Setting up the camper can take as much time as you want. Some folks are happy to roll the camper off the RV dealer lot and head out camping with just the stuff the dealer provided and a quick trip to the grocery store. On the other end of the extreme, my husband takes a LOT of time because he is a fastidious type-A obsessive compulsive organizational freak. Me… not so much, but I do take great pride in having the kitchen and sleeping arrangements set up nicely. Generally speaking, investing upfront time to organize and set up the camper, makes life on the road a whole lot smoother and pleasant.
We have tons of solar installed along with a lot of battery storage, which is really nice. Like most campers we also have a fresh water tank (40 gallons) and both grey water and black water tanks (40 gallons each). And propane (2 x 30 pound tanks) for heat, cooking and one of the methods for operating the refrigerator. Having all that stuff is really nice. But for the obsessive-compulsive-fastidious-type-A husband wants to know, 24 hours a day, what the levels are for each of those items. Lotsa campers will be fine knowing that there is “some” water, and the battery voltage was good yesterday. But it is nice having tools (monitors and apps) to know our energy levels, monitor propane, and make sure we aren’t about to overflow the black tank into the camper, or that we have enough water to wash our filthy bodies after a muddy mountain bike ride.
Some of the nicest and newest campers come with monitoring tools for all of those items listed above, and some can even do it remotely, as long as it has a WiFi or cellular connection. Our Airstream is relatively new in the grand scheme of almost 100 years of Airstreaming, but it’s monitoring abilities were still rather crude. Enter the obsessive-compulsive-type-A-organizational-freak of a husband (not an insult as he will also call himself that). And, while it can be annoying at times, I have to admit the end results are nice. Even with older campers there are lots of add-on options for monitoring and reporting everything from fluid levels to battery voltage to refrigerator temperatures and solar yield. With a good cellular modem most of this information can be viewed remotely and even controlled to a small extent.
A few of the products and monitoring apps we use are listed below:
- LevelMatePRO. An app that is incredibly useful for leveling your trailer. It indicates how level you are on all axis and conveys the information instantly, via Bluetooth, to your mobile device. You think “that’s so overkill, who needs to know that information on your phone”. But it might rank as our very favorite, reasonably-price-simple-to-use App. Why, you ask? Because now, as you enter your idyllic-but-unlevel-boondocking site you so artfully found, you simply turn on your phone and open the LevelMatePRO app. Drive forward or backward until you get a side-to-side level that reasonably good, and then hop out of the car and place your banana-shaped leveling wedges (Anderson or other brand). Then hop back into the car and drive onto the wedges until you are perfectly level. Shazam. Put the tow vehicle in Park and chock the campers tires. Disconnect and use the app to perfectly set the fore-aft level while standing at the tongue jack.
- Mopeka. An app that monitors your propane levels and lets you know when you are running low. It’s kinda finicky, but for those campers whose propane tanks are under covers or hard to access, it’s a nice product. You attach a sending unit to the bottom of your propane tank(s) and pair with the Mopeka app. Pretty simple, but they are very sensitive to placement.
- RV Whisperer. This is a fairly new addition to our electronic smorgasborg. But Matt is a big fan. I think it’s a small business because if you call their tech support, the head honcho actually answers the phone. Basically the RV Whisperer is a wonderful product that links all sorts of sensors to your WiFi system and pipes it up to the internet. They sell many of the sensors but also will communicate with 3rd party products. Like the Mopeka tank sensors (so now you can determine if your fridge or heat still has some juice to keep running while you are grocery shopping, or away from the camper for weeks). Temperature sensors for inside, outside, fridge, freezer. Voltage. Door proximity sensors. All viewable while lying in the camper in bed, or from thousands of miles away while the camper is in storage. Their App is basic but works nicely and provides historical charts if you really want to know whether the eggs in your fridge got too warm. Or it can send alerts to let you know something is out of tolerance. Minor nit-pick is that you can’t view any of the information unless you are connected to the internet. So no internet means no information and you can’t actually see the fridge temp from bed. While it’s nice that it stores information in the cloud, I wish it would allow view access to current results using the LAN connection if there was no internet connection.
- Cat Scales. People are amazed at Plato pulling Aristotle. In fact, there are many, many strong opinions on Airstream Addicts about appropriately sized tow vehicles. Plato is a beast, but pulling Aristotle would not be possible if we didn’t take a few necessary precautions. Weight and balance are key, and the prolific Cat Scale locations you thought only truckers used will allow you to quickly weigh your tow vehicle and camper, isolating axle loads. And yes… there is an App for that! It makes it easier to pay and track the weights and allows you skip going inside to pay and get the weight ticket. Of course that means you lose the opportunity to buy some Twizzle-Stix and beef jerky. If you want the nerdy, detailed information on our hook up, ping us.
- Pepwave. We both work while traveling and having a decent internet connection is very important to us. Sure, we can go a few days completely off-grid, but after that our inner paranoia starts taking over. The Pepwave is a dual-sim-card cellular modem with a roof-mounted antenna (not a Pepwave product, but I can’t remember which one we installed). We have AT&T and Verizon sim cards in the Pepwave and T-Mobile in our phones, so we usually have good coverage in most areas except the most distant forest areas. Pepwave isn’t the only game in town for cellular modems, but if you are thinking about getting one make sure you get one that operates on 12volt power. You definitely don’t want to have to fire up the inverter every time you want WiFi. And one more detail… while our modem is dual-sim, it is single MODEM. Meaning it can only establish ONE connection at a time. Usually that’s okay, and it does have smarts that will fail-over to the other sim card if the first one (carrier) isn’t working. BUT… it can then bounce back and forth not accomplishing much and it takes almost 10 minutes to re-establish a connection with the other sim card. Higher end units (much pricier) have dual (or more) modems which means both cards/carriers are active at the same time. This can ensure a more stable connection and they typically also will allow doubling of bandwidth (smart people must design these things).
- AirForum. This is the site you need to help you with any problems. There is also a listserv that is useful to highlight issues that you may have and how to address. Sign up!
We also have apps related to our solar production and battery storage (Victron products – very nice stuff) as well tire pressure monitoring for the trailer (I think that is critical information). Again, this is Matt’s nerdy territory, so if you want more information, ping us.
Aristotle has become our second home. We spend weeks on end living in it, and my dream is to spend even longer. This means that it should fit our lifestyle and have all the necessities that we need, such as all items you might use at home for cooking, drinking, and living. We remodeled Aristotle to make it more comfortable and usable, but keep in mind that almost all of the RV/trailer dealers/repair places can have some shoddy work. It’s like surgery, there’s nothing that surgery can’t make worse. We tried to make the remodeling process perfect by requesting and PAYING FOR expensive remodeling plans (with measurements). They put the plans together and then promptly did not follow. In short, we had trips delayed and Aristotle had a redo of many mistakes made during the remodel. Just peruse the Airstream Addicts facebook page or AirForums to read about all the problems that result from poor workmanship with new and “fixed” trailers. There is something to be said for doing it yourself (if you have the time and patience) or finding a niche, very small outfit that is willing to do it perfectly.