Let’s face it no mater what you do in life there is some electronic device that is available to enhance your experience and ready to become "My Favorite Electronic device". RVing is no different. Over the years I have come to depend on certain electronic devices, so I thought it would be fun to tell you what they are and why I depend on them or why they are my favorite device. So, without any further fan fair in no particular order, here is my list of my favorite devices.
Equipment
RV GPS: Garmin RV 770 LMT-S – I love this device! The Garmin RV 770 GPS is an easy-to-use GPS with a nice large but not overbearing screen size. Measuring in at 6.95” edge to edge it can display a feature rich screen of information. It sits nicely on my Dash (Actually stuck to my windshield) without getting in the way of my view of the road but is firmly in my view when I need to look at it. The maps and directions have so far proven to be very accurate. I have only found a few places that I could not find routes to. It is all in how you search! Knowing the various names that a place can go by helps a lot in setting up routes. Though this is an older model I would highly recommend it or at least its upgraded line. I believe the next step up is the RV 780 or 85 These are selling on Amazon for around $550. The RV 890 is the latest GPS with a 8” Screen and is going for $700 on Amazon. Having instant road information and a map to your destination is such a game changing driving experience especially in an RV. Two of the nicest features of this GPS is its voice command and smart phone link. The voice command is easy to use and intuitive, and I have found it very handy for hands free use. The smartphone link allows your GPS to access your phone and cellular network to get road advisories in real time. It also will allow the GPS to display call and email information while you are driving. Good or Bad it is handy.
Smart Phone: iPhone 10XS - My Smart phone is my remote office my wife always says to me and she is right. These days smart phones are essential to a connected digital life. Being a systems engineer I need to stay connected to the office and systems that I manage. So, my phone is everything to me as I am sure yours is to you. Everything is on that phone of mine including the entertainment system for the RV. Yes, Once I am in my seat I plugin my phone into the RV’s entertainment system and viola we have music, or pod casts. Finally, my phone is my backup GPS just in case the Garmin fails, but that has yet to happen.
Dash Cam: Vantrue N2 Pro – This device is here for two-fold. One I like to record the adventure from the driver seat, and this dash cam allows me to not only record the road but inside the vehicle as well. So I get a full recording of the trip as it happens. You know it’s about the journey not the destination. This Camera is helping me build video to play with in my budding videographer hobby and having both inside and outside video is awesome. It works with a 256GB micro-SD card, but they must be Samsung EVO cards. They are a bit pricy, but I have found them to be good quality and they last a good day of driving.
Secondly the Camera is for security. There are so many shall we say aggressive or clueless drivers on the roads. Driving an RV seems to put you in the path of these drivers fairly frequently and sometimes when those paths cross accidents happen. RV’s are expensive to fix when damaged, so if you can prove your point with video all the better.
Backup Camera: Got Lucky Built in – Yes, a backup camera should be considered an essential part of your RV. If your RV does not come with a backup camera system, then you should really consider purchasing one. Backup Cameras just make parking your RV so much easier than the tried, true and tested yelling and hand waving technique. They are reasonably priced these days ranging rom $100 up to $600. Trust me if you have not used a backup camera before then you will just love this addition. In my old RV I installed an after-market backup camera and boy did it make a difference. It was a Hopkins setup with just a 3.5” colour screen. Boy did I think that was special! In the new RV I have a 9” inch colour screen and boy do I think that is special! What a big difference in Quality, clarity, and depth of sight. Though I still get Lorraine out to guide me, I can see her clearly in the camera, so I do not have to depend on hearing her scream instead.
EMS: Surge Guard Model 34930– This is purely protection for your RV. IF you’re going to plug your RV into an external or shore power source you need an EMS (Electrical Management System). An EMS will protect your RV from bad power, surges, brownouts, and polarity issues and shorts. This protection will and can save your RV’s Electrical system and all the devices plugged in to the RV’s grid. It’s not cheap starting around $450 but not having one and plugging in your RV is like playing Russian Roulette. You may not get hit this time or the next, but somewhere your RV will suffer a power problem. The EMS will save you, as it will only turn on the power to your RV once it has checked the incoming power for a variety of faults. If all is clear it will turn on and allow power to flow from the pedestal to your RV. Mine has saved me three times so far. Twice at the campground and once at home. Consider this purchase an insurance policy for your RV’s power grid.
Cell Booster: Weboost RV 4G X - As with the iPhone being connected when you’re in the digital world is important, even when you’re out camping. At least it is for me. Being on call 24x7 means I have to be connected. That can be difficult when you are out camping in the back country miles from a cell tower. That is where the Weboost RV 4g X signal booster comes in to play. This booster will take a one bar signal and turn it into a three or four bar signal, thereby giving you the bandwidth, you need to work or connect remotely. The big thing to remember here is that the booster must have some sort of a signal, if there is no signal there is nothing to boost. It is not a transceiver per say. The good thing though is that most campgrounds we have gone to even the back country ones, I usually can pick up a signal to boost; though there have been those few where I could not get a signal. Once the booster is setup (the hardest thig to do is hoist the antenna) then I can connect my MIFI device to the booster and broadcast Wi-Fi all over the RV and our campsite. The system works well and allows me to work in the RV or out at the picnic table. Cool eh? Hint: If you upgrade the antenna to a directional yagi antenna then you can increase the range you can go from a cell tower.
