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.