Category: Technology
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Keeping my Lithium Battery Warm
If you are familiar with lithium batteries (LiFePo4) you know that they are not happy when they are cold. Charging a LifePo4 battery when the battery is below freezing or storing it below -4°F will damage the battery. Some batteries have built-in circuitry that cuts off charging at damaging temperatures and some have built-in heaters.…
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Traveling Technology – Navigation and Mapping
No doubt that modern navigation technology – GPS & mapping apps – have made navigation much easier. Navigation apps however, still have a lots of opportunity for improvement. Here’s my rant take on the current state of smartphone navigation apps. A navigation application usable for long distance travel needs to have a features that are…
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Camper Electrical – Version 4
A couple electrical-related things happened on our September 2020 trip. The result is ‘Camper Electrical Version 4’. 😁 Our OEM WFCO battery charger/converter failed, which meant that we could not charge our batteries even if we were plugged into an electric outlet. I bought an inexpensive automotive charger to use to top off the AGM…
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Battery Monitoring – You can never have too much data
Edit: An up-to-date description of the vans technology. I’ve been monitoring battery status with a pair of Thornwave battery monitors. They work OK, but because they do not log data. I have to be within Bluetooth range to check the batteries. There is no history, so I have to guess what happened when I’m not…
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Portable Solar
Make a note. Compressor refrigerators are nice, but they draw significant amounts of power. Ours is large, poorly vented and poorly insulated, so it sucks (power). We’d like to be able to stay away from electric campgrounds more often, but because the 200W of rooftop solar doesn’t keep up with the refrigerator, our battery capacity…
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Travel & Technology – Hits & Misses
I thought it would be useful to enumerate some of the things that worked well and didn’t work well during this last trip. Here’s the first ‘hit and miss’ list. Technology hits: Data plans: We have two ATT phones on a cheap 4GB shared data plan with about 3GB rollover and a Verizon 8800L MiFi…
Michael Janke 