Hi there. For the past week we were staying at a state park without Wi-Fi, using our cellular modem. So I took a break from doing blog posts to preserve bandwidth, since it was a new service, and we didn’t know how fast we’d go through it. It turned out that we used about half of the capacity if we were using it full-time, and most of the time we expect to have campground Wi-Fi, so we don’t need to be so careful with it. Which is good.

Anyway, I’ve got a bunch of topics and pictures to share, so you can look forward to daily posts for a while.

As you might expect, tires are rather important with an RV. So to help keep an eye on them, we purchased a tire pressure monitoring system, or TPMS. It has sensors on each valve stem, plus a signal repeater, and a display in the cockpit.

Here’s a flow-through tire pressure sensor for a front tire; flow-through means it has a normal cap for filling, and the air can go through the sensor, making it more convenient:

Another sensor, for an inner rear tire; the number “5” is a sticker to identify the placement:

A sensor for an outer rear tire:

Part of the system is that it can monitor the truck tires too. Our truck has its own built-in TPMS, but we can’t see that when towing the truck behind the coach, and it’s important to watch them too, since our coach could drag the truck with flat tires without noticing. The pressure sensors for the truck are cap style, i.e. they replace the valve cap, and have to be removed to top up the air:

Since our coach and truck totals 60 feet front to back, the TPMS comes with a repeater unit, to help the sensor signals from the truck tires reach the front of the coach:

They recommended mounting the repeater in the chassis bay at the back of the coach:

So I hooked it up to 12V connectors there; the thin red and black wires:

The repeater is mounted to a wall in the bay:

Here’s the display unit in the cockpit; it cycles through each of the tires, blinking each in turn, and showing the current temperature and pressure of each tire. If one gets too hot, or the pressure drops, it sounds an alarm:

I have it on the dash where I can see it:

While at Poulsbo RV, we took the opportunity to replace the flooded cell batteries with maintenance-free AGM batteries.

AGM stands for Absorbed Glass Mat, which just describes the way the batteries are formulated. They’re similar in performance to the basic flooded cell ones, with one key difference: they don’t need to have the water checked and topped up frequently. One less thing to worry about.

Here are the flooded cell batteries that came with the coach; six 6V batteries in series and parallel, for 12V:

And our new AGM batteries:

Our coach has a media cupboard in the bedroom, below the TV there, that manages the various inputs and outputs of the TVs.

Here’s what the media cupboard looked like before we bought the coach, with a Winegard Trav’ler satellite dish controller, a Dish TV box (that the previous owner removed), and a 3D Blu-ray player:

Our coach has a foldable satellite dish plus a TV antenna, as you can see in my aerial photos post, though we won’t use either, since we’re “cord cutters”; we don’t watch broadcast TV.

An expanded view, showing the compartment to the left with HDMI switch boxes, plus how we had it after moving in, with Jenn’s PS5 instead of the Dish box:

The two HDMI splitters take the outputs of two devices (formerly Dish and Blu-ray) and squirts them via CAT6 cable to the four TVs of the coach:

The four TVs are in the bedroom, the main one in the living room, another one above the cockpit (which we’re unlikely to use much), and one outside. Each TV can choose to show either input (or cable/antenna TV), so multiple TVs can show the same thing, or different things.

There are a bunch of component cables for additional inputs, but we’re not using those:

Here’s what the media cupboard looked like after setting things up, with an Apple TV plus the PS5 and its hard disk on the top shelf, and a Pepwave modem, Nintendo Switch dock, and the Blu-ray player on the bottom shelf. (We probably won’t use the Blu-ray player, but doesn’t hurt to leave it. And I since moved the Pepwave out of the cupboard, as it interfered with the signal strength.) There’s also a HDMI switch to change between the PS5, Switch, and Blu-ray, going to one of the splitters, with the other splitter dedicated to the Apple TV:

Of course, we had to test it by firing up Jenn’s current favorite game, Red Dead Redemption II, on the PS5; here it is on the main TV:

As I said, any of the devices can be displayed on any of the four TVs, so she can play on any of them; in nicer weather, she’ll be able to play outside. Or we’ll be able to watch TV anywhere. Quite nice.

An issue with our coach that I caused: back in the homestead we had a sturdy gas cooktop, so I’d bang a spoon on a pot to dislodge stuck food. Well, it turns out that glass induction cooktops are a bit more sensitive than I’m used to; the very first time I used it, and banged as usual, it stopped working. Who knew? Oops!

So, I purchased a replacement cooktop (the same kind, albeit new), and yesterday I swapped them out.

Here’s the old cooktop after being pried out (with the DishDrawer dishwasher visible below):

The new cooktop:

The bottom; it just plugs in to an outlet under the kitchen counter:

The new cooktop installed:

The cover restored and label removed; all done:

I’ll try to remember not to bang on this one!

I previously mentioned that we removed the couches from our coach so we could use our recliners and add a desk. Well, while at Olde Stone Village RV park one of our first projects was to assemble a desk.

The desk is for Jenn to do her work, and includes drawers and a keyboard tray, plus an external screen and laptop. Those are mounted on arms, so they can be swung aside when we want to watch TV, as the main TV is on a “televator”, i.e. it raises out of the shelf behind the desk. (We haven’t gotten around to setting up the TVs yet; another project for this week.)

To the left of her desk is a top-access litter box and litter bin for our cat Paladin, who is currently being boarded; we’ll pick him up on Sunday. Hopefully he’ll accept that new box!

A peek behind the screen and laptop support arms, mounted to the desk:

Update — the drawers slid open while driving, which isn’t ideal, so I added some roller catches that should hold them closed: