, and the length of time we've managed to dry camp), we thought we'd do a post about it. Maybe you already know all of these things, or maybe you're just starting out and this will be super helpful. Either way, we thought it would be kinda fun for us to think through all the little things we do to increase our efficiency in the Airstream.

Dry camping on the edge of Lake San Antonio, CA

Basically, there are four categories we think about: water, electricity, holding tank management, and propane, in that order. If we're dry camping or boondocking, fresh water is the first thing to go. If we're in a campground with partial hookups (electricity and water only), then tank management and propane are the only things we have to worry about.

WATER

The two biggest drains on fresh water are washing dishes and taking showers.

Washing Dishes:

We wash our dishes using a bowl with a squirt of soap and a little bit of hot water to start. Wash a bunch of silverware and wait to rinse it until you have a handful. When you rinse, rinse so the water goes mostly into the bowl, and this will increase the amount of soapy water you have to wash with.

**Note: While you run to the water and wait for it to get hot, run that water into something else so you can use it. We have a Sodastream carbonator in the Airstream and so we fill an empty bottle with the "not yet warm" water to use for fizzing/drinking later, or in the reservoir for the espresso maker.

We never leave the water running while doing dishes. Wash a few things, rinse a few things. It takes a little bit to get used to, but you'll get the hang of it.

**Holding Tank Management Note: If we're trying to be extra careful about gray water capacity so that we can shower, we sometimes pour the used dishwater into the toilet/black water tank. Since that tank is much slower to fill up (and it actually helps to have extra water in there) it seems like a good move. Some campgrounds have little drain areas specifically for dumping dishwater…also a good option – stretch your legs, walk your dishwater out to the dishwater dump.

Showers:

We switched out the stock shower head that came with our Airstream with an Oxygenics shower head. It uses quite a bit less water than the original one. Also, don't leave the water running when you shower. Both the stock Airstream shower head and the Oxygenics shower head allow you to cut off the water flow on the shower head. (Note: both of these shower heads trickle in the "off" position…it's supposed to do that and yours is not broken.) Get wet. Soap/shampoo, then rinse. Condition/shave, then rinse again. It's not luxurious, but running out of fresh water or filling up the gray water tank isn't luxurious either. We can both take pretty good showers and increase the gray water tank by only 1/8 or less. To us, it's worth being this careful because it's totally worth it to be able to take a shower while you're camped on the side of a lake somewhere where there ARE no showers. If the campground has showers and they're clean, use them. It'll save a tremendous amount of water and holding tank space.

Brushing Your Teeth:

Don't leave the water running while you brush your teeth. Duh.

Also, we have a couple of these 6 gallon BPA-free water jugs and if we plan to be out a while, we carry those full of fresh water. They're still light enough to be able to lift up to add water to your fresh water tank if you need to.

ELECTRICITY

We replaced all of the stock halogen bulbs that came in our Airstream with LED bulbs. Each halogen bulb was 10w and each LED is 1.2w. Most of the newer Airstreams now come with LEDs…which is nice because that was not a cheap switch for us (31 bulbs, or something like that!) That means you can save 88% of the electricity it takes to run your lights by using LEDs instead of halogens.

Since we spend so much time in our Airstream, we also sometimes watch TV and movies (although many people think it's very uncool to watch TV while "camping", we think of this as our home, and at home, sometimes we watch TV. Whatever.) We installed two very low power 12 volt 22" tv/dvd combo units by Skyworth that we got from www.roadtrucker.com. They use MUCH less electricity than the standard AC-powered flat screens.

Anywhere possible, we use low power 12 volt appliances. (We also turn everything off when we leave for a few hours.) One of the biggest electricity users is actually the heater. Even though the heat comes from propane, the fan uses quite a bit of electricity. Keeping your thermostat low (or off when you're not there) saves electricity as well as propane.

The kinds of appliances to be really careful about are things that make heat: toasters, microwaves, coffee makers, hair dryers, curling/flat irons…all of these things use tons of electricity. If you're boondocking, use them sparingly or not at all. (Particularly for cooking you'll want to use the propane stove and/or your outside grill instead of any electric cooking appliances.)

Pretending to dry camp by not using the hookups (Wouldja lookit all that solar!) at Depoe Bay, OR

Now, we do have a crazy awesome solar system with 400 watts of solar panels on the roof, a 2000 watt inverter and 6 bigass AGM batteries in our trailer, and this has a huge effect on how we think about electricity while we're dry camping or boondocking: we don't think about it much at all. We can run both of our laptops, espresso maker, microwave, 1000w hairdryer, tv/dvd, the Traeger grill, etc. as much as we want, and as long as we have good sun, our batteries never get below about 90% and are back to full by mid-afternoon. (The only thing we can't use when we are dry camping or boondocking is the air conditioning. Obviously, not everyone has this crazy set up, so your mileage will of course vary.

We don't have a generator and with the solar system we have, we don't need one. If you're boondocking much, however, you'll need either (1) a good generator, or (2) a pretty substantial (and more expensive) solar system. (The small solar systems that come as factory options on some Airstreams are really only good for keeping your batteries topped up when you're not using the trailer. They won't supply a significant amount of a typical day's electricity use.)

Dry camping on the edge of the Columbia River at Skamokawa Vista Park.

HOLDING TANK MANAGEMENT

I covered most of this subject in the above categories: (1) don't leave water running when you shower, do dishes, or brush your teeth; (2) try to dump dishwater sometimes in a dishwater dump reservoir or sometimes in the toilet.

Our fresh water tank is 39 gallons. Our gray water tank is 37 gallons, and our black water tank is 39 gallons. So if we manage the tank levels closely along the way, we can add fresh water as needed and stay out for a couple of weeks without having to dump our tanks.

PROPANE

Heater: Keep the heat off if you don't need it during the day, and set it as low as you are comfortable at night when sleeping (use plenty of blankets). If you have the thermostat set high (or even on what you're used to at home) and leave it on all the time, that uses up propane in a hurry.

**Note: When we are hooked up to electricity, we have a small space heater that we use for heat instead of our Airstream heater, saving our propane for when we need it.

Water Heater: The hot water heater really only takes about 10 minutes to heat the water, so we leave ours off most of the time and only turn it on before we're going to use it to do dishes or take a shower, then turn it off again when we're done. Otherwise you are using propane to keep 6 gallons of water hot all night while you sleep and all day while you're out exploring.

Kitchen appliances: The stove, oven, and fridge use very little propane, so we don't worry about those at all. We can probably dry camp a couple of weeks without using up one propane tank (unless we are somewhere really cold and need to run the heat all day.) If your fridge and/or your hot water heater have an electric mode, learn how they work and use them when you're plugged into electricity. This will save more propane for when you're dry camping. However, if you're running on an inverter off your batteries, be sure that your fridge and hot water heater are NOT on electric mode — they'll drain your batteries in a hurry.

Have you got any conservation tips to share with us? Post 'em in the comments section!

(Posted by Laura & Kevin)