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Just a few modifications I added to our new RV.
Took the advice and installed the Oxygenics Showerhead
Added a wireless router that will allow us to have our own network and connect to the campsite network. Also added a Roku that connects to the RV wireless router. We use the Roku to watch Netflix and other online content.
OBDLink MX to monitor the engine, gas millage etc. This is the Bluetooth version
Torque monitoring application on my HP Slate 7 tablet for the OBDLink MX
LED light bulb replacement for the shower – bought on Amazon
LED Lights throughout the coach
We love our Oxygenix showerhead and certainly gives more perceived “water pressure”. Only thing I don’t like is the cold little blast you still get after taking it off of “pause” when shampooing.
I would really like to know how you like your wireless router and your new LED lights. We contemplated starting to switch ours out as well but wonder what the difference is in harshness and which ones to get.
I like that OBDLink MX. That’s pretty cool stuff. We have a WiFi amp/router also, but find most of the campgrounds WiFi is so overloaded it rarely works that well. I think many people are using Netflix now and the campgrounds can’t afford the bandwidth, so they just throttle everyone to very low speeds.
Reason for the router is that I only have to connect it to the camp site vs. every device I want to use wireless. This way I can setup all the devices to connect to my wireless once, from now on all I need to do is get the router connected to the camp site wireless and everything get’s connected.
I suspect that most camp sites will have poor wireless and I will also be bringing movies that I can stream to my Roku via Plex. I digitized all my movies (1200+), Anime (200+ shows) and TV shows (200+ shows) on to a network server. At home we can stream any of them to any TV, laptop, phone, tablet etc that resides on my network. I will be building a smaller version with a few synced shows with my laptop and USB hard drive.
The LED lights come in different temps (higher # you get a white cool color, lower number you get a warmer yellow color) we like the white cool color. I also noticed when I tested the old vs new bulbs the old bulbs got hot fast. LED’s not at all. I bought the COOL White (6500~7000k) for the coach and 4000-4500K Natural White for the shower.
Thanks for the info on the colors for the LED’s! One of the problems we’ve had with them is the harsh brightness. I will look for the warmer color for the living area.
BobLet me see if I got this right. My laptop, the wifes laptop, both our tablets are set up to a router in rv, then I go to a site then hook the router to the campsites Internet? Now u mention streaming. Are u streaming movies to ur computer to watch at a later time? If so how are u doing that?
Ray, I would LOVE to get my movies digitized, but holy crap, it takes so long!!! 😀
How big is the network server with all those movies on it? I have a 2TB drive I could use….
James- Yes that is how my router setup will work. All devices in my coach would connect to my router, I would log into my router and have it connect to the camp site wireless. As for streaming, I have software called Plex that has a server/streamer component and a client component. The server software resides on my NAS server (can be on a laptop or any PC – just need enough CPU power to transcode movies if needed). I will be using a laptop with the server software and a 3TB usb drive will store the movies. Once the laptop scans and creates the database for the movies on the laptop it will pull down the artwork, descriptions, titles etc to the laptop. once that is done my Roku has a Plex client that will connect to the laptop(server/streamer) and show me my selection just like the Netflix client does.
Norma- yes it does take a long time, i would do a few at a time here and there. I would rip the dvds to my computer and add them to the handbrake queue for processing. once i had enough ripped dvds I would tell Handbrake to process the queue (usually at night while I was sleeping). i would check the movies to make sure they are good quality then copy then to my NAS. You can use a laptop, desktop as the server or a NAS – network attached storage (basically a server that is specifically designed for storing files). You can attach a usb drive to he laptop or desktop as your storage. I chose to get a Thecus N7510 NAS that can take 7 x hard drives. I have 22 TB of storage with 10 TB worth of movies, TV shoes, Anime, and music. I chose my NAS because they have a Plex server/streamer package for it. This way i don’t have to have a separate storage and Plex server, it’s all in one tucked away in my closet
Plex is a free software package and they offer a lifetime membership that has added features like being able to stream your own collection from anywhere in the world that you can get connect to the internet. I can watch my movies on my phone, laptop, tablet etc from anywhere as long as I can get online.
At first I thought you were our Ray! You both are very tech savvy! Wish I could beam you over! :yahoo: welcome by the way!
That’s what I’ve been trying to convince Dewey of. I need my internet and he just wanted to do WiFi I know I’ve read you have Verizon. What server do you use for internet? Oh tech wizard. B-)
If your cell phone has the HotSpot capabilities you could have your coach wireless router connect to that while all your devices connect to the coach wireless router. I setup the wireless router in my coach so i wouldn’t have to reconfigure each and every device I wanted to get on a camp site’s wireless at every camp site I go to. only have to worry about the router. Depending on how this weekends trip goes and the wireless connectivity I can get, I might change my cell phone plan to allow HotSpot capabilities and only worry about cell coverage.
I do need to add an external onmidirectional antenna to the my setup at some point. Probably going to attach it to the retractable HD antenna that’s on the roof.
Norma- for the most part the movies are 720P, Anime and TV 420P
Really depends on the source (Blueray or DVD). I have some movies that are in 1080P like Avatar and the recent Star Trek movies. So it’s very subjective as to the quality I want since I have a lot of space to work with. Another cool feature of Plex is that I can sync movies to my phone, laptop or tablets for viewing even though I am not connected to my home system. That way when I travel I always have something to watch.
Here is a site for Handbrake settings.
Here is an article on How to put your DVD library in the cloud
I’ve used Handbrake and love it. There really isn’t any reason to do cloud-based stuff for me because I’ll be fulltiming sometime next month. There will be no S&B closet to put a huge farm in! 🙂
BUT, it’d be nice to have everything networked all over the RV and outside too. I’m not sure I’ll have bandwidth to watch what I want when boondocking and like you and others have mentioned not enough when hooked up either, so putting stuff on the server seems the way to go to me. Probably going to invest in a few more drives and I’ll look into that Thecus setup. I have a spare closet onboard I could fill up. 🙂
Also, I already have the Roku and the router.
I intend to get Millenicom when it comes time to cut the string, because I will HAVE to have internet to do my job. They only give you around 20 gigs, which sounds like alot until you’re streaming Netflix…lol…
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