But because the remodel has involved us permanently pulling our propane powered range / oven, we’ve been [...]]]> We are deep in the midst of a kitchen remodel this week, and we’ve been posting progress photos on our Facebook page as we go. We’ll do a post with better photos of the completed project later.

But because the remodel has involved us permanently pulling our propane powered range / oven, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about our goal of going propane free – and specifically, how we’ll cook.

We haven’t really written much about our propane free goal, because frankly, we’re not necessarily advocating the choice. We think it’ll be the right choice for us, but we have some specific circumstances that most folks won’t ever have to contemplate.

For most RV setups, propane when done right is likely still a good default choice, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a RV without it already installed. Propane is a very dense energy source, it’s readily available, affordable, portable and fairly efficient. It is undeniably a great way to provide for basic household functions like hot water, heating, cooking and refrigeration while boondocking.

So why are we ripping out all of our propane appliances and standardizing on electric & diesel? It’s a multipart answer.

Influence #1: Safety

Despite its convenience, propane has its share of risks. There’s a reason there are codes around it, requirements for proper ventilation, rules around tank placement, and leak detectors. When things go wrong with propane, it’s a very bad day.

Our bus conversion was done back in the late 80s – and either the codes weren’t what they are today, or our converter ignored many of the basic guidelines, as is actually quite common in non-professional conversions done by hobbyists. The biggest oversite was placing a 50 gallon propane tank in a poorly vented bay with no separation other than physical distance between the propane and an electrical panel.

This is a no-no that someday might result in a big kablooey.

So we started off our bus ownership knowing that if we wanted to keep our propane systems, we either needed to find a way to isolate the tank and properly ventilate it, or re-locate the propane tank to another bay. Either way, it would be a big project.

Removing the 50g Propane Tank

To make things immediately safer, we removed the huge 50 gallon tank, and replumbed our remaining propane appliances to a small 20 lb tank in a properly vented bay. This system is workable for now, but not an ideal long term solution.  A 20 lb tank is not enough to rely on for any length of time, and there’s not room for more without lots of modifications.

Influence #2: Old Appliances

And, as all of the propane appliances were 20+ years old.. we knew that we would need to be replacing or refurbishing every appliance relatively soon anyway. And we knew from the beginning that every single one of the appliances that came with our bus had problems.

• Our fridge works on electric, but is finicky about lighting on propane. It also doesn’t currently have a working thermostat – meaning that if we leave it unattended for a weekend, the entire fridge begins to turn into a freezer.
• The furnace that came with our bus looked as if it had never even been used, but though the blower worked the ignition during our tests would never engage. We’re pretty sure a $15 part and a few hours grunt work would have solved the problem, but since the furnace was located under the dinette we were ripping out to put in our desks, a repair didn’t make sense since we were already needing to find another heating solution.
• The hot water heater needed some work to come back to life, and it did – but the tank sat partially filled for 15 years and has seen much better days. We know it’s living on borrowed time.
• The bus’s stovetop just needed some cleaning to get it to light, but the oven (which looks like it has never been cooked in!) burner has resisted all attempts at lighting. It probably just needs a part replaced, but it’s primarily been a storage cabinet for us.

Decision Point 1:  Energy Source Simplicity

In our past RV setups, the choice to use propane was an easy one. We were designing for primarily off-grid boondocking, and we also just didn’t have the physical space for hefty battery banks or for alternative energy sources like solar panels. Going all-electric just wasn’t an option – even with solar we still needed propane for some of the heavy lifting.

With the bus, we have a lot more space to play with, and that gives us many more options.

We’re designing our bus to be flexible & comfortable for a variety of situations – from boondocking to RV Parks.

One of the reasons we were ready to move to a larger unit than our Oliver was that we were finding ourselves staying in campgrounds and RV Parks more often. As much as we like being out in the boonies, we also like being close to friends, family, professional networking, attending conferences, etc. The bus makes this so much more comfortable.

Since we anticipate having access to shore-power far more often than we were used to and we wanted to retain ability to be off-grid via solar and large batteries… it just didn’t make sense to us to try to optimize for propane too.

We also already have another fuel source onboard – diesel. We have a 140 gallon tank of it that fuels our bus and our generator. Why not rely on that, instead of an independent propane system?

Decision Point 2: Newer technology

Propane is a tried and true technology. There haven’t been many recent advancements with it, and we don’t see many coming down the line.

But alternative electric energy is another ball game, and is much more our technomadic style. Solar keeps getting better and better. Battery technology is finally advancing. And as we were already investing in things like Lithium Ion batteries and researching the latest solar tech for our other electric needs – it is appealing for us to look towards optimizing all of our appliances to match.

There are electric options for most things that are traditionally propane powered in a RV. In fact, most propane appliances are dual mode – supporting both electric and propane. But rarely are propane appliances at all energy efficient on electric – just take a look at a dual or tri-way absorption fridge. It’ll drain a battery in no time flat if you turn off the propane while not plugged in. But there ARE options for electric-only compressor fridges for RVs and boats that are quite efficient.

Decision Point 3: Our Cooking Style

But what about another critical component of living – cooking? If we got rid of our stovetop and oven, how would we cook?

Spend a summer in the 120+ degree heat of Arizona with just a propane cooking solution, and you’ll understand why a flame sucks inside a tin can. It’s already fricken hot out and air conditioning is struggling to keep it even reasonably tolerable. Turn a stovetop on to heat up a meal, and in seconds flat you’ve lost the battle.

The day our induction cooktop arrived, was a ray of sanity. It’s so fast and easy, and it doesn’t heat up the space around you – just the pan & food inside it. And pretty darn power efficient (at a medium setting, draws 70 amps). Sure, it uses power… but it doesn’t need it for very long since it is very targeted. Boiling water takes less than 5 minutes.

Aside from that, we don’t bake much at all.. we haven’t had an oven in years. Having a microwave is a new thing for us, and something we only use sparingly or when electricity is abundant. We figure we’ll eventually replace that with a convection oven combo so we can bake in small servings on occasion too.

Not to make this a discussion about diet choices (a topic we generally avoid here), our household is gluten free and mostly vegetarian ….  we’re simply not doing things like thawing chickens and baking pies. Most of our food prep is either stovetop, grilled, blended or raw. As a result, we use a lot of small kitchen appliances for our cooking.

A big oven is just not our style. Since we’re using it now primarily to hold our portable induction cooktop and rice maker, we might as well optimize the storage space.

So what’s the plan?

We removed the furnace when we installed the new floor way back when we first got the bus, and now the stove / oven has been removed too. We still have the fridge to replace (with probably a Nova Kool), and then the hot water system.

The fridge and cooking will be electric powered (aside from occasional outside grilling with independent propane bottles).

To power our electrical system, we’ve already installed a 500 ah Lithium Ion battery bank, and anticipate we’ll double that sometime this year. We also intend to maximize the amount of solar we can get on the roof. We’ll obviously be looking to make every electric component in the bus as energy efficient as possible – such as converting most our primary lighting to LED.  We hope to tackle the solar project this year, and research is well underway.

Our intentions is to create an electric solution, like our past RVs, such that the solar is enough to keep up on most days … and we hope to only rely on our generator occasionally.

Hot water and heating will eventually be addressed by installing a diesel burner hydronics system, which will also serve to pre-heat our engine on chilly days. That’s a project we aim to tackle before winter rolls around again, as we’re currently getting by with just an electric space heater. It’s working fine for our Florida winter this year, but we don’t want to plan our winters around having to stay south.

We’re making progress towards our goal!

I explained the chief downsides of Lead Acid batteries, the tried and true battery technology that powers essentially every RV electrical system made.

And in part two, I explained about the advantages Lithium Ion batteries, the latest and greatest battery technology to come along.

It is a depressingly long list.

As you will soon see, on paper lithium ion batteries seem to be superior in almost [...]]]> In the first post of this series, I explained the chief downsides of lead acid batteries, the type found powering the house bank in 99.999% of all RV’s you have ever seen.

It is a depressingly long list.

As you will soon see, on paper lithium ion batteries seem to be superior in almost every possible way – as if Zeus himself had climbed down from Olympus and handed the world the perfect battery. Or maybe it wasn’t Zeus, but that annoying pink Energizer Bunny, bringing the gift of divine electrons pulsing to the rhythm of his eternal drum.

To understand the promise and potential of lithium ion batteries for RV use, it helps to first understand the myriad of ways that lithium ion batteries differ from lead acid.

The Lithium Difference

Lead acid batteries are made from (not surprisingly) a mixture of lead plates and sulfuric acid. This was the first type of rechargeable battery, invented way back in 1859.

Lithium ion batteries on the other hand are a much newer invention, and have only been around in a commercially viable form since the 1980′s.

Lithium technology has become well proven and understood for powering small electronics like laptops or cordless tools, and has become increasingly common in these applications – edging out the older NiCad (Nickel-Cadmium) rechargeable battery chemistry due to lithium’s many advantages.

But as you might recall from the many news stories a few years ago around defective laptop batteries bursting into flame – lithium ion batteries also earned a reputation for catching fire in a very dramatic fashion. The commonly used lithium ion battery formulation had been Lithium-Cobalt-Oxide (LiCoO2), and this battery chemistry is prone to thermal runaway if the battery is ever accidentally overcharged. This could lead to the battery setting itself on fire – and a lithium fire burns hot and fast.

Just imagine how nasty the fire would be if it was a large battery burning, and not just a small laptop battery!

100 amp hour LiFePO4 Packs

This is one of the reasons that up until recently, lithium was rarely used to create large battery banks.

But in 1996 a new formula for mixing lithium ion batteries was developed – Lithium Iron Phosphate. Known as LiFePO4 or LFP, these batteries have a slightly lower energy density but are intrinsically non-combustable, and thus vastly safer than Lithium-Cobalt-Oxide.

Now that large scale LFP batteries are starting to be massed produced (primarily targeting the electric vehicle market), we are now on the cusp of LFP batteries becoming practical for RV use!

And once you consider the advantages, LFP batteries becomes exceedingly tempting.

Consider…

The Amazing Advantages of Lithium Ion Batteries

To understand just how substantial these advantages are, be sure to read the parallel list about the downsides of lead acid batteries…

Superior “Useable” Capacity

Unlike with lead acid batteries, it is considered practical to regularly use 80% or more of the rated capacity of a lithium battery bank, and occasionally more. Consider a 100 amp hour battery – if it was lead acid you would be wise to use just 30 to 50 amp hours of juice, but with lithium you could tap into 80 amp hours or more.

Extended Cycle Life

Laboratory results indicate that you could expect to see 2,000 to 5,000 cycles out of a well cared for LiFePO4 battery bank, which means that a lithium ion battery bank has the potential to likely outlast your RV!  These are theoretical results – we are looking forward to seeing how lithiums do in reality for RV use, as the energy uses of a home-on-wheels is not normal laboratory conditions, nor at all similar to that of an electric vehicle (which is where LFP is primarily used right now).

In contrast, even the best deep cycle lead acid batteries are typically only good for 500-1000 cycles.

Fast & Efficient Charging

LiFePO4 batteries can be “fast” charged to 100% of capacity. Unlike with lead acid, there is no need for an absorption phase to get the final 20% stored. This can save you hours of generator run time. And, if your charger is powerful enough, lithium batteries can also be charged insanely fast. If you can provide enough charging amps – you can actually fully charge a lithium ion battery just 20 minutes!

But even if you don’t manage to fully top off to 100%, no worries – unlike with lead acid, a failure to regularly fully charge LFP batteries does not damage the batteries.

Lithium Battery Charging Curve - From Elite Power Solutions

This give you lots of flexibility to tap into energy sources whenever you can get them without worrying about needing to do a full charge regularly.  Several partly cloudy days with your solar system? No problem that you can’t top off before the sun goes down, as long as you’re keeping on top of your needs.  Only 30 minutes left until quiet time at the primitive campground? No worries – with lithium, you can charge up what you can and not fret about leaving your battery bank perpetually undercharged!

Very Little Wasted Energy

Lead acid batteries are less efficient at storing power than lithium ion batteries. Lithium batteries charge at nearly 100% efficiency, compared to the 85% efficiency of most lead acid batteries.

This can be especially important when charging via solar, when you are trying to squeeze as much efficiency out of every amp as possible before the sun goes down or gets covered up by clouds. Theoretically, with lithium nearly every drop of sun you’re able to collect goes into your batteries.  With limited roof & storage space on RVs for panels, this become very important in optimizing every square inch of wattage you’re able to mount.

Especially combined with the fast charging ability, this also translates to less fuel costs when running your generator to charge the batteries.

Fewer Placement Issues

LiFePO4 batteries do not need to be stored upright, or in a vented battery compartment. They can also fairly easily be assembled into odd shapes – an advantage if you are trying to squeeze as much power as possible into a small compartment. This is especially useful if you have an existing battery bay that is limited in size, but you want or need more capacity than lead acid is currently able to provide.

Little Maintenance Requirements

Theoretically, lithium batteries should be fairly maintenance free. An occasional “balancing” process to make sure all the cells in a battery bank are equally charged may be called for, but a well designed energy management system should (ideally) do this automatically.

But to be fair, while we are in the experimental phase with our own lithium battery system, they are far from maintenance free as we endeavor to tweak the system. Until we perfect our setup, we are watching our batteries vigilantly.Remember, this is newer technology and barely even tested for RV use. Inverters and chargers do not yet come standard with profiles for LFP. The battery distributors and manufacturers are still tweaking the energy management systems that protects the batteries too. This is new and evolving tech, and not quite yet ready to be “plug and go”.

AGMs have an advantage here, just set your charger to “AGM Mode” and you are good to go.

Peukert’s Losses & Voltage Sag Virtually Non Existant

The discharge curve of lithium batteries (especially relative to lead acid) is essentially flat – meaning that a 20% charged battery will be providing nearly the same output voltage as an 80% charged battery. This prevents any issues caused by the “voltage sag” common to lead acid as they discharge, but does mean that any battery monitor or generator auto-start dependent upon voltage levels will likely not work well at all when monitoring a lithium bank.

On the flip side, once lithium batteries are fully discharged, their voltage takes a nose-dive quickly – which is why tweaking your energy management systems to protect the batteries to absolutely never let this happen is vitally important.  Completely discharging a lithium ion bank, even once, can render your entire pack permanently dead.

Lithium Discharge Curve - Minimal Sag & Peukert's Losses (from Elite Power Solutions)

Another huge advantage of lithium batteries is that Peukert’s losses are essentially non-existant. This means that LiFePO4 batteries can deliver their full rated capacity, even at high currents. Whereas lead acid can see as much as a 40% loss of capacity at high loads.  In practice, this means that LFP battery banks are very well suited to powering high current loads like an air conditioner, a microwave or an induction cooktop.

Size & Weight Advantages 

Our 500 Amp Hour Lithium Bank - Weighing Just 141lbs!

And finally, the reason why most folks are intrigued by lithium… LFP batteries are much smaller & lighter!!!

The 12-volt 100 Amp Hour LiFePO4 battery packs we started with when building our system are 4.9″ x 11.0″ x 9.2″, and weigh just 28.2 lbs. That works out to be 0.282 lbs per amp hour of capacity.

A Trojan 8D-AGM 230 amp hour battery on the other hand weighs 167lbs, which works out to be .726 lbs per amp hour – which is about 2.5 times heavier.

And when you take “usable” capacity into account, the weight advantage of lithium is even more dramatic. Remember, that 100 amp hours of lithium will deliver 80 amp hours, no matter the discharge rate, without worry. 230 amp hours of AGM can only deliver 70- 115 amp hours, depending on the discharge rate.

