Another essential gadget I’ve had for quite some time is the VIAIR 450P air compressor, to inflate the tires on our coach.

I already had a tire inflator that plugged into a 110V outlet, which I’ve previously used for truck tires and other tires. But it can’t quite handle the maximum 130 PSI of the coach tires, plus is very noisy. (I inflate the front tires to 120 PSI.)

The VIAIR unit is much quieter, and automatically shuts off when not actively inflating.

Unlike the old one, this one connects to a 12V source like a car battery. I hook it up to the truck’s battery; the truck needs to be running while in use, to avoid draining the battery.

I keep it in the back of our truck, so we’ll be able to use it while driving the truck around if needed.

It comes in a handy bag, and includes two long coiled hoses, so I can leave the compressor by the truck, and reach all of the coach tires:

Here it is in use; it’s easy to inflate by pulling the trigger, and release to read the gauge to check the static pressure:

An essential tool.

Fire safety is an important consideration for everyone, especially RVers, with lots of combustible materials in a small space. There have been lots of stories of RVs that have burned to the ground — usually cheaper trailers with propane fridges, but any RV is at risk.

Especially since RVs typically come with just one mandated fire extinguisher, by the door (which I invert and shake once a month, to prevent the contents settling):

If we’re in our bedroom when a fire starts, that extinguisher may not be overly useful — if we can get to that one by the door, we should probably just get out the door, unless the fire is tiny.

So a basic first step is to get a second fire extinguisher for the bedroom, which we keep in a cabinet above the bed:

But we can do better than that. We have purchased several quick can-style fire suppressors, which not only can put out fires, they produce a foam that we can spray onto ourselves if we have to go through flames to get out:

We have several of them all around the coach, including in a cupboard in the kitchen and under the kitchen sink:

In the bathroom cabinet:

And in several compartments in the basement area:

The coach came with a smoke detector in the cockpit area, but we felt that wasn’t enough, so we got some smart Nest Protect ones, that do both smoke and carbon monoxide detection, and talk to each other:

I mounted one in the living room area, and another in the bedroom:

 

Plus a third in the basement, to detect any fires down there:

 

The Nest detectors weren’t compatible with our Wi-Fi network, so I also got a Nest Wi-Fi router to help set them up (once set up, they communicate with a private network, so they’re not dependent on Wi-Fi):

The Nest router is installed in the internet cupboard, with an Ethernet connection to the Pepwave modem:

Our coach only has one entrance door. If we’re in the bedroom and a fire blocks access to that door, there is an emergency exit in the bedroom window; the red latches can be opened to swing the whole window up:

It’s a fairly small emergency exit, but better than being stuck back there. To make it easier to use, I got a pole that lives next to the window:

The pole can be used to hold the emergency exit open, for easier egress:

Hopefully we’ll never need to use it, but it should help if needed.

Vehicles nowadays are full of computers that control and monitor most operations. You may know about the data port that repair shops can use to diagnose issues. This port can be used by us, too.

The BlueFire data adapter connects to a different style of this port in large vehicles like trucks and motorhomes, and uses Bluetooth to communicate with an app to display this diagnostic information.

Here’s the adapter next to the case it came in:

Top of the adapter:

The connector on the bottom:

There are two data ports under the dash in our coach; the green one is the modern data port; I’m not sure about the gray one; might be an older port, or something else:

Removing the cap from the port, you can see the connector pins:

The BlueFire adapter plugs in, with a twist to lock it in place; it lights up with various colors and flashing patterns for its status:

The other essential part is the app. It works on Apple iPads and iPhones, and Android devices. It has a dashboard that can be configured; see the BlueFire site for more examples.

Here’s a dashboard layout I used initially on my iPad Pro (I’ve actually been using the BlueFire for months, but just got around to writing about it):

I later changed to a different layout that I got from someone online:

I have my iPad on the dash of our coach on travel days, along with the tire pressure monitor, and my laptop with the map:

I’m still working on improving the dash layout in the app; I’ve added a couple of gauges, but there’s room for more:

Here’s a screenshot for a more clear view:

Sometime I’ll spend more time customizing this further, but it’s a useful tool as-is.

About the same time I purchased the Coach Proxy device to remotely control our coach, I also purchased a Firefly Vegatouch Mira device, that does much the same thing.