TPMS: TST 507 TPMS – A TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitor System) is another piece of safety equipment that you should not travel without. It is so important to know the status of your tires while driving a big rig or even a little rig. Tire blowouts are a major cause of accidents and if you survive the blowout without causing a major accident or getting hurt, then you will have to deal with the after math of the damage a blowout will cause to your RV. Since RV’s are typically made of Fiberglas or wood /aluminum a tire blow out can cause catastrophic and expensive damage to an RV’s sidewall or undercarriage. Especially if you are driving at freeway speeds. A TPMS was one of the first pieces of gadgetry I bought when we got our current RV. Lorraine thought it was an expensive toy. (It was expensive) But on our first trip in the RV it paid for itself by alerting us to a rear inside tire losing pressure as we travelled down the Highway at a 100km/hr. The TPMS gave me enough time to pull the rig over in a safe place before the tire went flat and got torn apart. If I had not had the TPMS this incident would have cost me thousands of dollars in damage and a lost camping trip. In the end a three hour wait for a tire guy and we were on our way again. This is another insurance policy for your RV.
Brake Controller: Tekonsha P3 - Having a 32’ Class C means that we are not always as nimble as we would like to be. Traveling around a busy city in our RV can be hair raising especially when towing. So to try and mitigate having to move and travel around in our RV we pull a car or Towed (Toad) vehicle behind us. When I first started towing a car, I chose the doily route instead of the 4-down route, mainly due to expense. The dolly was half the cost of setting up for 4 down towing. This meant that I had to install a brake controller for the dolly. Now again here you have choices, some cheap and some not so cheap; but I am a firm believer in that you get what you pay for. There is a time to go cheap and there is a time to pay up. This is a time to pay up. The Tekonsha P3 brake controller is a fully digital brake controller for around $250. I have been impressed with how easy it is to program, how communicative it is about the status of the trailer, and it brakes the dolly very evenly. Once setup, it is piece of mind knowing that when I brake, the dolly 32’ behind Me is also breaking without skidding or jack-knifing.
Weather Station: AcuRite- Lets face it its’ nice to be able to wake up put on your house coat and see what the weather is doing before you venture outside with the dogs. The AcuRite weather station along with the window, allow me to do just that. This inexpensive weather station comes with three sensors to place around your rig so you can keep tabs on temperatures in places like your Wet Bay, or basement, or battery compartment. I found its ability to predict the weather is fairly accurate within a 24hr period. The three temp and humidity sensors are really helpful in keeping tabs on various spots in my RV. This helps when camping in colder temperatures. I like the full 8”colour screen and it makes a nice addition to our RV wall.
Now I should preface that all the above equipment is now several years old, and though you will not be able to find these particular models anymore, but you can look for their upgraded models. When we first bought our Class C (Jambo), these were the first electronic gadgets I bought for the RV. In some ways I would consider them critical to the operation of any RV, and therefore should be put on the priority list for purchase. These devices will help to make your RV safer and your experience driving it around or sitting in the park more enjoyable. Don’t you just love technology!?
Honorable mention: - Boondocking game changer
Battery monitor and Solar System: Now this was certainly not the first thing I did to the RV, but it was a close second. I spent a better part of a year researching and looking at and pricing equipment for this upgrade. What I found was that you can spend a lot on this equipment but if you had an idea of what could be done and how to mix and match, you could get a decent system for a reasonable price. In the end I decided on using the Bogart Battery monitor and solar controller from Bogart Engineering. Together these electronic devices help to not only monitor your batteries better than the standard idiot lights in an RV, but they also help to control the charge that your batteries receive. The Solar controller is a PWM not an MPT controller, but I found very little difference in performance especially at the loads I was putting the controller under. Besides the solar controller and the battery monitor were specifically designed to work together, and they do perfectly! The battery monitor and solar controller along with the 500amp shunt, 500amp bus bar, and cables needed to complete the installation could be found on Ebay and Amazon when I purchased the items. Bogarts site has a list of Canadian resellers too.
Complete Bogart battery monitoring kit
The Control panel
The solar controller
When it came to the solar panels, again there is a lot of choice here and the costs can get pretty expensive. You need to know how much wattage you want from a panel or array. Also, it helps to know where you are going to store them; will they be mounted to the roof, or will it be portable? I chose to go portable instead of going through the hassle of drilling holes in my roof. Besides When you are parking your rig you typically park it in some sort of shade, so the panels do not work so good in the shade. So, it made sense to have a portable array that could be moved around with the sun for maximum effect. For me I did not have a lot of storage space to allocate to this solar array. So, I really needed to get creative. I knew I wanted at least 200-watts of charging capability, and an ability to upgrade later on. My panels needed to be slim and somewhat flexible to be able to fit in the designated compartment. I looked at aluminum framed panels, but they were too big, bulky, and heavy. I stumbled upon these thin and flexible, waterproof panels from Dokio, sold on Amazon. They came in a 200-and 300-watt panel array. These turned out to be perfect for my requirements and the price was reasonable and the quality comparable. I ended up buying the 200-watt array for just over $300 and then built a custom panel rack to hold them in place at the campground for around $100. When I had finished, I had a reasonably priced Battery management and solar charging system that exceeded my expectations when put to the test. On a sunny day, this system will produce around 13amps of power, and takes around 6hrs to top up my batteries by over 20%. This was a game changer for charging batteries without the noise of a generator. Somewhere down the road I will upgrade the solar array to the 300-watt version.
See: Bogart Solar & battery monitor install
Cost: All Bogart parts: Monitor / shunt / solar controller - $500(US)
Solar panels: - $320(CAN)
Well, that’s it my list of favorite electronic devices. All of these devices have made my life in and out of the RV and at the campground a much more enjoyable experience, and in the end is that not what we are all trying to achieve? Campground and RV nirvana. Well, these devices will take you one step closer to that goal.
Happy Trails,
The Glampurs