So not only is lithium smaller and lighter than AGM per amp hour, you need significantly less stored amps to get the same usable capacity.

To simplify what we’ve covered so far about Lithium Ion vs. Lead Acid AGMs, here’s this handy chart we created:

Lithium Ion vs Lead Acid AGM Batteries

As you’ve seen, the theoretical advantages of LiFePO4 batteries for RV use are exceedingly compelling, particularly if you boondock a lot, use solar and/or want to minimize generator use. But we all should remember about the difference between theory and practice…

In theory, there is no difference.

In practice – using LiFePO4 for RV house batteries remains new and uncharted waters.

And that brings us to the biggest downsides of lithium batteries – the cost and the novelty.

These uncharted waters don’t have a low cost of entry, particularly when compared to the Walmart specials on generic flooded lead acid batteries. And there are not a lot of resources you can turn to for tech support since the technology is so new. Most inverter / charger makers don’t even officially support lithium batteries yet at all. So those opting to try lithium for RV use are pioneers, and need to educate themselves to fully understand what they are dealing with.

But…

If you consider the lifetime cost, and the fact that lithium batteries should (theoretically) far outlast even the best high-end AGM’s, suddenly the math starts to look compelling.

I’ll dive into explaining how we weighed the lifetime costs vs the benefits, and will give the details on the costs and specifics of our new system in my next lithium post. Stay tuned!

By the way, we should note – we are not trying to motivate anyone to follow us on this path. We are not selling these batteries, we are not affiliates with any battery dealer, we paid for all our components and nor do we have any financial stake in the technology beyond our own systems.  We are simply full time RVing technomads who are designing our own cutting edge home & office on wheels, and are sharing our research & project. Of course we’d love to have more folks out there pioneering and helping us take the arrows in our backs.  Right now, we do not consider this technology ready for the mainstream, and those contemplating this technology need to be a bit savvy with electrical and battery technology. 

Other Posts In this Series:

Promise of Lithium #1: Lead Acid Battery Downsides
Promise of Lithium #3: Lithium RV Battery System Cost Analysis
All our Lithium Ion Battery Posts 

]]> http://www.technomadia.com/2011/10/lithium-update-2-the-promise-of-lithium-rv-batteries/feed/ 20 http://www.technomadia.com/2011/10/lithium-update-lead-acid-downsides/ http://www.technomadia.com/2011/10/lithium-update-lead-acid-downsides/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:57:23 +0000 Chris Dunphy http://www.technomadia.com/?p=6038 We’ve made a few teaser posts showing off our new lithium ion battery bank, but we’ve yet to properly explain why on earth we decided to venture off into such uncharted electrical territory instead of installing a more traditional flooded lead acid or AGM battery bank.

This post is the start of [...]]]> We’ve made a few teaser posts showing off our new lithium ion battery bank, but we’ve yet to properly explain why on earth we decided to venture off into such uncharted electrical territory instead of installing a more traditional flooded lead acid or AGM battery bank.

This post is the start of a series explaining why we’ve gone down this path, and will focus on the chief downsides of the current default options most RV’ers choose. Which are:

Flooded Lead Acid – These are the most common batteries that you see in most stores, and are typically used for everything from “starter” (high current) batteries for engines to “deep cycle” (multiple deep discharges) powering golf carts and RV house systems. Flooded lead acid batteries are the cheapest per amp hour, but also have the most drawbacks.

AGM – Absorbed Glass Matt (and the similar Gel Cell) batteries are still chemically lead acid batteries, but the liquid acid has either been “gelled” or fully absorbed into a glass matt, giving them several advantages for RVers and boaters. They also typically cost quite a bit more.

What’s the upside of Lead Acid batteries?

Lead acid chemistry batteries have been around since the dawn of the electric age, they are proven, and (when treated properly) extremely reliable. AGM variants in particular are well suited to RV use, with none of the flooded battery maintenance requirements, and somewhat less of the risks of damage from overcharging.

The best known brands like Lifeline and Trojan have a sterling reputation and rock solid warranties and support networks too.

In our opinion, AGM’s are a smart and solid choice for any RV. We went this route on our little Oliver Travel Trailer (designing in two 6 volt Lifeline AGM’s to create a 220 amp hour system), and we seriously considered building a massive 1300 amp hour AGM bank into our bus.

But yet, when we dived into researching the advantages of lithium and the downsides of lead acid batteries, the price premium for lithium batteries suddenly started to seem worthwhile. After much consideration, we decided that we were willing to risk the investment in an unproven technology for RV applications.

And besides… we like a new challenge and playing with bleeding edge technology!

The downsides of Lead Acid batteries

To understand why lithium batteries show such promise for an RV house battery bank, it first helps to understand all the ways that traditional lead acid batteries fall short.

Limited “Useable” Capacity

It is typically considered wise to use just 30% – 50% of the rated capacity of typical lead acid “Deep Cycle” batteries. This means that a 600 amp hour battery bank in practice only provides, at best, 300 amp hours of real capacity. If you even occasionally drain the batteries more than this their life will be drastically cut short.

Limited Cycle Life

Even if you are going easy on your batteries and are careful to never overly drain them, even the best deep cycle lead acid batteries are typically only good for 500-1000 cycles. If you are frequently tapping into your battery bank (such as a full-timing boondocker might), this could mean that your batteries may need replacement after less than 2 years use!

Lifeline AGM Battery Life Cycle Estimates

Slow & Inefficient Charging

The final 20% of lead acid battery capacity can not be “fast” charged. The first 80% can be “Bulk Charged” by a smart three-stage charger quickly (particularly AGM batteries can handle a high bulk charging current), but then the “Absorption” phase begins and the charging current drops off dramatically.

Just like a software development project, the final 20% of the work can end up taking 80% of the time.

This isn’t a big deal if you are charging plugged in overnight, but it is a huge issue if you have to leave your generator running for hours (which can be rather noisy and expensive to run). And if you are depending on solar and the sun sets before that final 20% has been topped off, you can easily end up with batteries that never actually get fully charged.

Not fully charging the final few percent would not be much of a problem in practice, if it wasn’t for the fact that a failure to regularly fully charge lead acid batteries prematurely ages them.

Smart battery dependent RV’ers need to strike a balance – some bulk charge to 80% daily, and once a week run the generator all day, or pull into a RV Park, to do a long “top off” charge. Others just buy the cheapest (typically Walmart or Costco) batteries they can find, and just replace them when they fail.  Often they even try to get the replacement of their overly abused batteries covered under warranty!

Trojan AGM Charging Profile

Wasted Energy

In addition to all that wasted generator time, lead acid batteries suffer another efficiency issue – they waste as much as 15% of the energy put into them via inherent charging inefficiency. So if you provide 100 amps of power, you’ve only storing 85 amp hours.

This can be especially frustrating when charging via solar, when you are trying to squeeze as much efficiency out of every amp as possible before the sun goes down or gets covered up by clouds.

Placement Issues

Flooded lead acid batteries release noxious acidic gas while they are charging, and must be contained in a sealed battery box that is vented to the outside. They also must be stored upright, to avoid battery acid spills.

AGM batteries do not have these constraints, and can be placed in unventilated areas – even inside your living space.  This is one of the reasons that AGM batteries have become so popular with sailors and RV’ers.

Maintenance Requirements

Flooded lead acid batteries must be periodically topped off with distilled water, which can be a cumbersome maintenance chore if your battery bays are difficult to get to.

AGM and gel cells though are truly maintenance free. Being maintenance free comes with a downside though – a flooded cell battery that is accidentally overcharged can often be salvaged by replacing the water that boiled off. A gel or AGM battery that is overcharged is often irreversibly destroyed.

Peukert’s Losses & Voltage Sag

A fully charged 12-volt lead acid battery starts off around 12.8 volts, but as it is drained the voltage drops steadily. The voltage drops below 12 volts when the battery still has 35% of its total capacity remaining, but some electronics may fail to operate with less than a full 12 volt supply. This “sag” effect can also lead to lights dimming.

Lifeline AGM Discharge Curves

Also – the faster that you discharge a lead acid battery of any type, the less energy you can get out of it. This effect can be calculated by applying Peukert’s Law (named after German scientist W. Peukert), and in practice this means that high current loads like an air conditioner, a microwave or an induction cooktop can result in a lead acid battery bank being able to actually deliver as little as 60% of its normal capacity.

This is a huge loss in capacity when you need it most!

Size & Weight

And finally… Lead Acid Batteries are BIG & Really Heavy!!!

A typical 8D sized battery that is commonly used for large RV house banks is 20.5″ x 10.5″ x 9.5″. To pick a specific 8D example, Trojan’s 8D-AGM weighs 167lbs, and provides just 230 amp-hours of total capacity – which leaves you with 115 amp hours truly usable, and only 70 for a high discharge applications!

If you are designing for extensive boon docking, you will want at least four 8D’s, or as many as eight. That is a LOT of weight to be carting around that impacts your fuel economy.

And, if you have limited space for batteries on your rig – size alone of the batteries will limit your capacity.  We first started researching lithium options when we were designing our Oliver’s electrical system, as we could only fit 220 amp hours of AGM golf cart batteries in our relatively small battery chamber.

As you can see, lead acid batteries come with some significant downsides. In my next post, I’ll explain the technical advantages of Lithium that lured us away from the tried and true lead acid path, and then I’ll follow up with a post about the cost factors we weighed.

By the way, we should note – we are not trying to motivate anyone to follow us on this path. We are not selling these batteries, we are not affiliates with any battery dealer, we paid for all our components and nor do we have any financial stake in the technology beyond our own systems.  We are simply full time RVing technomads who are designing our own cutting edge home & office on wheels, and are sharing our research & project. Of course we’d love to have more folks out there pioneering and helping us take the arrows in our backs.  Right now, we do not consider this technology ready for the mainstream, and those contemplating this technology need to be a bit savvy with electrical and battery technology. 

Other Posts In this Series:

Promise of Lithium #2: Lithium Ion Battery Advantages
Promise of Lithium #3: Lithium RV Battery System Cost Analysis
All our Lithium Ion Battery Posts 

We thought it was brilliant.  It very simply answers the question – “is it safe to drink the water?” for over 200 countries. A very handy reference tool for travelers .

But we did know one thing – if we attended, we wanted a year off of hosting our theme camp, Camp Nomadia, [...]]]> We left Burning Man in 2010 for the first time without a plan one way or the other if we would be attending in 2011.  We left that decision up to serendipity.

But we did know one thing – if we attended, we wanted a year off of hosting our theme camp, Camp Nomadia, and being focused on a role as nomadic evangelists.

Technomadia at Burning Man 2011 (Thanks to Karen Nace for snapping the photo!)

We were thrilled to discover that enthusiasm for Camp Nomadia carried on, and past Nomadians were interested in taking on the reigns.  And then just after we bought our bus, and tickets sold out for the first time ever, we came across two extra tickets.  Finding our bus within a days drive – serendipity had clearly said that yes, we were intended to go again.  We even turned down an offer from a major TV show to film us at the burn, holding to our intentions to keep things low key.

This would be our year to focus on us, connect with friends and relax.  It was our rite of passage.

And it was glorious.

Camp Nomadia Caravan to Burning Man

We met up with campmates prior to the burn in Reno and Fernley, caravanned in together and had our most chill burn yet.

Our old bus powering Ben & Karen's

Before heading to the playa, we completed our lithium ion battery and inverter install, and it performed wonderfully for the week.  And thank goodness, as our friends Ben & Karen had trouble with their bus’ electrical system – so we were able to build a buddy plug to share our battery bank with them.

Camp Nomadia

Camp Nomadia was awesome, probably not much more than 35-40 folks this year (half that as last year) – a great size. Everyone was awesome, and it was wonderful be able to be part of the camp but not be in charge.  We did participate in the camp’s ‘Nomadic Lifestyle Workshop’ panel, which is always fun and a great to meet so many other past, future and present nomads.

The Temple at Burning Man

The Temple - burning.

The temple this year at Burning Man was the most amazing we’ve seen together.

We stayed at Burning Man thru Tuesday morning with many other Camp Nomadians, having one last camp party as we broke our communal shade structure.

Las Vegas, baby!

From there, we headed back south to Las Vegas to pick up Kiki, who had been staying with JoAnna Haugen and her hubby there.  Ben, who is a Photoshop guru and instructor, was able to get us guest badges to Photoshop World.

An amazing act in Absinthe - well worth catching!

So we’ve spent the last couple days attending inspiring Photoshop classes, hanging out and going to some shows. JoAnna gifted us with free tickets to see Penn & Teller, and we also followed her advice to catch Absinthe.  Both were awesome.

Today has been our first day in a long while to have a down day.

From here?  We’re actually quite unsure.  We had originally thought of heading to Sacramento to clean out Chris’ storage unit once and for all, and then moving some stuff to St. Louis to his parent’s place.

But we’re just not feeling it, and don’t have the energy to take on that huge of a project right now.  We’re behind on work, blogging and bus projects – and most crave being still somewhere for a week or two and attempting some catch up.

Just as we were coming to this conclusion, we got an unsolicited invitation from a reader who manages an RV Resort in St. George, UT to come stay for a week or so in exchange for hosting a couple of talks on Technology and RVing.  That’s a style of ‘workamping’ we hadn’t considered before, and sounds like a fitting idea!

So, we’re going to go check that out – after we have another nap or two.

So let’s back up a few days, and cover the journey since we left Phoenix – where we built our own lithium ion battery bank.

Building our bank was lots of fun, but [...]]]> There is nothing like hearing your air conditioner turn on via battery power!  Not that it’s any different of a sound.

So let’s back up a few days, and cover the journey since we left Phoenix – where we built our own lithium ion battery bank.

Building our bank was lots of fun, but it took away two days of time that we had put aside for doing our complete install.  So now we needed to somehow manage to cram in many hours of installation work of not only wiring up the inverter and battery bank, but new breaker boxes too.  All this while traveling up to Reno to rendezvous with the Camp Nomadians, Sam & Tracy.

And of course, needing to do general Burning Man preps.

From Las Vegas to Reno

So we hit the road towards Reno, with a planned stop along Lake Mead to meet up with some fellow bus nuts.   We then stopped in Las Vegas to drop Kiki off with travel writer JoAnna Haugen of Kaleidoscopic Wandering, as she and her hubby offered to keep Kiki for us while we’re at the burn (no pets allowed).  We made another stop just north of Beatty, NV at an RV Park rumored to have hot springs for soaking.

The rumors were true, and it was pure bliss.

We overnighted in Fallon, NV with dear friends – and got a surprise rendezvous with another friend out on a road trip.  (You might notice that we also had a lot of social time to fit in too.)

When we told our Fallon friends what we were up to with the battery install, it turns out he has the exact battery cabling we need to complete it – along with all the tools at his machine shop.

So our stay got extended in Fallon as Chris and he tried to hunt down all the parts that would be needed, which turned out to be more challenging than anticipated in such a small town.  Also, as we hadn’t yet mounted the batteries and inverter, we were unsure of what our cable sizes would need to be.

Projects in Reno

So we continued on to Reno for our rendezvous with Sam & Tracy. Our biggest mission (aside from catching up with friends) was to get our satellite dish re-activated for them to take to the playa.  We were able to cross paths with them in South Carolina when we were delivering the Oliver back in May, and they so kindly took that bulky dish off our hands so we had one less big thing to worry about.  They also took Chris’ Time Frame art project over for us, and scored early arrival as a result – which allows them to land grab at gate open for Camp Nomadia’s spot this year.