They each have pros and cons; the Mira device interfaces with an actual iOS app, with a more attractive UI, whereas the Coach Proxy has a local web interface. The Mira device communicates via Bluetooth, so is local to the coach, whereas Coach Proxy uses Wi-Fi, so can be accessed remotely — but the Wi-Fi connection can be less reliable.

The features are a bit different, too, e.g. the Mira app can rearrange the home screen a little, but Coach Proxy has presets to quickly restore a state.

And Mira was from a commercial company, vs a hobbyist project for Coach Proxy.

So, having both seemed like the best of both worlds.

However, the experience with Mira wasn’t as seamless as I’d like.

But first, installation of the hardware. The hardware component is a small box, about the size of a deck of cards, with a port for the Spyder multiplex network of the coach. It just needed to be plugged in anywhere on the coach. I happened to have a spare port behind the fridge, accessible via a panel outside (you can see more pics of this area in my Spyder shades issue post). So I connected it there; the orange cable leads to the device:

A closer look:

To enable the app, one long-presses on the coach floorplan option in the main Spyder panel (which I had previously upgraded), to reveal a secret coach models screen, which includes a button to enable the mobile app, amongst other options:

Once that is done, a Mobile App button appears in the settings:

The Mobile App settings, before connecting the device:

After installing the Vegatouch Mira app, it installed an update:

But the app mis-identified our coach as an Allegro Open Road?! That’s not right:

Of course, with it misidentifying the coach, most of the controls were wrong, and didn’t work. I tried re-installing the config, to no avail:

I spent several months emailing the relevant person at Firefly every week, trying to get a fix. That was very frustrating, as he repeatedly said they were working on it, with no progress. I somehow managed to get the app to show a screen to choose a different floorplan, but the code I got from Firefly to choose the right one didn’t work. I eventually asked for a refund, and nothing happened on that either.

But I kept trying. After power cycling the entire coach for another reason, I managed to get that floorplan screen to appear again, and this time the code worked; I was finally able to set it to the correct model:

Yay!

Though it still isn’t perfect. Several of the pages aren’t quite right, e.g. on the home screen it shows LPG, which our coach doesn’t have, and the shade master and entry door lock controls don’t work:

 

The Lights page seems to work:

But nothing on the Climate page works — our coach doesn’t have Spyder-controlled climate, so that isn’t surprising, though the Aqua-Hot controls should work, but don’t:

On the Cockpit Shades page, nothing works:

And on the Coach Shades page, the master and driver side don’t work, and the passenger side is reversed (goes down when pressing up):

The Power pages are also mostly non-functional:

So after all that time, the app is still a little useless, though slightly better than it was before. The features that do work, like the tank levels and lights, are enough to justify keeping the app and device, though I wish more of the features worked correctly. I will likely continue using Coach Proxy most of the time, but for occasions when that is offline (due to Wi-Fi issues), having Mira as an alternative could be useful.

I would not recommend Mira for other owners of 2017-era coaches; Coach Proxy works much better. On more recent coaches, it might be more satisfactory. But I hold out hope that Firefly will improve the app, and maybe eventually fix those issues.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post on our cellular internet options, where I mentioned that we recently got Starlink satellite as an additional option.

Starlink is a satellite-based service from SpaceX, that uses thousands of small satellites in a low Earth orbit to blanket most of the globe. Older satellite systems use geostationary satellites, that orbit at the same rate as the planet rotation to stay in the same relative position in the sky all the time, which requires that they are further out, resulting in higher latency, i.e. slower response times. By using lots of satellites orbiting much lower down, Starlink can be much more responsive.

We don’t use Starlink all the time, but in some situations it is the best option, e.g. when we are in an area with no or limited cell coverage. For example, at a recent park we had no T-Mobile or AT&T coverage, only Verizon — but we have limited data available via that network. So we set up the Starlink dish for unlimited data.

The speed can vary widely, anything from 1 to 120 Mbps down, and 1 to 20 Mbps up, with ping times of about 30 to 120 ms, which is comparable to cellular connections. Not bad for a sky connection.

We got residential Starlink, with portability to let us access the network while roaming around. Starlink now offers a RV-specific plan, though it isn’t any better a plan; actually it’s worse, as the data rate can be more limited.