We spent a couple days hanging out, and doing Burning Man preps together (shopping, hair dyeing, etc.). We rented a car so that we would have local transportation, as we’re going without a tow behind vehicle (or ‘toad’) for now. There’s so many things that we needed to acquire, especially since a lot of our gear is actually in storage in Sacramento.

We were also running around Reno getting more and more parts for the battery install.  I swear, every time  I turn around this project is needing fuses, cables, nuts, bolts, screws, panel boxes, breakers, mounting boards, buses (don’t we have one already??),  relays, etc.  And frankly, the complexity of the project has seemed to grow, and it was frustrating me considering the time crunch and other projects to accomplish.  Chris and I definitely approach projects in very different ways.

And now, we had to plan in another trip back to Fallon once we knew our measurements.

All Nighter Battery, Inverter and Breaker Install

Chris and I both pulled a 12 hour all-nighter on Friday to run new wires down the length of the bus from what is now the battery bay to the breaker bay.

We then dismantled the old breaker box (which had so many code violations, it wasn’t even funny), and installed two new ones – one for the shore power to come into, and one for the inverter to take control of the AC power in the coach.  We decided to do this at night when it was cooler, so that the lack of air conditioning would not be as noticable.  While the highs in Reno were significantly cooler than they were in Arizona, mid-90s is still warm when working on projects.

Keith & Chris making battery cables

After getting a few hours sleep, we headed back to Fallon on Saturday to meet up with our friend to create the battery cables.  What should have been an hour of cable making – turned into another 5 hours on the project, as he had further ideas to make the system even safer by building better mounts. Safety is a good thing, and so are awesome friends.

Inverter on! Rainbow on!

At sunset (with a rainbow forming over the bus), everything was wired up. We turned on the inverter, and then turned on an air conditioner. All running off the sweetness of lithium ion batteries and 3000w pure sine inversion!

By our calculations, we should have enough battery power to run an A/C for almost 3 hours before needing to run the generator for a re-charge.. and all our wiring, cabling, fuses, etc. are scaled for this.

The battery bay - Phase 1 complete!

For now, phase 1 of the project is completed and good enough for Burning Man.

We’ll have power without needing to turn on the generator just to run water or lights.  After the playa, we have many other phases to implement, including a wiring schematic that our on-call electrical wizard, Sean of Our Odyssey, drew up for us that will give us many more awesome features.  (He’s been a tremendous guiding force to us these past few weeks – and we wish him and Louise well as they’re now deployed for the Red Cross in North Carolina).

Playa Bound

Tomorrow, we start the final leg to the playa.  Sam & Tracy currently are parked at the same location that Camp Nomadia was located at last year – the corner of 6 & H.  If you’re playa bound too, stop on by Thursday @ 3pm –  there will be a Nomadic Lifestyle Workshop, followed by a Nomadic Happy Hour.

Expect this blog space to be quiet until we return to the default world. I don’t believe we’ll be posting updates from the playa this year – as we’re taking this year to focus on us.

By the way, we should note – we are not trying to motivate anyone to follow us on this path. We are not selling these batteries, we are not affiliates with any battery dealer, we paid for all our components and nor do we have any financial stake in the technology beyond our own systems.  We are simply full time RVing technomads who are designing our own cutting edge home & office on wheels, and are sharing our research & project. Of course we’d love to have more folks out there pioneering and helping us take the arrows in our backs.  Right now, we do not consider this technology ready for the mainstream, and those contemplating this technology need to be a bit savvy with electrical and battery technology. 

Other Posts In this Series:

Promise of Lithium #1: Lead Acid Battery Downsides
Promise of Lithium #2: Lithium Ion Battery Advantages
All our Lithium Ion Battery Posts 

The bus [...]]]> After another all-nighter lithium ion battery research session last Tuesday, we slept in on Wednesday and then made our way down the hill from Flagstaff into Phoenix. With every foot of elevation drop, the temperature increased and we were soon reminded of why we escaped to Flagstaff in the first place.

The long 6% grade descent into Phoenix.

The bus did incredibly well on the descent, and we learned the advantage of a jake brake – they not only sound cool, they’re very useful! After our first major drop in elevation, Chris exclaimed

‘If I ever meet Jake, I’m gonna kiss him!’.

In the 7000 foot elevation drop, Chris only had to briefly engage the regular bus brake once or twice, the rest the Jake handled with ease.

Unfortunately our late departure and stops at every rest stop, often of which involved more research and ordering parts that would be needed for the battery install – put us arriving in Phoenix too late to meet up with the supplier.

But never fear, we received an invitation inbound for bus parking, power and dinner with a fellow bus nut. Well actually, they’re the owners of one of the buses we looked at in our search, Bus’Osaurus. When our friends we rendezvoused with in Flagstaff walked into our bus, they decided they too needed a bus as their full time home.. and actually bought Bus’Osaurus this week!

We hadn’t realized how contagious this bus nut disease is, so caution to anyone who invites us over.

Battery Day

Thursday morning we arrived to Elite Power Solutions, who specializes in lithium iron phosphate (for the geeks amongst you, LiFeMnPO4 is the actual chemistry) batteries for electric cars, motorcycles and scooters. Our research into the state of lithium for RV use lead us to them as a reputable supplier of a non-combustable safer battery than previous versions of lithium ion.  When we reached out to their engineers they were happy to work with us to create our RV house battery solution. And they further offered us a great price on the batteries that sweetened the temptation to pioneer into the land of untested bright speculations.

We were anticipating when we arrived our time with them would be focused on getting the batteries installed into the bus and hooked up to the various other parts we had shipped to them – including our fancy new pure sine inverter, high end relay switches, fuses, and such.

Disassembling the 100ah Lithium Ion Packs

Little did we know that the batteries came in packs of 4 cells that make up 100ah at 12v. And to create our bank of 500ah, we’d have to manually disassemble 5 packs and re-assemble them into 4 packs of 500ah at 3.2v and hook them up in parallel. We soon learned how tedious of a process this is, which includes having to unscrew every jumper and all the assembly plates.

Re-assembling the packs into 5 cell, 500ah at 3.2v.

We then had to re-assemble the binding plates to support 5 cells each, and press the cells into the bands using a hydraulic jack.

It was actually quite exhilarating to physically build our own pack (and talk about the geeky DIY points we earned!) – but it’s time we hadn’t budgeted for. And this got complicated when the house generator in the bus overheated in the 110+ heat, threatening to roast poor Kiki with out air conditioning. We had to end Thursday early with a scramble to find a nearby RV park with power hook-ups and then rent a car. After making sure Kiki was ok, we ran some errands to obtain parts for the battery bank – and got our Fry’s Electronics fix (grin).

Wiring up our Lithium Ion battery pack. (Safety note: Bad idea to keep jewelry on while working on batteries - we'll be taking our commitment rings off in the future!)

On Friday morning we returned to Elite Power to finish building our bank and getting it all wired up – which involved tediously screwing in jumper bars in parallel, fuses and Elite’s EMS (Energy Management System).

Moving 500ah of Lithium Ion goodness into our rental car.

When we were done – we had a sweet looking 500ah battery bank that measures just 21″ x 14″ x 11″ and weighs just 140 lbs. And yes, a much more technical post is forthcoming for all you interested in more of the details.

We’re much further behind on the project than anticipated, but feel much more in tune with the system we’re building as a result of being so involved with its creation.

We’ll continue sharing the install as it progresses this coming week as we meander towards Reno, with the goal of having something workable by Burning Man.

Gates open in 9 days.

By the way, we should note – we are not trying to motivate anyone to follow us on this path. We are not selling these batteries, we are not affiliates with any battery dealer, we paid for all our components and nor do we have any financial stake in the technology beyond our own systems.  We are simply full time RVing technomads who are designing our own cutting edge home & office on wheels, and are sharing our research & project. Of course we’d love to have more folks out there pioneering and helping us take the arrows in our backs.  Right now, we do not consider this technology ready for the mainstream, and those contemplating this technology need to be a bit savvy with electrical and battery technology. 

Other Posts In this Series:

Promise of Lithium #1: Lead Acid Battery Downsides
Promise of Lithium #2: Lithium Ion Battery Advantages
All our Lithium Ion Battery Posts 

We came here intending to cool off – both our bodies and on the bus projects. We were also [...]]]> Two weeks ago we finally escaped the intense Arizona desert heat in Lake Havasu City, and headed to nearby Flagstaff. Sitting at elevation 7000 ft, it’s many degrees cooler and has things that are green.

We came here intending to cool off – both our bodies and on the bus projects. We were also tempted here to be temporary neighbors with some fellow nomadic friends.

We had dreams of lots of hiking, catching up on some projects, exploring Flagstaff, birthday celebrations and beer.

Ahh… dreams.

Upon arriving, some prior conversations we had started inquiring about the state of lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4 – or LFP) battery technology for RV use elevated from intriguing to interesting. This newer LFP isn’t your old school lithium ion battery chemistry that is known for exploding – it’s non-combustable, making it vastly safer.

As our bus came with no house battery system or inverter, tackling that project was on our priority list – especially with planning to go off-grid at Burning Man at the end of the month.

One conversation lead to another, and we were introduced to a supplier of the technology – who happens to be just down the hill in Phoenix.

As we know that Burning Man would present an ideal opportunity to field test such a system, if we’re going to get it done – we had to move quick to take advantage of the Phoenix connection before leaving the area.

So instead of our chill no bus project escape, our time in Flagstaff has been consumed with intense all-nighter research into batteries & inverters, house electrical systems and taking measurements of all our bays. We’ve been weighing the benefits and risks of a bank of lithium ion versus AGM batteries, corresponding with our braintrust of electrically inclined friends and tracking down our ideal inverter.

We’ve decided that while lithium ion batteries have not fully proven their potential yet, especially for RV house electrical systems – heading to Phoenix this week is worthwhile. If it continues to hold our interest, by the end of the week we could have one very interesting and cutting edge house electrical system that could be a fantastic platform for our eventual solar install.

And yes, you can bet I’ll force Chris to sit down and write a more technical report.

So, this morning we’re off to Phoenix. Back into the intense Arizona desert heat.

I haven’t even checked the weather forecast for the expected highs.. I really don’t want to know.

By the way, we should note – we are not trying to motivate anyone to follow us on this path. We are not selling these batteries, we are not affiliates with any battery dealer, we paid for all our components and nor do we have any financial stake in the technology beyond our own systems.  We are simply full time RVing technomads who are designing our own cutting edge home & office on wheels, and are sharing our research & project. Of course we’d love to have more folks out there pioneering and helping us take the arrows in our backs.  Right now, we do not consider this technology ready for the mainstream, and those contemplating this technology need to be a bit savvy with electrical and battery technology. 

Other Posts In this Series:

Promise of Lithium #1: Lead Acid Battery Downsides
Promise of Lithium #2: Lithium Ion Battery Advantages
All our Lithium Ion Battery Posts 

‘Re-calculating‘ she proclaims.

She comes back with instructions to get us back on her previously researched route. We’re obstinate.  We ignore her and continue on the route that calls [...]]]> The new-to-us GPS unit we recently purchased from my father instructs us to turn left.  We ignore her, and turn right instead… our way seems more scenic.

‘Re-calculating‘ she proclaims.

She comes back with instructions to get us back on her previously researched route. We’re obstinate.  We ignore her and continue on the route that calls us stronger her than voice.   She keeps re-calculating to get us back on track. Her track.

Re-calculating!  Make a u-turn! Re-calculating!!

We anticipate that any moment smoke will start pouring out of her ports from all the re-calculating.

Our GPS unit doesn’t seem to have a setting for ‘Route via Serendipity’.

Our serendipitous nomadic life doesn’t have much room for pre-planning.  We’ve intentionally designed our lives to be in tune with serendipity and remaining agile to choose to follow it.  Some might call it pronoia – or trusting that the universe is conspiring in your favor.  Some might call it godly winks, synchronicity, fate or just darn good luck.

This past week, since we agreed to accept an unsolicited offer to quickly sell our current home and deliver it to Virginia, has been a huge leap of faith in serendipity.   A clear plan ahead just hasn’t made itself known to us, the clock is ticking and we’re constantly exploring the options at a dizzying pace.

Despite brief stark moments of terror at the realization of what we’re doing, we keep mentally moving forward following serendipity’s beacon.  While we physically move northward with our re-calculating GPS .

One moment we’re researching a vintage bus that seems promising, and start plotting a logistical path to move towards it.   And then we diverge, and consider an entirely different path.

• Find a short term apartment!
• Go crash with a friend!
• Rent a van!
• Get a storage unit!
• How about the condo in St. Thomas? Oh wait..  that was a joke.
• Get a cheap temporary home-on-wheels!
• Ooops… finding a worthy cheap motorhome is too time consuming.
• Ooo.. look at this bus!

We’re re-calculating what our next turn is often. Sometimes several times a day.

When it happens, we now grin at each other and say ‘Re-calculating‘ in our best GPS voice.

We thought it would be interesting to share the hard numbers behind these roll-outs, because there isn’t a lot of real-world publicly available data showing [...]]]> This past year we have been experimenting with selling electronically distributed products, namely our iOS applications ‘State Lines‘ and ‘Coverage?‘, and our ‘Answers to Common Excuses‘ eBook.

We thought it would be interesting to share the hard numbers behind these roll-outs, because there isn’t a lot of real-world publicly available data showing the realities of how much (or little) independent developers and eBook publishers make.

We took on these projects as experiments in both learning new technologies and learning how to best distribute them.

In the case of our iPhone/iPad apps, we built product ideas that solved real world problems we had as full time travelers. We wrote apps that we wanted for ourselves, and that we could have fun developing. Fortunately (as you will see), we aren’t dependent on ‘making a living’ doing this – our core custom software development clients and projects happily remain our primary sources of income.

We share this information with you not to complain, but because so many folks ask us if creating and selling eProducts can be a profitable and sustainable business model. And we encounter a lot of folks who assume anyone who creates an iPhone app is destined to be an instant millionaire. As if…

So here we go:

State Lines for iPhone

State Lines is the first iPhone app we developed – it is a handy guide to the state laws and regulations that change as you cross state lines, helping travelers keep up with seat belt laws, towing regulations, smoking bans, sales taxes, driving laws and much much more.  We created this app because this was stuff we were always looking up, and we wanted to have it easily accessible in one convenient spot.

We began learning the specifics of iPhone development and working on State Lines in February of 2010, and officially launched it in early May 2010.

Our time invested into the initial launch of this app included:

Research on laws/regulations: ~70 hrs

Development time: ~100 hrs

Graphics & Initial Marketing: ~20 hrs

While we actually spent much more time than this developing State Lines, we’re estimating low because there was a lot of learning and experimentation time involved.

We have have also released three updates to expand State Lines and keep the app current, as well as a version of State Lines focused on alcohol laws, and the time spent on those versions and updates is not accounted for in these estimates either.

Now, the sales figures:

# of copies sold in 2010: 1161

Money earned: $2,152.80

State Lines 2010 Sales in the App Store - from AppFigures.com

State Lines did reasonably well in the first month or two – having an average of about 15 downloads a day.  But towards the end of the year, it slowed to a steady trickle of 2-3 copies a day. Overall, we averaged selling only 5 copies a day in 2010. From talking with other independent developers, this seems fairly typical.

If we consider just our initial pre-launch invested creation time, we’ve been compensated at about $11.33/hr.  While this makes for a nice residual income, we won’t be quitting our day jobs anytime soon (not that we are aiming to).

We are however still working on evolving State Lines, and soon we’ll re-launch it as a universal iPhone/iPad version, as well as releasing the underlying data in an eBook format for those not on an iOS device.

As for pricing – you can purchase ‘State Lines‘ for $2.99, though we intend to up the price to $4.99 once the iPad version is released.

Coverage? for iPhone/iPad

‘Coverage?‘ is a universal iPhone/iPad app that provides an at-a-glance “universal” coverage map by interactively overlaying maps from the four major nationwide cellular providers. It isn’t meant to give neighborhood level detail, but rather it is a tool for us traveling bandwidth junkies to interactively see where we’re most likely to catch our next hit of usable bandwidth.

We wrote this app not to embarrass AT&T or to make Verizon look good, but because as full time travelers, we needed it. To learn more about the story behind ‘Coverage?’, watch the demo video here.

Creating ‘Coverage?’ involved a whole raft of new technical challenges (excuse us as we geek a bit), in particular mastering the new in iOS 4.0 API’s for overlaying image layers on top of an underlying map. Being able to display so many graphical overlays interactively on top of Google Maps is pretty challenging stuff.  We needed to learn more about digital cartography, map projections, tiling, and image compression than we ever imagined.

We also quickly learned that there’s a reason that a resource like ‘Coverage?’ doesn’t currently exist anywhere else – coverage map data is not easy to acquire. Each cell phone provider reports it through a very awkward interface, rendered in very different mapping formats and projections.  It isn’t as simple as downloading maps and overlaying them - we had to first create our own interpretative maps based on each provider’s reports, standardize them to the same format, and separate out each coverage type to its own layer so that they could be compared on top of each other.

Our time invested in this project thus far:

Development time: ~200 hrs

Map creation: ~150 hrs

Graphics & Initial Marketing: ~20 hrs

We’re of course not including all of the research and learning time necessary to even take on creating ‘Coverage?’.   Plus, in addition to investing our time, we outsourced some of the graphical map-making grunt work for a cost of $300.  And that overhead cost will be repeated with each map update.

Since we just launched ‘Coverage?’ on December 22 – it’s far too soon to know what the longer term potential is of the project. But after the terrific launch-day numbers, the initial sales aren’t nearly as exciting as we hoped.

For the tail end of 2010, here are our results:

# of copies sold in 2010: 875

Money earned: $620.00

Coverage? Launch Sales - AppFigures.com

Our initial launch was quite exciting, and after a prominent featured review on TUAW we were blown away to sell 480 copies of ‘Coverage?’ on the first day. We immediately shot up as high as #2 in the iPad Navigation charts, and #3 on the overall iOS Navigation charts.

And then (we did know this was coming) Apple shut closed the interface to track sales for a week-long holiday shutdown, leaving us in limbo waiting for our next update on how well we were doing.

Based upon the day one sales, we thought we might have enough momentum to become an App Store success story, and we even had fantasies of ‘Coverage?’ earning us enough to buy a sailboat!

However, once Apple’s tracking interface came back online after the holidays, we were greatly disappointed to see the download numbers had quickly slumped off to about around 10 copies a day, and we were already nearly invisible in the App Store charts.

In hindsight, our biggest launch mistake was going with a 99-cent introductory price. While this made ‘Coverage?’ a no-brainer purchase, it also meant that we had a few too many ‘no brainer’ App Store reviews submitted by people who bought the app having not read the app description and who expected it to do things that it was explicitly not designed to do.

We’ve since raised the price of ‘Coverage?’ to $1.99, and we’ve found that a higher price makes for happier customers. Why? Because when spending more, people are much more likely to read reviews and the description to make sure the app is in line with their needs and expectations before purchasing. Since switching to $1.99, our sales have only slightly dropped, the reviews have improved, and our revenue has remained constant.

It is still way too early to draw too many conclusions from the launch of ‘Coverage?’. We still have a lot of media outreach to do to make sure that the app gets the notice it deserves, and we are working to make that happen.  We are also playing around with some other business models – such as maybe offering a free version with limited features that can be upgraded via in-app-purchase.

But based upon our initial sales, we have a long ways to go to get to a break even point, especially since we are faced with recurring hard cash expenditures to keep the maps updated.

Answers to Common Excuses eBook

When we were accepted to present at SXSW 2011 on Technomadism this coming March, we decided it was a good opportunity to experiment with offering a way for our readers to opt into financially supporting our non-commercial efforts in educating people about the potential and practicalities of this sort of lifestyle. Our ‘Answers to the Common Excuses’ blog series seemed like great content make into an eBook for fundraising.

We decided to release the eBook on a ‘Pay as you Wish‘ basis with a $20 suggested contribution, so that folks could decide what it was worth to them, and how much they’d like to support us.

Our time into this project thus far:

eBook Creation and Editing: ~40 hrs

Marketing graphics and materials: ~15 hrs

Obviously, we’re not including the time invested in writing the original blog posts that this eBook was based upon, just the time invested in re-writing, expanding and updating the content – and putting it into an eBook format.

Thus far, the eBook has these numbers:

# of copies downloaded in 2010: 156

# of folks who opted to contribute something: 38

Money raised (minus PayPal fees): $421.43

Average contribution per copy sold: $11.09

Average contribution per copy downloaded: $2.70

We’re quite thrilled with the generosity of folks choosing to contribute for their download of our eBook, and contributions have ranged from $1 – $40 (wow!). And we have hopes that some of the folks who opted to take our offer to preview the book for free will eventually come back and contribute.

Considering we weren’t launching the eBook to make a profit but simply offset our SXSW travel expense, we’re pretty darn happy that we’ve covered one plane ticket to SXSW so far.   And we still have a couple months to go.

Some Analysis & Opinions

We’ve learned a few things with our eProduct experiments in 2010:

• We are glad that we spent our time developing things that we’re passionate about, proud of, and that we can use ourselves. If we had approached these projects as ‘work’, the return on our investment would have been exceedingly disappointing.
• If you build it, customers wont magically come. Creating content or an app is not enough – you must have a way to reach your audience.  For any hope of success, you have to work constantly at keeping your visibility up! Particularly in the iOS App Store, it is really easy to get lost in amongst the other hundreds of thousands of apps.
• We’ve had several requests to port ‘State Lines’ and ‘Coverage?’ to other platforms, such as Android, Blackberry or WebOS.  Based upon our results in the iOS App Store and research into the viability of these other marketplaces, we just can’t see any way that investing in these ports would be at all worth our time, or even any fun. We would need to buy phones, subscribe to data plans (and get locked into contracts), learn new languages and tools, and then do a bunch of drudge work – all to enter into a market where other developers report seeing only a fraction of the sales as they do on iOS. It seems that the majority of successful Android apps are advertising supported, a model that we are not fond of and which does not mesh well with occasional use reference apps like we have created. We remain open to partnering with other developers who want to take on the porting costs and split the profits, but we’re just not interested in investing time or money into it ourselves. Maybe once Amazon’s upcoming Android App Store launches, the market conditions will change…
• For niche focused useful apps like ours, selling at 99-cents just isn’t worth it.  It is frustrating to be selling into a market where people value your work less than a can of soda, or a pack of chewing gum. In theory we can make it up in volume, but the volume for anything other than a mass-appealing hit just isn’t there. Selling cheaply devalues the work that went into creating the app, and invites critics not aligned with your app to submit unfounded negative reviews. For 2011 we are going to avoid under-pricing our apps, and are vowing to support other developers by buying their apps when the are OFF sale.
• If you are going to be in the App Store, it helps to have a thick skin. Consumers that spend a buck on your product seem to be the harshest critics, and they have very high expectations for their 99 cents.  The App Store review system is completely one-sided towards the consumer’s voice; they can leave unfounded negativity anonymously and without any responsibility for what they say. And Apple gives developer’s absolutely no way to proactively provide customer service or even a refund to these people. In our opinion, the customer service side of the App Store if fundamentally broken.

Anyway – that’s been our experience with ‘State Lines‘ and ‘Coverage?‘, and our ‘Answers to Common Excuses‘ eBook.  We thoroughly appreciate all of you who have supported us with purchases, positive reviews and spreading the word. Thank you!

Coverage provides an at-a-glance “universal” coverage map by interactively overlaying the coverage maps from the four major nationwide US cellular providers.

We came up for the idea last summer when we set up camp in a beautiful field of wildflowers [...]]]> \

We are beyond excited to present our newest iPhone/iPad app: Coverage?

Coverage provides an at-a-glance “universal” coverage map by interactively overlaying the coverage maps from the four major nationwide US cellular providers.

We came up for the idea last summer when we set up camp in a beautiful field of wildflowers along the continental divide in Colorado with strong AT&T and Sprint signals. We planned to spend a few days catching up on work, until AT&T notified us that we had used up our 24MB “Off Network” allowance for the month, and Sprint emailed us to let us know that our Aircard had exceeded their 300MB Roaming cap. Yet neither our iPhone, iPad, or Sprint Aircard in our Macs gave us any indication we were “roaming” until after we were notified that we would be shut off until the end of the month.

If only there were an easy way to look up where we might be roaming, and where the nearest 3G might be, without needing to go online to do it….

And thus Coverage was born.

Checking each individual provider’s coverage maps can be done – but there had to be an easier way! When you don’t have a signal, it’s near impossible to determine where you might next get one.

Us bandwidth junkies just sometimes need to know when we’ll get our next hit.

We designed Coverage to be simple, easy, and genuinely useful. Here’s some of what makes it great:

• Easily know before you go: Avoid having to check each provider’s coverage map individually to know where you’re most likely to keep connected.
• No internet needed: All overlay maps are stored locally, so you can check where coverage is most likely to be found even when you have none.
• Urban and rural maps: The maps cover the entire continental USA for AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile.
• Know where to roam: View 4G, 3G, 2G and roaming areas as separate overlays, focus on the coverage type you need.
• Universal App: Compatible with iPhone, iPod Touch and IPad – iOS 4.2 and higher.

Here’s a quick video demo we made that tells the story behind the app, and gives some real world examples of how Coverage? can be useful:

Direct link to the video demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNNzUtjgJIo

Bask in the joys of mobile bandwidth while avoiding the sorrows of roaming usage caps and absent signal.

Get it now, before you need it – just 1.99.

Use Coverage to determine which direction is best to head towards, which route is likely to keep you the most connected in your travels or determing if you’ll be likely to have signal on your next trip.

Winner – ‘Most Useful App’ – iOSDevCamp 2010

The groundwork for Coverage was built at iOSDevCamp 2010, and was named ‘Most Useful App’ of the conference.  We are absolutely thrilled and honored to have won this award for our idea, and are excited to be at last releasing the finished app to the world.

 “Pretty simple, but also rather handy.” – Gizmodo, 1/11/11

Note that the maps in Coverage are our own interpretations of the coverage reported by each carrier. You should not rely on the maps in Coverage to be perfectly precise nor comprehsively up to date, though we intend to regularly update them.

We can of course make no promises as to where you’ll *actually* get signal. The goal of Coverage is to give you an indication of where you’re most likely to catch a wave, not provide neighborhood level precision.

So… Got Coverage?

Get it now, before you need it – just 1.99.

Those dreams solidified one night in the early 90′s when I stumbled across the website and writings of Steve Roberts – the [...]]]> My desire to live life as a technomad isn’t new – the idea of combining technology and travel has been an active dream of mine for as long as I can remember.

Those dreams solidified one night in the early 90′s when I stumbled across the website and writings of Steve Roberts – the original “technomad” and coiner of the term. When I first found Steve’s site I was literally up until dawn reading of his adventures and imagining a tech-filled life on the road. Steve’s book Computing Across America chronicling his first 10,000 miles on his geeked-out solar/pizza-powered computerized recumbent bicycle fired my imagination.

Later that year I arranged for Washington University in St. Louis (where I was a Computer Science / Computer Engineering major) to host a stop on Steve’s speaking tour, and we’ve been friends ever since.

My First Silicon Valley Tech Job

But before I could pursue the nomadism, I knew I needed to spend some time building up some career experience on the tech side. And like most Computer Science graduates, that meant heading west towards Silicon Valley. Mecca for geeks.

The job that brought me west to California after I graduated in 1996 was to become the first Technical Editor of Imagine Publishing’s newly-launched boot magazine. It was an incredible job, and other than the ever present panic of print deadlines, it was heaven for a tech junkie like myself.

I was only at boot for a year and a half before I moved on to a series of other tech-industry jobs, but I am hugely proud of the work that went into creating that magazine. I still get a thrill every time I see boot’s successor Maximum PC on the newstands, and recently I spotted a new spin-off Maximum Tech that is broadening the PC-focus into all sorts of consumer technology. The first issue was absolutely fabulous – reviewing everything from Web Tablets to Vibram FiveFinger shoes.

I love knowing that something that I helped start continues to thrive, and remains one of the most respected and influential magazines in the industry.

Lately on the Maximum PC website, they have been running a series called “Old School Monday” featuring reruns of articles from the early days. And one article in particular just brought a huge grin to my face.

For the 1996 “Lust List” feature, every editor had to briefly write about the 10 products that most fired up their imagination that past year. Here was one of my picks:

Ricochet Wireless Modem: Taking the Net with you on the road helps blur the boundaries between cyberspace and reality. A Ricochet and a notebook are the first step to being the technomad I’ve always dreamed of becoming. Next, I need a HUD headband and a palm keyboard. I wonder if the Borg have any job openings…

This was a time years before WiFi, and the Ricochet modem was the size of a small brick. But it allowed me to get online wirelessly all over the SF area, and it was actually faster than the then common 56kbps dialup modems. I actually wrote my Ricochet review while enjoying the “office view” from the top of SF’s Twin Peaks. It was incredible technology, way ahead of its time.

The Ricochet was reliable enough that I even “cut the cord” and ditched the phone line at my apartment, and even back then was relying on just my cell phone and my wireless modem to live my digital life.

Another fun Ricochet memory – I once created a VAN (Van Area Network) that combined a rental mini-van, a 12volt-to-AC inverter, the Ricochet, a wired router and hub, and a lot of ethernet cable… All so that my team could have four laptops sharing the wireless connection while underway playing in an epic weekend-long puzzle hunt (The Game).

Dreams Do Come True

Those were the days… It is amazing how far wireless and mobile technology has advanced since then.

But I am thrilled to realize that 14 years later, I’ve been the “technomad I’ve always dreamed of becoming” for nearly five years now.

Dreams tend to come true, eventually. *grin*

One of the most common things we get asked about is for advice on staying connected to the net while on the road. Worrying about a lack of usable connectivity is an excuse that holds many people back from [...]]]> Note: This post originally written on 9/10/2010 and updated on 9/20/2011 to reflect current information.

One of the most common things we get asked about is for advice on staying connected to the net while on the road. Worrying about a lack of usable connectivity is an excuse that holds many people back from a life of nomadism, particularly if they are concerned about their ability to work and make their living online.

And though it is easier than many people fear, the truth is – it can occasionally be so maddeningly frustrating that even getting a simple one word email out can seem darn near impossible.

There is a scene in the film RV where Robin Williams is standing on top of his rig like the Statue of Liberty, trying desperately to send an email only to have his battery die just as his dozenth attempt looks finally likely to complete.

This series has been greatly expanded - and is now available as a convenient 'pay as you wish' eBook!

It is the funniest bit in an otherwise forgettable movie, but I didn’t laugh. I’ve been in that exact situation (and pose) way too many times…

The real secret to connectivity on the road is learning to be flexible, and embracing rather than struggling against the constantly changing ebbs and flows of bandwidth that might pass your way. Living as a technomad, some days you will have a connection that seems as if you are plugged directly into the heart of the Internet, and other days you will be wishing for an upgrade to IP over carrier pigeon.