Here’s our unboxing:

The dish and stand:

Below that, the router and cable:

The dish set up in our coach; the marks on it suggest that it was refurbished, something that I gather was fairly common:

I put the Starlink router on the edge of a basement compartment, below a power outlet; the cord goes out the bottom of the door:

The rectangular Starlink dish; in typical SpaceX and Elon Musk fashion, it is named “Dishy McFlatface”:

When setting it up in a breezy environment, I secure it to the ground using long screws and washer-like discs (that came from stakes; screws are easier to deal with than hammering in stakes):

I also got the Starlink Ethernet adapter, though don’t currently use it, since routing an Ethernet cable is extra hassle; I just connect to the Starlink router’s Wi-Fi via the Pepwave modem; perhaps not quite as fast, but convenient:

(One day I want to figure out a way to permanently route an Ethernet cable from the basement to the internet cupboard, but I haven’t thought of anything satisfactory yet.)

When positioning the Starlink dish, its app has a handy tool to check the visibility; you can point the phone camera at the sky to get a visualization and report of obstructions, to help find the best spot:

I initially stored the dish in the original box, but a better solution was suggested in the Starlink for RVers and other mobile users group on Facebook: a Husky 12-gallon container is a perfect size to fit the dish along with the packaging material, simply by cutting off the bottom part of the packaging, like so:

The dish and stand then fits in nicely:

And the cable on top (and some people put the router there too, but I keep it in my basement compartment):

The closed container:

I keep the Starlink container in a basement compartment, safely stored until next needed:

Starlink is a great option when there isn’t cellular service.

I bought a Coach Proxy device for our 2017 Tiffin Allegro Bus 40SP coach.

This is hardware and web-based software to remotely control the Spyder coach systems like lights, fans, etc. Everything that can be done from the main touch panel.

It is also obsolete technology that has a new lease of life. It was a commercial product a few years ago, but was discontinued. But many people enjoyed it, so it was released as an open source project, and some people have continued to make hardware for it using off-the-shelf components.

The device I purchased was an example of that; it was made by a guy named David Earnest, housed in a 3D-printed case:

The logic board is actually from a Raspberry Pi 400, with another board to interface with the Spyder network:

I had a spare Spyder connector under the dash, so I mounted the box there:

The software side is a web app powered by that hardware, with controls for the various lights etc. Here is the top of the Interior page of Coach Proxy, with the main lights; the ones with a slider can be dimmed:

Scrolling down, the living room TV lift (that TV raises up in front of a window when wanted), and more lights. At the bottom the MEM ON turns on the lights that were on when the ALL OFF was used:

On to the shade controls; day and night shades on the driver and passenger sides, or all at once:

The Exterior page has lights, locks, and water systems:

The Climate page has fans and heated floors (very nice in cool weather):

A nice thing one can do via Coach Proxy that one can’t do via the touch panel is assign presets, to turn on or off custom sets of lights; I just have a couple so far:

The Status page has tank levels and power stuff:

The Notifications page lets me get a notice when certain conditions occur:

Plus there are a couple more pages for settings, including options to set up remote access, so these controls can be changed when away from the coach via a secure connection.

A very useful device.

I previously posted about our internet services, with a picture of the cupboard above the entry door that contains the cellular modem:

I decided to consolidate the internet stuff into this cupboard. So I hatched a plan to run a power cord from the outlet above the windshield to that cupboard:

I removed panels in those cupboards:

The mess of cables behind the panel in the front cupboard:

I used my drill with a large bit:

…to cut a hole in the panel:

…to fit a grommet:

…for the power cord, which I pulled through by tying a strap to it:

Getting the cord through the small gap behind this speaker was rather tricky (I lost a bunch of skin):

…but I managed in the end:

I installed another grommet in this panel:

The cord then plugged in to the power outlet (the front TV also plugs in there, and for some reason the top outlet only receives power when the ignition is on… maybe I should plug my dashcam into that?):

The other end of the cord has a power strip with electrical and USB outlets:

Then I moved the other internet devices into the cupboard:

In addition to the modem, it contains the MiFi hotspot:

The power strip:

A fan to cool the modem, as it gets rather hot:

And the security camera base unit, that has an Ethernet connection to the modem:

I subsequently removed the door of this cupboard, since I was leaving it open for airflow:

It’s not super tidy, but it’s nice to have everything in one place.