What follows are some of our essential tips for staying connected while on the road, as well as our thoughts on and experience with some of the common connectivity options. There is no “one size fits all” ultimate answer for staying connected, so we invite all of our readers to share their success (and horror) stories in the comments as well.

Tip #1: Soak up any WiFi you find!

Often the fastest, cheapest, and easiest way to get online is to use public WiFi networks, and in some parts of the country and world these are growing increasingly easy to find. Many libraries, coffee shops, RV parks, motels, and even fast food restaurants now offer free WiFi. There are also plenty of paid WiFi networks to be found too, but sometimes these are free as well if you are connecting with a certain device. For example, AT&T smartphone users can connect for free at any Starbucks.

Though WiFi has the potential to be blazingly fast, some shared networks can be horribly overloaded, or their upstream connection may actually be little better than a dial-up modem. So just because you can connect via WiFi, it may not be worth using. Even at major tech conferences there have been times where our cellular-powered “Technomadia” WiFi hotspot is faster and more reliable than the official WiFi channel.

The other major limitation of WiFi is range. Sometimes we enjoy working in coffee shops, but usually we prefer to be at our home office in our RV, or computing outside under the shade of a tree. Most WiFi setups fall off to unusably slow connections just a hundred feet away from the base station, and in some RV parks only the nearest spots to the office can reliably connect via WiFi. But with a boosted WiFi antenna system you can manage to connect to a base station substantially further away than your unaided laptop alone ever could.

One option to pull in a distant signal is the Wirie, made by some sailing nomad friends of ours. Another nomad we have encountered swears by his Deliberant CPE2 WiFi Bridge mounted on top of a pointable PVC mast. We have also personally experimented some with an older version of the Wi-Fire, but found that aiming the antenna was awkward and the drivers were a bit unstable. (Reportedly improved in more recent versions, but we can not verify…)

Picking our ideal extended-range WiFi solution is on our list of upcoming Technomadia upgrades, so further recommendations and tips are appreciated.

Tip #2: Embrace multiple pipes!

The more possible on ramps to the Internet at your disposal, the more likely you are to find one that works. Embracing diversity of connection types and networks is the best possible way that you can maximize your chances of getting at least somewhat of a workable connection, particularly since WiFi alone is rarely going to be enough.

When Cherie and I first hit the road together, we had a Sprint Aircard EX720, shared as a WiFi hotspot via a Cradlepoint CTR350 router. We also had a Palm Treo smartphone on T-Mobile, a Pocket PC smartphone on Verizon, and both of those phones were configured to be tethered to and the connection shared via our laptops as well.

Having three of the four largest cell phone networks available for connectivity gave us a lot of potential towers to hit, and it is generally good advice for nomadic couples to have phones and data cards on as many diverse networks as possible.

Our current connectivity arsenal is (updated September 2011):

• Cherie’s cellphone: iPhone 4 on AT&T with a tethering plan ($20/mo for 4GB)
• Chris’ cellphone: iPhone 4 on AT&T, no tethering
• iPad 2 on AT&T: Unlimited data plan, used for all our video streaming ($30/mo – grandfathered in from iPad 1)
• Data USB Stick via CradlePoint Router: Millenicom Verizon 3G ($60/mo for 20GB)  (may soon upgrade to their 4G plan)
• Satellite Dish: Hughesnet ($80/mo for 425MB/day)

All except our iPhones are with no contract, and we regularly suspend the satellite dish when we know we’ll have reliable connection for a while.

Tip #3: Understand roaming & coverage issues!

Speaking of cellular networks – in our experience, there is no ideal network!  While Verizon looks to have the most coverage nationwide, we have been in plenty of places where only AT&T or only Verizon was usable.

One place where all the carriers have grown exceedingly deceptive is around “roaming”. Though no carriers charge you extra for domestic roaming any more, they tend to have special data roaming limits hidden in the fine print. But because they want their networks to seem as large as possible, they also go out of their way to hide from you that you may be roaming and running into these limits. For example…

By default on an AT&T iPhone, the network name is displayed as “AT&T” no matter who actually owns the towers you are connected to. In many rural areas, AT&T is actually roaming onto small regional cellular carriers, and AT&T reserves the right to cap your roaming usage at just 24MB/month. Only once you’ve bumped into this cap does AT&T adjust your phone to display “Off Network” so that you can better track your usage.

Sprint has a slightly more generous 300MB/month roaming cap, but we managed to inadvertently hit this and get our account suspended from roaming after just one day parked soaking up bandwidth in a location that had been seemingly showing five bars of solid Sprint service. Thus why we dropped our so-called grandfathered in unlimited Sprint plan, and switched to Millenicom.

Running into these roaming and coverage map issues actually inspired us to create Coverage?, an iPhone app that overlays the coverage maps of all the major carriers. We developed this app at the iOSDevCamp in August, and won the award for ‘Most Useful App’, and was released in January 2011.  It really is an extremely useful tool for technomads who plan their routes taking into account connectivity at least as much as scenery.

BTW – the great advantage of satellite Internet service is that you can connect anywhere you have an unobstructed view of the southern sky. But there are actually even coverage map issues when it comes to satellite. HughesNet offers service on a dozen different satellites, each with a different broadcast footprint and varying signal strengths across the nation. After comparing all the maps posted at DatastormUsers.com we selected Galaxy 28. This should allow us to connect while traveling into both southern Canada and partway down into Baja, Mexico.

(Changing Satellites on HughesNet is possible, but cumbersome. It is actually reportedly sometimes easier to cancel and reactivate service if you want to switch to a different satellite, for a trip to Alaska, for example…)

Tip #4: Beware near borders!

One final extremely important roaming tip – beware of cruise ships and international borders! While most carriers don’t charge you for domestic roaming, they all charge an arm and a leg for international roaming (including onto the onboard cell networks offered on cruises now). If you are going to be anywhere close to an international border, make sure to turn off data roaming on all of your devices. Otherwise, you might find that you accidentally stumbled into a multi-thousand dollar bill.

And to avoid any unpleasant cruise surprises (like paying $1.00 for an incoming text message), turn off your cell phones entirely as soon as the ship pulls out from port.

When we were living in the US Virgin Islands in the 2011 winter, we experienced frequent roaming onto the British Virgin Islands towers.

Tip #5: Know your caps!

Most fixed location Internet connections are unmetered, but mobile data is very commonly capped (usually at 5GB/month if you are direct with a carrier), and often comes with outrageous overage charges for “excessive” use. Buying a TV series in iTunes, or allowing your operating system to download a service pack, could end up costing you hundreds of dollars if you are not careful.

To avoid getting cut off without warning, or overage charge nightmares, you need to consciously control what you download and when. Turn OFF all your application and operating system auto-update features, and disable automatic podcast downloads and TV series subscriptions. Save your big downloads for the days when you are visiting friends with a fast cable modem connection, or a coffee shop with both ample caffeine and bandwidth to satisfy your cravings.

And though I am a strong believer in sharing your networks when you can (and I love it when people do), if you are on a capped connection you are a fool if you don’t put a password on your network. Otherwise, somebody parked in the next RV over might end up torenting a few pirated films on your dime. Don’t let this happen to you!

We tend to use over 5GB a month even when we are being extremely conservative with our Internet use, so we have been exceedingly wary of signing up for any capped plan with overage charges. So, we were thrilled to find Millenicom.

Millenicom is a virtual network provider – they do not own towers, and instead buy bulk capacity which they then resell. Their current selection of plans varies from time to time – but generally you can get at least double or quadruple the bandwidth, and sometimes even unlimited data caps. At our last check, they just started offering a plan with 4G service.

And, one of our favorite features – no contracts!  This makes it very easy for us to suspend or cancel service when we go overseas for a bit.

As they bulk buy their bandwidth, they can not advertise on their website which plan is with which carrier.   Usually they are offering Sprint & Verizon, and usually the one with unlimited or higher caps is Sprint.  We’ve found their customer service to be excellent, and they will confirm who the carrier is before you buy.  So be sure to do so before signing up to get the plan that will best suit your needs.

This series has been greatly expanded - and is now available as a convenient 'pay as you wish' eBook!

Another reseller of the Sprint network is Virgin Mobile, and they have just started offering a truly unlimited plan for just $40/month! The catch with Virgin Mobile and many other “prepaid” resellers is that they do not support roaming at all, and can only connect to the towers directly owned by Sprint. This works great if you live in a Sprint-heavy metro area, but it could put a serious damper on your ability to connect while traveling, particularly in more rural areas.

The caps on satellite service work a bit differently – they are based upon daily usage rather than monthly usage. The $79/month HughesNet plan that we are on offers us 425MB/day download before we get FAP’ed (Fair Access Policy) and the connection slows to a crawl for 24 hours. BUT – usage is unlimited between 11PM and 4AM (Pacific time), so you can stay up late or use a smart download manager to handle all your heavy download needs. HughesNet now also offers one free “reset token” each month that can reset your download limits should you ever get FAP’ed accidentally in the middle of a critical project. Additional reset tokens can be purchased for $10/each, or you can just log off for a while and wait for your usage bucket to refill.

Overall I think I prefer the daily limits and caps to the monthly plans with overage fees. It gives us more control, and I love the option of logging on late at night to handle OS updates. With cellular data, there is no such thing as “off peak” usage (a serious oversight, in our opinion).

Tip #6: Avoid contract lock-in!

Though you can often get your hardware cheap or free if you sign a two year contract, these contracts come at a price of severely limiting your technomadic flexibility to change carriers or even countries on a whim.

It is often better to buy used equipment, and avoid the lock-in if you can. If your situation ever changes, you can usually resell used equipment for the same price that you bought it for.

One perk of being out of contract is that you can often suspend your account without penalty when you no longer need that particular pipe to be active. HughesNet for example allows you to suspend service for up to six months of every year without penalty, or you can cancel and then reactivate after any length of time for just $25.

All the Millenicom plans are also contract free, and can be suspended – but only whole calendar months at a time, so the suspension is not nearly as flexible.

Tip #7: Learn parallelizing & batching!

Mobile connections tend to be slow, and even 3G connections can sometimes feel more like a dial up modem.

Another problem that is present with wireless connections but which is particularly prevalent on satellite links is latency – in thise case caused by the round-trip to geosynchronous orbit and back.

To fight slow speeds and high latencies, it is wise to divide your online tasks into things which absolutely need a fast connection, things which can be done on a slow connection, things which can be batched up for bulk downloading later, and things which can be done regardless of speed in the background. This way you can save up your bandwidth hogging tasks for the days you have fast WiFi available, and not stress about them at other times.

Things like email and syncing RSS readers work wonderfully in the background, and you often can’t even tell that you are on a slow or high-latency connection. But web surfing can feel painfully slow if every new page takes minutes to render. To deal with this, parallelize your browsing using multiple tabs. Whenever you see a link you want to follow, select “Open Link in New Tab” and make sure your browser is configured to load tabs in the background. You can queue up dozens of pages this way, and by the time you flip over to reading them they will have fully loaded in the background.

Once you get used to surfing this way, you’ll never go back to using just a single window without any tabs – even on a fast connection.

Tip #8: Boost what you have!

We had a Wilson cellular signal boosting system (ordered from Powerful Signal) built right into our Oliver trailer, featuring an external antenna, an amplifier, and an internal antenna that boosts the signal simultaneously for multiple cellular devices. And now that we’re traveling in a vintage bus, we just brought on board – courtesy of the awesome folks at Powerful Signal, the latest in mobile boosting power – a Top Signal 55db Booster Kit that will, in theory, work while in motion.

Courtesy of ImperfectDestiny.com

These systems aren’t magical, but on several occasions made the difference between having a barely detectable signal and a barely usable one.

We are also planning to add on an extensible mast to raise a directional antenna up even higher off the ground. Our friends Julie & Jim at Imperfect Destiny are having great results pulling in weak cellular signals with their 25′ mast-mounted antenna, often managing to turn a marginal and slow 2G signal into solidly usable 3G.

Tip #9: Satellite tips – spot beams & tripods…

When selecting a mobile satellite setup, you can go with an expensive roof mounted robotically aimed dish that can lock on to a signal with the push of a button, or you can go with a tripod mounted system that has to be manually set up and aimed – an admittedly very cumbersome process.

For us, the choice was obvious when we had our small trailer – our roof is already completely covered with solar panels, so we had no space for a large roof mounted dish. We were considering our satellite system an experiment, so we wanted to avoid something exceedingly expensive and permanent.

A tripod system is also vastly cheaper that a roof mount – we bought ours for $600 used, whereas roof mounted robotic systems cost $4000 – $8000 for the equipment.

Tripods have one other advantage as well – you can better position them to find a gap in the trees to hit the satellite. Even the smallest branch in the way can obscure the signal, so this flexibility can come in handy while still allowing you to park in the cooler shade.

On the other hand, it is not practical to set up a tripod and manually aim a dish to grab a bit of Internet when you are pulling off the road for lunch…

One final satellite specific tip… Make sure that you get a satellite system that supports moving around the country. Some satellite providers (like Wild Blue) use spot beams that limit your usage to within 100 miles or so from your officially provisioned address. This is great for spectrum usage efficiency, but horrible for nomads who roam.

The preferred satellite systems for RV’ers in North America are StarBand and especially HughesNet – both of which (at least unofficially) support moving your dish around the country. But if you go with HughesNet, make sure you get an HN7000S modem and service plan. The newer 9000 modem is actually using spot beam technology and will NOT work if you relocate it.

Tip #10: Final Tip — Manage expectations!

If you are planning in advance on having good net days and bad net days (and even no net days), you can better manage your own expectations around what you will be able to get done online, and when. Managing your expectations is perhaps the ultimate key to avoiding frustration.

And if you are working on the road, proactively share your situation and expected connectivity with your clients, boss and coworkers. Let them know that some days you’ll be fast enough to video chat, others barely able to send an email, and occasionally you may not be connected and reachable at all. If they are in the know and are expecting this, it is rarely a big deal. More often than not, your clients will think that it is friggin cool that you are getting work done for them in the middle of nowhere.

And when you do have critical online work to be done, allow yourself plenty of time to make sure that the connection where you are going is going to be fast and reliable enough. If not – you just might need to relocate and find yourself a plan B.

Sure mobile connectivity can be a major hassle sometimes. But when your view is changing every day, you are able to Skype from the middle of the Black Rock Desert, and handle a contract from the top of a mountain in a national park, the hassles are so absolutely worth it…

This series has been greatly expanded - and is now available as a convenient 'pay as you wish' eBook!

We love our iPhones (and yes, we did just both upgrade to the new iPhone 4), and we are growing increasingly addicted to our iPads (yup, we have two).

We consider both of these fine pieces of technology to be [...]]]> As Technomads, it should be no surprise that we are mobile technology lovers.

We love our iPhones (and yes, we did just both upgrade to the new iPhone 4), and we are growing increasingly addicted to our iPads (yup, we have two).

We consider both of these fine pieces of technology to be essential components of our technomadic arsenal. There is something magical about having the Internet in your pocket, a world’s worth of maps on your lap, email and messaging always with you, music and video on demand, and an abundance of incredible apps that every day make our iGadgets ever more useful tools for facilitating our full time domestic travels.

Oh, and apparently the iPhone actually makes phone calls too. (We really aren’t phone people…)

Today we’d like to share some of favorite apps that we use specifically in our travels. Please note that aside from the apps we were involved with creating, we paid for all of the apps and these are unsolicited reviews.  Just our honest opinions.   But, if you do opt to buy any of these apps off our recommendations, the links below are iTunes affiliate links and we will get a tiny cut.

Apps for Finding RV Parking & Camping

When we first starting looking for apps to create on our own – a campground locater was tops on our list. At the time, we could find no decent options.  More recently however, there seem to be a bunch of them – and we’ve been trying several of them out.  There still does not seem to be one single app that does everything – but there are some promising potentials.  We find ourselves using a combination of apps depending on the situation and type of camping or overnight parking we’re looking for.

	RVParking.com – Free This app claims to have more than 18,000 listings in their database, which is also accessible online at RVParking.com.  Both the website and app are brand new, and the database is still being fleshed out.  We’ve found many duplicates, bad addresses, missing parks, and listings for mobile home parks that don’t allow RVs. The maps in the app don’t seem to auto-update as you scroll through them, making browsing by map a bit of a challenge by having to start with a location search. They do have a unique angle tho that we’re really excited about – integrating in full park info, user reviews, photos and profiles. We’ve been enjoying leaving reviews, and would love to see this website adopted by others.  If it can get a lot of following, it stands to be an excellent central source for finding RV Parking information on the go. And as a free app – it’s definitely worth checking out (just be prepared to do a bit of fact checking until the database gets cleaned up.)
	Camp & RV by Allstays – $2.99 This app uses the same technology as the rest of the Allstays product line to help you find things near highway intersections and freeway exits.  It features a wide variety of RV camping and overnight options – including some public campgrounds, private campgrounds, KOAs, truck stops, Walmarts (including those that don’t allow overnighting), rest areas (including wifi & RV dump availability) and RV repair & parts stores.  Each category shows up on maps with nicely labeled pins so you can quickly scan for what you need. You can also adjust how far from the highways exit you want to search. The interface is fairly intuitive, and we like that the maps auto update with camping options as you scroll around.  Their nifty exit view auto updates as you approach exits to show you what is coming up. We’ve found a fair amount of discrepancies in the database, and a lot of missing campgrounds, so it is not entirely comprehensive.  The app has built in feedback to the developer to submit corrections.  As this is the only app that tracks free overnight parking options, we mainly use this app when we’re in transit and just in need of a place to sleep for the night.
	Campwhere – $5.99 This app only covers public campgrounds – including city, county, national, state, forest service, BLM and Army Corp of Engineer campgrounds.  Since this is our preferred camping style, this app has been a great tool for us to quickly find our public camping options. The database seems pretty comprehensive and accurate, and smartly leaves off campgrounds that are not accessible by vehicle. In the map view, each type of campground is displayed in a different color. The user interface is so incredibly well done, that we wish they had a version that was completely comprehensive of all camping & overnight options so we could only use one app.  There is not much information to be found for each campground listing aside from the number of sites they have, coordinates, weather forcast and web link.  The app would be more useful if it listed amenities provided, prices and more.  Overall, for finding public camping options, this is our top choice app – especially since the app now also works full-screen on the iPad.

If the three apps above could be merged into one comprehensive, user friendly app – we’d be very happy campers!

Apps to Aid General Travel

	HearPlanet: Audio Guide to the World – $4.99 We must admit, we’re partial to this app as were hired to orchestrate its launch at MacWorld 2009 (a very fun project!). Even without a connection to the app, we’d use it often in our travels to get an overview of things around us. It’s an awesome concept – an audio tour guide for the world around you, which are perfect for while you’re driving. The bulk of the database is basically text-to-speech computer voiced Wikepedia entries – however HearPlanet has been hard at work acquiring premium human voiced content. We even have some entries we have created in the app, just search for ‘TFT’ to find them.
	Google Earth – Free Chris is addicted to Google Earth, particularly on the iPad. Google Earth lets you zoom in and browse the entire world, using your fingers to zoom, pan, and tilt in a way that is so much more intuitive than any desktop application. We use Google Earth to scope out the road ahead, and the places we have been – getting a great overview of the towns and terrain we have passed through. And – Google Earth integrates Wikipedia as well – so whenever you see an interesting place, the Wikipedia page for more details is just a click away. Just the other day Chris used Google Earth to “fly” through West Virginia’s New River Gorge, reading about the regions rich mining history as he went. Amazing stuff!
	Roadside America – $2.99 This is an app version of the popular website that tracks all the various roadside attractions across the US – so now you’ll know where all those large balls of twine are!  We enjoy using this app to find cool off-the-beaten path things around as we travel.  We enjoy that users can leave tips and that you can mark the things you’ve seen.  They also have an interesting pricing model – the $2.99 purchase prices gets you 1 of 6 regions of the US.  If you want other regions or the entire US, you can make an in app purchase to activate them.
	CoPilot Live USA - $4.99 The iPhone and iPad are perfect navigation devices with the built in GPS and gorgeous high-resolution screens. For the most part, the built in Google Maps application works well, but only when you have cellular coverage. Because the maps are loaded over the Internet, if you are out in the boonies you can easily end up lost. The Google Maps app also doesn’t do turn-by-turn directions to let you know when a turn is coming up, or automatic re-routing when you veer off course. We’ve been in search of a better navigation solution, and for now we’re trying out CoPilot Live USA. At $4.99 for the entire countries worth of maps, it is an incredible bargain. The app so far has impressed us, though the UI is cumbersome at times, and the GPS seems to occasionally get confused – telling us to “turn right, then turn left” on long straightaways where no turn is necessary. But for the price, you can’t beat it.
	CoPilot Live HD North America –  $29.99 The only iPad-optimized full screen navigation app out so far is CoPilot Live HD North America, but it has gotten some rather poor initial reviews. For now we are waiting for an update to be released, or for TomTom or Magellan to come out with an iPad optimized mapping app.
	State Lines – $2.99 And of course, we have to mention our own app – State Lines. We developed State Lines to fulfill our own desire for a single resource for all those laws and regulations that change as you cross state lines.  The app itself is selling fairly well, despite us lacking the time to really do much of a marketing push on it. We also just released a alcohol specific version for just $.99 that tracks just state alcohol laws, including DUI information.  We must say, we are loving our own app, and we use it frequently as we cross state lines to find out if gas taxes will be cheaper in the next state, if we can overnight at rest areas, if we can buy beer in grocery stores on a Sunday and other such information. We’ve been busy collecting even more data (child safety seat laws, U-turns, more motorcycle information, etc.) that we will be releasing in an expanded version soon.  If you were so kind as to purchase the app and are finding it useful, would you mind leaving us a review in the App Store?

Apps for General Use in Travel

	GasBag Pro – $1.99 When you’re on the road as often as we are, being able to locate the cheapest gas can make a huge difference in our bottom line travel budget. There are several apps available for tracking gas prices, and we’re partial to this one because it also has a built in mileage log.
	Yelp – Free We love Yelp – both the iPhone app and their website. It helps us quickly locate good places to eat – as well as dentists, veterinarians, mechanics, hair salons and more. End users can leave reviews, so it’s a great way to get unbiased opinions about places when we pull into a new town.
	USPS Mobile – Free While we try to minimize the amount of mail we need to handle, we do utilize shipping from time to time. This app from the US Post Office lets us quickly location post offices and mail drop boxes.  Our favorite features is that it also lets us find the automated postal centers, which allow us to do full package shipping after postal office hours.

That’s our current list of our favorite RV travel essentials.

Do you have any other favorites? Please share them here – we are always looking for great new apps to try!

I’ve managed to do some amazing and artistic things with small but advanced pocket cameras like the Canon SX110IS that we relied on throughout most of 2009, but I continuously found myself pushing the edges of what small cameras were capable of [...]]]> For literally years now, I have been craving a more capable camera.

I’ve managed to do some amazing and artistic things with small but advanced pocket cameras like the Canon SX110IS that we relied on throughout most of 2009, but I continuously found myself pushing the edges of what small cameras were capable of – particularly once we started experimenting with light painting and long exposure photography.

But every time I’d begin to get tempted by a DSLR, I’d find myself turned off by the size and weight of the camera bodies and especially the lenses. I don’t have any interest in carting around a suitcase full of photography gear, and when it comes down to it – the absolute best camera is the one that is with you when you stumble across a great shot. I knew that anything bulky or complex would more often than not be left behind.

Every year I’d research the latest in DSLR’s, get tempted, and then talk myself out of it. The bulk (and expense!) just wasn’t worth it – particularly considering I’d only ever want to own just a lens or two. It’s not like I had a 30 year investment in legacy lenses that I cared about….

Panasonic G1 (2009) vs Canon T70 (1984) -- My first major camera purchase, and my most recent...

But then last year I started to hear about the upcoming promise of EVIL cameras, and the new Micro Four Thirds standard being pioneered by Panasonic and Olympus.

While Nikon and Canon DSLR’s are unquestionably excellent, they are victims of their legacy – and to maintain compatibility with their vast library of lenses they are based around the same optical design as film camera’s from decades ago. Central to every traditional DSLR is a mechanical mirror that needs to swing out of the way each shot, and a bulky glass prism that focuses the light onto the optical viewfinder that you look through. Up until just last year most DSLR’s couldn’t even offer a “live preview” on the LCD screen of the shot you were about to take (because the mirror is in the way of the sensor until you press the shutter), and even the newest DSLR’s sacrifice focusing speed while the live view modes are engaged.

EVIL (electronic viewfinder / interchangeable lens) cameras are designed from the ground up to be optimized for digital. They take the larger camera sensor and lens interchangeability of a DSLR, but do away with the dependence on a mirror, prism, and optical viewfinder. Cameras based around the Micro Four Thirds standard can thus offer most of the advantages of a traditional DSLR, and some new capabilities that DSLR’s can only dream about, all in a package that is vastly smaller, simpler, and cheaper than would be possible with traditional optics.

The G1 has instant shutter response - SNAP!

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 was the first camera supporting the Micro Four Thirds standard to come to market, and it received rave reviews and spent most of last year sold out everywhere. But I was still concerned that it might be too big and bulky for my needs, and I never found a camera store with a G1 in stock to check it out in person.

Then late last year the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 came out, offering essentially the same capabilities and Micro Four Thirds lens compatibility of the G1 in an even smaller package that travel photographers online were raving about.

I thought I had found my dream camera, so late last December we tracked down one of the few camera stores around that had the GF1 in stock.
(Recommended: The excellent Schiller’s Camera in St. Louis.)

We drove out to Schiller’s one bitterly cold winter day to try the GF1, and to my surprise and disappointment, I didn’t like it.

The GF1 just didn’t fit fell in my hands.

But Schiller’s had a “barely used” G1 on hand, and it was a joy to hold – particularly when combined with the new 20mm lens that came with the GF1. To my surprise, the slightly larger camera won me over once I had a chance to spend some time with it!

We thus came home with a great deal on an almost new G1, and have been loving it ever since.

Lumix G1 – The Good:

It isn’t worthwhile to rehash some of the other excellent G1 reviews online – such as the epic 33 page opus at dpreview.com. But here are a few of the things that I particularly love about this camera…

For me, what I most love about the G1 is its extreme versatility. The camera is small enough and light enough that it isn’t in the way taking it almost everywhere, but it is large enough that it feels great and stable in your hand. After several months of use, I am not at all regretting going with the G1 over the GF1.

I love the flip out LCD that makes shooting at odd angles easy, and I love the integrated electronic viewfinder that switches on automatically when you bring the camera up to your eye. The G1 is just as at home shooting both “thru the lens” as at arms-length, with no compromises in speed or features when changing modes.

The G1 is fabulous for night photography work...

I love being able to take pictures in RAW mode, particularly now that iPhoto supports Panasonic’s RAW format directly so no conversion process is necessary. The RAW files are 5x the size of JPEG’s, but the extra flexibility when editing has proven to be even more worthwhile than I expected.

I love having a remote shutter release, and support for manual “bulb mode” exposures for light painting and night photography. “Bulb mode” in particular was a feature completely lacking from ANY point-and-shoot camera I could find.

And most of all, I really love the wealth of manual controls that the G1 offers – it is so freeing to at last break free from the limitations of pocket cameras. But when I just want to take a good picture fast, the G1′s automatic modes do a wonderful job as well.

Lumix G1 – What’s Lacking:

The most significant feature the G1 is lacking is any support whatsoever for recording video. This has been frustrating at times, particularly since video has become a standard feature on all new cameras.

Fortunately all of the newer Micro Four Thirds models now do support HD video, so I can look forward to upgrading someday.

Other than the missing video features, the only thing I wish the G1 had was an even better sensor for handling high-ISO recording without noise. The G1′s sensor performs good/great at ISO’s up to 800, but I wish it was even better in its highest sensitivity modes. (The max ISO is 3200)

Lumix G1 – What’s Next:

Panasonic started with the G1, and last year added the ultra-small Lumix DMC-GF1 and the pricey pro-video-quality capable Lumix DMC-GH1 to the lineup.

Exploring depth-of-field and the mysteries of Bokeh...

Panasonic has also just announced two new Micro Four Thirds models coming later in 2010 – the Lumix DMC-G2 is externally nearly identical to the G1, but it adds HD video recording capabilities almost on par with the GH1, and a touch screen that allows for a very innovative “touch to focus” capability which reminds me of the iPhone 3GS. The G2 looks to be a very worthy successor to the G1. (And while supplies last, there are some great deals to be had on the G1 now too!)

Also new is the Lumix DMC-G10, also identically sized to the G1, but cost-reduced by eliminating the swing-out LCD found in the G1 and G2. The G10 does however offer basic HD movie recording support – though it is significantly less capable than the pricier G2.

The great thing is that all of these Panasonic cameras can share the same lenses, and the Micro Four Thirds standard is also being pushed by Olympus. You can freely mix-and-match Olympus and Panasonic Micro Four Thirds lens and bodies, and using lens adaptors you can actually even take advantage of nearly every legacy lens ever made – including lenses from Canon, Nikon, and Leica!

Essential Accessories:

A great camera deserves a great tripod, particularly for playing around with night photography. One of the highest rated tripods on Amazon is the Dolica AX620B100 62-Inch Proline Tripod and Ball Head, and it is indeed amazing – particularly consider how much it versatility you get for the price. It is easily as capable as many tripods costing 3x the price, and it even includes a free tripod bag!

Our second more portable tripod is the UltraPod UP-1, a small tabletop tripod that folds up to fit in a pocket.

Another essential accessory is our Cactus Wireless Shutter Release, which lets me wirelessly trigger the camera from up to 45ft away. This is great for long exposures and light painting, avoiding any risk of bumping the camera while it is recording. The Cactus shutter release even supports “Bulb” mode for arbitrarily long exposures!

We also purchased a Promaster Digital Elite Holster SLR Camera Bag that is a great match for the small size of the G1, a UV filter, a spare battery, and a 12v battery charger.

Future Photo Arsenal Upgrades:

Our photography arsenal isn’t quite complete yet however. One of the joys (and perils!) of embracing an interchangeable lens camera system is the temptation to start collecting lenses. Sometime this year I plan to add the phenomenally small and fast (low light capable) Panasonic LUMIX G 20mm f/1.7 Aspherical Pancake Lens. This lens is so small that when mounted on the G1, the camera actually becomes jacket-pocketable!

I also will eventually want to replace the default 3x zoom kit lens that came bundled with the G1 with a more versatile 10x zoom lens, such as the Panasonic 14-140mm f/4.0-5.8 OIS Lens.

We also could use a small external flash so that we can start playing with side-lighting and other creative lighting effects.

Though upgrading to the new G2 to get the video capabilities is tempting, I think we’ll try to get at least another year’s use out of the G1 first, and then consider our options. Cherie’s excellent and compact Canon SD780IS handles all of our HD video recording needs fabulously for now.

FYI: For more on the SD780 and why we chose it, read this blog post.

Conclusion:

I really like the technology behind and future prospects of the Micro Four Thirds standard that Panasonic and Olympus are pioneering. Traditional SLR cameras were designed for the pre-digital 35mm film era, and the bodies and lenses are less than ideally suited for the digital age as a result.

The Panasonic G1 was the first of a new breed of cameras, and the GH1, GF1, and upcoming G2 and G10 show that the format has staying power.

So far, I couldn’t be happier with our decision to skip the legacy Canon and Nikon DSLR designs to embrace EVIL.

In this case, EVIL is good. *grin*

Most links above go to our Amazon affiliate account. Should you make a purchase based on our review, we’ll get a small cut of the sale (at no increased cost to you) – which we greatly appreciate!

Traveling around the USA, you likely have had some of the same experiences we have…

We get so many questions that it seems like a [...]]]> It seems like every week we get an email or two asking us for more details about our solar RV travel trailer setup, what components we use, what things we run off of solar, and how well being solar powered is working for us overall.

We get so many questions that it seems like a good idea to try and answer them all in one place. So here goes:

What are the specs?

Our solar electrical system consists of:

• 2x AM100 100-watt Solar Panels – These two panels are bolted together on the top of our roof, giving us 200 watts of sun harvesting capability. Our roof mount is technically capable of being tilted, but since we don’t have a ladder to easily reach our roof to make adjustments we have kept our panels perpetually flat – sacrificing some efficiency for a lot of convenience.
• 2x Lifeline GPL-4C 6V AGM Batteries – These two “golf cart” style batteries provide us with 220 amp hours of overall battery storage capacity. AGM-style batteries cost more, but allow for faster and more efficient charging, and they do not require any maintenance.
• Blue Sky 2512iX Solar Boost Charge Controller – A fabulous MPPT-capable charge controller. For more details why we selected this controller, read our solar charge controller options post.
• Blue Sky IPN-ProRemote Battery Monitor – A real battery battery monitor that tracks amps in/out (and not just the battery voltage) is essential to efficiently using solar power. To learn more, check out our RV battery monitoring post.
• Xantrex Freedom 458 Inverter / Charger – The inverter / charger we selected can provide up to 2000 watts of AC power from our batteries when we need it, and when we are plugged in to shore power or our generator the 100 amp charging circuit can rapidly top off our depleted batteries much quicker and more efficiently than any trickle charger.

Did you install the system yourselves?

Chris did the entire solar conversion on his old 16′ Tab trailer himself, and we had been planning to do the work gutting the electrical on our next trailer to bring it up to our standards. But the great folks at Oliver Travel Trailer were willing to work with us to customize our new trailer exactly how we wanted it, so Chris researched and worked out the specifications on our solar system for our Oliver, right down to the gauge wiring.

The Oliver crew then procured, fabricated and installed our system (we were onsite for some of the installation and assisted) as part of our custom build. They even went so far as to make some modifications to their overall trailer design to accommodate our desires for maximum solar space on the roof, such as moving the A/C and vent fan back further to make more space for the panels.

Oliver now offers the system Chris designed as a standard package, and they have sold several units with the “technomadia package” using the same components as ours.
(And no, we don’t get kickbacks…)

What would you do differently?

Overall we have been extremely happy with most of the components we selected.

If we were building the system from scratch we would once again investigate every new possibility for more solar panel wattage and battery capacity, and the one major change we would make would be going with a sine-wave inverter / charger rather than the modified-sine-wave Freedom 458.

(Our 24″ monitor makes a faint whine when plugged into modifed-sine-wave power, even when it is turned off…)

What all can you run off the solar?

We can run all of the following off our solar power:

• Lights
• Ceiling Vent Fan
• 12v small oscillating fan
• 2x Macbook Pro 15″ Laptops
• 1 Mac Mini (our trailer’s media and backup server), plus attached external drives
• Cradle Point ctr350 Router (converts our Sprint aircard to wifi)
• iPhone and camera battery chargers
• 24″ Dell Ultrasharp Monitor (via the inverter)
• Electric jacks/levels
• Water pump
• Furnace fan
• Cellphone booster system
• Small single serve smoothie blender (via the inverter)

We have optimized our systems so that nearly everything can run directly off of 12v power, allowing us to mostly avoid needing to turn on the inverter. The only things which we are unable to run directly off of 12v is our 24″ LCD monitor, and our small blender. The inverter has a bit of a power overhead just being on, so we minimize our reliance on it as much as possible.

Now.. we don’t run all these things all the time, mind you.

What don’t you run off solar?

Our refrigerator can run off 12v power, but it’s incredibly inefficient in this mode and it would quickly drain our batteries even on the sunniest of solar-producing days. Propane refrigerators like ours cool by producing heat, so it is most efficient burning propane when we’re off-grid, or 110v when we are plugged in.

It is also essentially impossible to power an air conditioner off of a solar system – the demands of even a small 1000-1500W air conditioner would require a huge expanse of solar panels, and massive banks of batteries to provide for even a few hours of air conditioning per day.

When we’re off-grid and really need it, we have a small 2000 watt Honda EU2000 generator converted to run off propane that will run our air conditioner. Our furnace (aside from the fan) and hot water heater are also propane powered.

We left the microwave/toaster oven option off our unit, though technically our inverter would be large enough to power it. But even though we could, running a microwave for even 15 minutes a day would impact our battery life, and honestly, it’s not our style of cooking anyway. We greatly appreciate the extra pantry space that decision afforded us.

How have you optimized your systems to run off solar?

All our our lights are converted to LED. This is a fairly easy switch to make, and we used LED Wholesalers to find replacement bulbs for our existing fixtures. We spent about $200 to switch all our bulbs out – pricier than standard bulbs, but so worth it for the power savings. We can turn all our lights on, and combined they use less power than a single halogen bulb previously did.

We have 12v MacBook power supplies from MikeGyver and HyperMac for our MacbookPros, that allow us to run our laptops without the power overhead of the inverter needing to be on. And we use a 12v power supply from Carnetix for our Mac Mini.

How long can you depend on solar power only?

It depends.

Summer? Winter? Shade? Clouds?

We designed our system with a goal of enabling a full day of computing (8-12 hrs) for both of our Macbook Pros, plus using the lights, vent fan, and occasional water pump use.

With moderate use of our technology, we can easily go several days on end without even thinking about power much. During the summer with daily full sun, we have lasted as long as 12 days completely off grid without needing to top off with our generator – and we probably could have lasted much longer.

More typically, we tend to go 3-6 days at a time without much concern, providing we’re not in the shade or there aren’t overly overcast days.

If we are trying to make our batteries last, it is important to pay close attention to our batteries and how quickly we are draining or charging them. We ran a series of tests on every individual electrical item we own in various states of usage to know exactly how much power everything draws, so we can optimize our usage as needed

Our BlueSky battery monitor is absolutely essential here – it gives us a real time indications of our power usage, which keeps us very in tune with our system.

When we are trying to maximize our efficiency and off-grid stamina, we do need to be conservative with our power usage. We keep our power consumption to a minimum, and reward ourselves at night with a movie on the ‘big screen’ if we’ve ended the day with a good power score. Our goal is to always keep the batteries at above 50% capacity to ensure their health. Generally we can charge the batteries around 20% in a good day of moderate use and sunshine, so anytime we start creeping below 80% at night we know we are likely to soon need an alternate source of energy to top us back off.

Are you off-grid all the time?

No.

We stay in a wide variety of places – and we have our solar system to increase our options, not to depend on it completely. Our ability to run completely off solar is dependent upon the weather and access to a clear sunny sky. In the winter, with shorter days, we tend to need to be plugged in more. If we’re parked at a friend’s house in partial shade or at a shady campground, we’ll also usually need a little help power wise.

And if we encounter a string of heavy overcast days, we can’t rely strictly on solar either.

As our batteries also charge off our tow vehicle’s alternator as we drive (and yes, the solar panels continue to top off the batteries as we drive too), our transition days tend to be unplugged – as we have plenty of power to keep us computing overnight. Even if we have no sun at all, a full battery charge can keep us going at least two days without needing topping off. And when in major transitions, such as from Washington DC to San Francisco last summer, we can go a couple months without ever plugging in. Days on the road tend to provide lots of sunlight for the panels, as well as plenty of hours charging off the trucks alternator.

It’s really difficult to give an estimate of how much time we spend plugged in versus not, just because there really is no ‘typical’ in our lives. For example, we may choose to stay in a major city – such as San Francisco last year – for a couple months, where it makes more sense to get a monthly RV space with power included.

But even when we are plugged in, we sip power. The last time we had metered electricity, we used about $20 worth of electricity a month – and that was not being conservative with our usage at all.

Do you consider your solar system adequate enough?

We wouldn’t want any less than our current battery capacity and panel size, and while more of both would be nice, it is not essential.

A good rule of thumb is to target 100 watts of solar and 100 amp hours of battery per person, minimum.

After almost a full two years of relying on our current system, our solar endurance has certainly never been much of a limiting factor, and having solar has given us quite a bit of flexibility. We certainly couldn’t imagine living without it.

We are looking at potential future upgrades in our battery capacity, as that is more of a limiting factor or us than anything else. If we had larger batteries we could bank more of the energy we collect to get through overcast days. We’ve also pondered adding more solar panels on top of our Tundra’s camper shell, and perhaps an additional battery bank in the truck bed, now that we have more flat surface to play around with.

But given that we don’t really feel we’re lacking, these upgrades are not a high priority.

Once you’ve had solar, traveling without feels limiting and uncivilized.

But imagine how you would feel if you inadvertently racked up over $10,000 in charges after just an hour or two of web surfing and email while in a foreign country?

It happens, even [...]]]> Most people know that international roaming charges can be pricey. But few realize just how outrageous these roaming charges can be.

But imagine how you would feel if you inadvertently racked up over $10,000 in charges after just an hour or two of web surfing and email while in a foreign country?

It happens, even to tech industry professionals who should know better.

Waiting for a flight in Toronto recently, Nilofer Merchant of Rubicon Consulting used her AT&T data card to catch up online rather than pay the $10 charge to use the airport’s WiFi.

Her phone bill for that usage? $10,609.27.

Our good friend Michael Mace works with Nilofer at Rubicon, and he has written in depth about Nilofer’s misfortune and how the mobile carriers routinely rip off customers who are roaming. If you travel and use mobile data, read this before it is too late!

Michael has to dig deep to find the fine print that discloses these outrageous fees, and he concludes that this warning printed in big red letters on the top of every phone bill would be a bit more appropriate:

“Using wireless data outside your home country is about as smart as juggling chainsaws. In a single day, you can build up charges large enough to buy us a new car. We’re constantly amazed that people keep falling for the roaming thing, but you know what PT Barnum supposedly said about suckers. If after reading this you’re still stupid enough to use roaming data, please stop by our headquarters the next time you’re in Dallas and we’ll buy you a drink (although knowing you, we can probably stick you with the tab for that as well.)”

It is little wonder that people grow to hate their phone companies. For a more in depth look at what the various carriers charge for roaming, check out this post as well.

Protect Yourself: On your phone, turn OFF data roaming BEFORE you leave the country or board a cruise ship. On the iPhone, this option can be found under the “Network” panel of the “General” section of the “Settings” application. On other phones, this setting may be much harder to find.

If you forget to disable data roaming, your phone may be silently pulling down email updates and racking up a huge bill without you even touching it. Be especially wary on cruise ships – the “cellular aboard” plans have burned many travelers who never even take their phones out of their luggage. Turn your phone off before the ship leaves port!

If you know that you will need wireless data during a trip, call your phone company in advance to confirm the rate, and to ask about special international data plans. If you have an unlocked GSM-compatible phone, you may also be able to purchase a local SIM card and vastly cheaper data plan in whatever country you are visiting.

And if you have a data card for your laptop, don’t even think about using it abroad unless you are certain about what charges you might face. A laptop can burn through data MUCH faster than any phone, and you could literally spend thousands of dollars before you even realize it. Your best bet is to seek out WiFi and to get online that way.

Think about it. TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. In a bit over an hour.

It could happen to you.

Consider yourself warned.

the [...]]]>

Camp STS-130 in Titusville, FL

Since Saturday afternoon, we’ve been camped along the Indian River in Titusville, Florida – right off Highway US 1.  We’ve been enjoying a completely awesome nomadic rendezvous with Sean Welsh and Louise Hornor of Our Odyssey as temporary neighbors (it’s our first in person meeting after years of cyber stalking each other around

Sean & Louise of Our Odyssey

the country.)  We’ll post most later about our time with them.

What we’re here for was to watch the last planned night shuttle launch. And one of the last five shuttle launches, period.

I lived on the Space Coast of Florida for 12 years before going nomadic. Stepping outside to watch a launch is an amazing part of everyday life here, and an experience that never gets old. I feel very blessed to have serendipitiously ended up back on the Space Coast, in the perfect area to watch this last night launch.

Only on two other occasions had I made the effort to get a close up view and see the entire launch from engine ignition.

Our view across the Indian River - VAB & Launch Pad

There’s been a temporary RV encampment here along US1 that has been fun to be part of, it’s been sort of a ‘Quartzite East’.  The City of Titusville allows free overnight camping on their owned land during a 36 hour window surrounding launch time, something we greatly appreciate!

And we have had the most spectacular of views.

The first attempt of the launch was scrubbed Sunday morning due to low clouds in the area. However, we had an awesome time hanging out with Sean and Louise.  Nomad-stalker, James Schipper and his partner Maria, also came over from the west coast of Florida for the launch and for our first in person meeting.  The four of us huddled all night long in our little Oliver Travel Trailer until the last minute no-go call.

This morning however, at 4:14am EST – all systems were GO (or GEAUX for you Saints fans!), and we witnessed an amazing launch. We also had the nomadic Browski family stop by for a bit before they headed on to their shuttle view hotel room.  The past couple days have been quie the nomadic tweetup!

We recorded video to share:

Direct link to the video for those on RSS/E-mail. By the way, this HD video was taken with my ultra compact Canon PowerShot SD780 – which I got back in July and am still totally loving.

I had a tear in my eye watching this magical moment of technological splendor, knowing that the shuttle program is soon coming to an end. And most likely, this will be the last shuttle launch I’ll ever get to witness in person.  What a beauty!

Lots of folks getting cameras for the holidays.. here are some that are most frequent buys and apparently [...]]]> For those curious about what people are buying this season, I thought I’d share my observations about what are the most popular items being shipping based on what I’m personally packing while we ‘workamp’ in Kansas.

Lots of folks getting cameras for the holidays.. here are some that are most frequent buys and apparently incredible deals right now:

Canon PowerShot SD1200IS 10 MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.5-inch LCD (Dark Gray)

Nikon D90 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera with 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED AF-S VR DX Nikkor Zoom Lens

Canon Digital Rebel XSi 12.2 MP Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens (Black)

GPS’s in general are shipping out by the truckload.. here are just a few that I frequently see in large batches.. incredible deals on these things! Just a couple months ago when we were investigating options for ourselves these same models were selling at 2-3 times the price.

Garmin nüvi 265W/265WT 4.3-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator with Traffic

Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS Receiver With Heart Rate Monitor

Garmin nüvi 855 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator with Speech Recognition

And while I tend to grab the tech stuff (it’s my way of keeping sane.. I love my tech!), I do get crates of toys too. Here are the ones I’m most noticing, and that look both techy and educational:

Vtech Tote and Go Pink Laptop

LeapFrog Scribble and Write

LeapFrog Clickstart My First Computer

And for my least favorite item to package but lots are shipping

Apple iPod touch 32 GB (3rd Generation) NEWEST MODEL
(It’ difficult to package because Apple has made the UPC code so incredibly tiny on the package, that it takes for ever to get a proper scan on it. Otherwise, their packaging is uber beautiful.)

And in the department of the weirdest and most entertaining item I’ve packed lots of:

The Mooning Garden Gnome

Disclaimer: The above are not our endorsement of any of the items, as we’ve not used any of them. The links are affiliate links.

In addition to evaluating usefulness, geek-factor and quality, we have several unusual but critical considerations to take into account when choosing technology – particularly size and power consumption. Living in around 80 square feet of space, [...]]]> As technology enabled nomads (thus ‘Technomad’), our mobile technology arsenal plays a critical role in our chosen lifestyle.

In addition to evaluating usefulness, geek-factor and quality, we have several unusual but critical considerations to take into account when choosing technology – particularly size and power consumption. Living in around 80 square feet of space, stuff has to be carefully considered for fit. And since we are often attempting to live off of just 200 watts (at high noon on a clear summer day!) of solar power, we try to get the most out of every amp hour we consume.

We’re constantly updating and evolving our technology, however here is what is in our current arsenal:

Computers

Cellular Services & Connectivity

Navigation & Weather

Cameras & Printers

Disclaimer: Yes, all of the above links to Amazon are affiliate links.

Taking away our option to move our house creates an interesting feeling that we’ve not felt [...]]]> One itch that being nomadic scratches is my seeming need for new experiences, new surroundings and a change of pace. This past week, our Jeep which is our tow vehicle, has been in the shop having transmission issues resolved.

Taking away our option to move our house creates an interesting feeling that we’ve not felt in quite a while – being stir crazy! And it’s not like we’re not trapped in paradise – where we’re at in southern California, is simply fantastic.

So, without a way to change our physical surroundings, fellow nomad and lifestyle designer – Cody McKibben of Thrilling Heroics - released his new free WordPress Theme, ThrillingTheme, as the exact right moment!

Using my stir-crazy energy, I put it to use to give Technomadia.com a make over that I had begun contemplating with much help from Chris to get the theme installed for me. Our old site was great, but we were starting to reach the limits of what the theme could do for us.

So, we’re pleased to announce our new look and feel on our virtual home (for those of you on RSS, you’ll need to click through to see it) with much gratitude to Cody for providing an excellent theme! I’m looking forward to what this new foundation can help us build upon.

—

In other news, during our Jeep’s maintenance they discovered some frame damage where our tow hitch attaches – likely caused by going over too many speed bumps or something. We’re currently in search of a body shop and/or welder in the San Diego area to fix it up next week.  More than likely we’ll be relocating to San Diego this weekend to rendezvous with a whole gang of awesome folks, and then moving eastward with an aim to St. Louis for the holidays.

For as long as 802.11 has existed, some geeks have enjoyed the challenge of building a [...]]]>

Phone Car - Burning Man 2008

If you looked hard enough, for years now there have been options for communicating with the outside world at Burning Man via internet or satellite phone. (Not to mention via the exaggeratedly disgruntled Black Rock City Post Office…)

For as long as 802.11 has existed, some geeks have enjoyed the challenge of building a public WiFi network in the desert — it is very literally an expression of their art. I first ran across WiFi on the playa in 2003, and in 2006 I was able to photo-blog the construction progress of the Conexus Cathedral, often using a porta-potty as an office near one of the few open WiFi connections to find shelter from the wind, sun, and dust.

But most Black Rock City citizens remained blissfully unaware of the ever increasing availability of WiFi in the city.

Voice connections have always been even harder to find. A few years ago I ran across confused late-night party people lined up at a phone booth in the open desert. I overheard conversations like this — “wow, this thing actually dialed! Oh, hi mom…. Yeah, I’m at Burning Man…. I didn’t think this phone booth was real…. Oh, it is 4AM?!? Sorry!”

Bizarre world-bending installation art at its finest.

But cell phone service on the playa?!? No way. It has always seemed like Black Rock City would be the last place on earth the get cell coverage. Sure, some burners have been experimenting with developing open source GSM software that is part of a project to bring cheaper mobile phone service to villages in remote parts of the developing world, but their on-playa network in 2008 only accidentally allowed a few dozen outbound calls to go through. That connectivity was a bug, not a feature.

But this year…. AT&T and Verizon (with no cooperation from Burning Man itself) actually set up a temporary wind and solar powered cell tower on some leased land just off the playa. Connectivity, for better or for worse, had come at last to Black Rock City.

Fittingly – this year’s Burning Man theme: “Evolution”

Many were up in arms about how the arrival of cell phone service might change Burning Man.  We even received a reply to a tweet telling us to ‘put the phone down!’.  There were threats of protests, and some anticipation of people walking down the streets of Black Rock City shouting out ‘Can you hear me now?’.   However, by and large, cell phone use was kept close to home, and mostly when away from camp cell phones were not particularly noticeable.

Particularly after the city gates opened and the population swelled, availability of a line out became more scarce. Five bars isn’t very useful when there are 40,000 people trying to share a reported outgoing capacity of just 40 simultaneous calls.  We were however able to check e-mail just enough to not feel completely negligent of our clients. As full time traveling technomads, there really isn’t much difference for us between ‘real life’ and ‘vacation’ anyway.

Having some connectivity was also invaluable in organizing a camp of 70 nomads, half of whom were going to camp at a location that we land grabbed just as the gates open, and which we needed to try and get the word out as to where. There were also plenty of last minute logistics and challenges to handle – and while you can just trust in playa magic to work everything out, it’s awfully nice to hear a friendly voice on the line to help figure out the details.

And having some cellular service helped folks in emergency situations, such as a fellow Camp Nomadian receiving word of a family emergency and being able to coordinate an early departure.

Temple Burn 2009

A side effect of so much connectivity at Burning Man was much more information flowing out to the world in a streaming fashion. This year, those tracking Burning Man from their computers at home likely saw and heard about more things at Burning Man than those of us actually there.  Catching up with my mom yesterday, she was telling us all about the art projects and news she saw posted during the week – she had seen more of the playa art projects than we had!

Watching Burning Man from afar is no where close to actually being there. So much of Burning Man just simply can’t be relayed outside of Black Rock City. It’s about being there. It’s about enduring white outs, wind storms and heat with your community. It’s about the emotional highs and lows. It’s about the amazing connections you make. It’s about actually interacting with the art, not just viewing it.  It’s about conversing with an artist late at night about his vision, his challenges and his passion. It’s about being in the crowd at the Temple Burn and really feeling the release of so much emotions.

It’s about the life changing experiences and transformations.

And it’s about watching the most amazing full moon rise on the horizon with burn platforms dancing in the distance and fireworks crackling in the sky, while sipping fantastic home brew with new friends.

More than anywhere else on earth, to understand it, you just have to be there.

So now we will update our office view regularly (which may be where [...]]]> Using a combination of the WordPress widget QuickFlickr, a Flickr account and a free iPhone app called ‘Flickr Sendr’ – we have added a new feature to our blog – our current office view!

So now we will update our office view regularly (which may be where we’re currently parked, visiting or shots from the road) to tease and taunt you about what a great time we’re having. Look over there to your right and down a bit —->   to see it.

For those of you on RSS or E-mail updates, click directly to our blog page at http://www.technomadia.com/blog/ to see this new feature!  Come visit often to get your daily dose of temptation to hit the road.

To recap, here are some quotes from our initial review:

One particular frustration that has vexed me for over three years now is that there is no [...]]]> In May I took a close look at the MacBook 12v power supplies offered by Mikegyver.com – and at first I came away extremely impressed.

To recap, here are some quotes from our initial review:

One particular frustration that has vexed me for over three years now is that there is no “official” way to power any MagSafe-equipped Apple laptops directly off of 12v power. As full-time technomads living in a small solar-powered trailer, we have ample access to 12v DC, while 120v AC is a rare luxury for us. Sure, we could use an inverter – but (as you will see) that inserts a lot of overhead and inefficiency. We would much rather run our lives directly off of 12v as much as possible.

…

We checked out the (Mikegyver modified) Kensington All-In-One, and it has quickly become one of the most indispensable items in our technology arsenal. We have been particularly thrilled with no longer needing to power up our DC-to-AC inverter to power our laptops.

Our love of the Kensington soon faded however, as we discovered the downside of one of the All-In-One’s features – the dreaded low-voltage cutoff.

Low-Voltage Cutoff – More Bug Than Feature:
To protect you from draining and damaging your vehicle battery, the Kensington power supply automatically shuts down (and stays shut down) whenever its input voltage drops below 12 volt. At first glance, this seems like a smart thing to do – a battery bank that is reading less than 12 volts has already been 50% drained. (And ideally, you should never drain most vehicle batteries below 50%!)

But… Things aren’t always that simple.

If you are drawing a lot of current out of a battery (such as when you are charging a depleted laptop), it will register a lower voltage even if it has not been drained nearly that far yet. And if you have a long relatively thin gauge wire between your battery and your 12v jack (which is very common), this voltage drop will be even further exaggerated.

In our case, trying to charge a drained MacBook Pro off of even 75% charged RV batteries would sometimes draw too much current and trigger the Kensington power supply to shut down.

It was extremely frustrating – the Kensington became useless to us at the very time that we needed the increased power efficiency it offered the most.

And though most car batteries will suffer damage if drained below 50%, the true deep-cycle batteries used in solar and RV setups like ours can handle up to an occasional 80% discharge without problem. We hated being prevented from fully taking advantage of our off-grid electrical system.

For our needs, the Kensington increasingly kept failing to live up to our expectations.

iGo Everywhere:
Fortunately – when he realized the nature of the problems we were having, Mike of Mikegyver.com sent us an iGo Everywhere130 power supply to try as an alternative. It worked wonderfully.

NOTE: The iGo Everywhere130 is an older model than the iGo EverywhereMAX linked to above. The primary difference is that the EverywhereMAX is physically smaller.

The iGo Everywhere130 is significantly chunkier than the Kensington All-In-One, and it weighs twice as much. But… It doesn’t cut out when voltages drop – which makes it vastly better suited for some types of use.

Mikegyver currently offers both the Kensington All-In-One and iGo EverywhereMAX modified to support Apple’s proprietary MagSafe power connector for $229. Normally Mikegyver steers customers towards the Kensington because “the Kensington is lighter and slimmer”. Though the EverywhereMAX is reportedly smaller than the Everywhere130 we were testing, I can imagine that the small size of the Kensington is indeed a better option for a road warrior who needs to carry a go-anywhere power supply with them all the time.

But if you are planning to run off of deep-cycle batteries or solar, do NOT get the Kensington!

We have been using the iGo Everywhere130 for the past month, and we have been extremely pleased with it. Testing it head-to-head against the Kensington All-In-One, it was easy to create situations where the Kensington would shut off (and not come back until it is physically unplugged and plugged in again) while the iGo just kept on charging.

Just like the Kensington, the iGo is a combination AC & DC power supply that can power your laptop off of traditional wall current, a car power jack, or an airline power jack. They both have a minimal 0.1A no-load current draw, meaning that it can be left plugged in all the time without fear. The iGo and Kensington seemed to perform equivalently while charging too – both offering up overall power consumption vastly lower than if we had to power up our inverter to use Apple’s AC power supply.

Conclusion:
If you need to run an Apple laptop off of solar or deep-cycle batteries, the iGo Everywhere offered by Mikegyver is a great way to do it. If you just need to charge your laptop in an airplane or your car while in transit, the smaller and sleeker Kensington All-In-One is the way to go.

There are other emerging alternative however… The comment thread (37 comments and counting!) for my previous post has generated some “spirited” discussion, with representatives from HyperMac and Power My Mac both espousing the benefits of their own MacBook 12v power supplies.

We’ve gotten in a Hypermac power supply that we are testing now, and hopefully we will get a Power My Mac supply to throw into the mix soon too.

It wasn’t long ago that it seemed as if there were no alternatives for powering an Apple laptop off of 12v. Now there are options galore. In a future post, I will try and dissect the tradeoffs between them all.

February 2010 Update: Our Mikegyver iGo Everywhere has bit the dust as of a couple months ago. Currently, it’ll run our laptops but not charge them.  Our Mikegyver lasted less than 6 months of usage, which we don’t find all too impressive.  Our HyperMac however is still running like a champ. And yes.. a review of the HyperMac is overdo.  Perhaps someday. Power My Mac never followed through with a review unit.

We rely on this generator to top off our batteries when the solar is not able to keep [...]]]> Though we normally rely on our 200 watt solar system for power, one of the essentials in our technomadic toolbox is our small Honda EU2000 generator that has been modified to run off of propane.

We rely on this generator to top off our batteries when the solar is not able to keep up due to shade, weather, or our own heavy use. And we also turn to the generator to power our air conditioning on the hot days when our roof fans aren’t enough to keep us cool and comfortable.

The Honda EU2000i is a fabulous 2000 watt generator that is small, quiet, weighs just 46lbs, and it gets great fuel economy. We found ours online last summer at Wise Sales for just $850, with free shipping – way less than from any other retailer. (Honda stupidly prohibits dealers publishing prices online – but I suffer no such limitation…)

Most RV air conditioners require a much larger 2400 watt or even 3000 watt generator to work, but we specifically sized the air conditioner in our Oliver to work with this generator. Instead of the (formerly standard) 13,000 btu model, we specced a power-efficient 9,200 btu Coleman Polar Cub that still cools great, but which we can manage with the smaller, lighter, and more economical Honda EU2000 option.

Of course, the big downside of any generator is the need to deal with fuel. Carrying around canisters of gas for the few times we might need our generator isn’t ideal.

Instead of dealing with gasoline, I tracked down a propane conversion kit to allow our Honda EU2000i to run off of our Oliver’s ample 50lb propane supply. I installed the “Tri Fuel Kit” from Central Maine Diesel that allows the Honda EU2000i to run on gasoline, propane, or natural gas.

(The kit is $179, or a pre-converted Honda EU2000i is $1269 + shipping…)

When I bought the kit last year, I was the very first customer to get the “installs in minutes” kit, so it actually took me several hours to figure out how to swap out our Honda’s carburetor and reroute the necessary hoses with only a picture to go on. The carburetor removal instructions I found posted here were invaluable, and in theory my feedback has by now helped Central Maine Diesel create better documentation to include with their kit.

We have been thoroughly happy with how well our generator setup has performed over the past year. It worked great on the playa at Burning Man, and even during sweltering 100+ degree days in Zion National Park the generator was able to keep up despite the high altitude (near 4000 feet).

And when charging the batteries, I am able to sustain a 60+ amp charge current, which allows for a very rapid recharge of our battery banks.

Of course – you have to pick – you can’t charge batteries and run the air conditioner at the same time without overloading the generator. But, this setup sure beats carrying around a 135lb 3000 watt Honda.

Unlike some RV’s, our generator is not permanently mounted and there is no electric start.  But setup is still easy. The Oliver factory folks hooked up a low-pressure propane hose on the tongue for us so all we have to do is plug in a hose and power cable, open a valve, and then pull the starter cable a few time to get our generator fired up for use. This detached setup also allows us to take advantage of the flexibility that comes from having a small generator that is so portable.

For us, this setup is the perfect backup power source. And though we haven’t ever needed to, if we ever do need to resort to gasoline, this kit (unlike some conversions) still gives us the option.

We love it – particularly in the summer!  *grin*