Motorhome tour: control panels

I’m currently sitting in a campground in La Grande in eastern Oregon, next to a rental travel trailer, while our fancy coach sits idle at home. Why? Because we’re on our way to Yellowstone National Park, for a family gathering. A trip that was booked over a year ago, before we had the idea of buying an RV. And our booking isn’t big enough for our coach and truck. So, crazy as it is to use a 19-foot travel trailer (without a functioning shower, as it turns out) with our 40-foot coach at home, such is life. It’ll make us appreciate our coach all the more when we get home.

This campground doesn’t have good Wi-Fi, so I’m tethering to my iPhone, and don’t want to upload lots of pictures… but fortunately I have a draft post about the control panels of our coach, so that’s what I’ll share today.

I actually was going to include these pictures in the previous internal tour post, but decided to split them into their own post, since many people probably don’t care about buttons. But for those who do, please enjoy this tour of the various control panels.

The controls aren’t as fancy as in more recent models, but they’re state of the art as of 2017, and certainly more numerous than in this rental trailer.

Next to the entry door is a control panel to turn on or off lights, and other functions. When a button is white, it is on, when blue, it’s off. The buttons with the up/down arrows are dimmable; hold down the button to dim the light. The Light Master control is handy, to quickly turn off or on all of the lights that were used last time. And the Step switch stops the entry steps from automatically retracting when the door is closed:

Driver controls to automatically or manually level the coach via air suspension or hydraulic jacks, open and close the driver side window and blinds, and manage the transmission gears:

Driver controls:

Dash gauges:

Camera, GPS, and various switches:

Passenger controls for lights, shades, etc:

Above the driver cockpit, a cupboard that hides power management and awning controls:

Another cupboard has the solar panel controller:

Yet another with antenna, door awning, and front/mid thermostats. The thermostats can be cooling, off, heating with diesel fuel, or heating with electricity:

Kitchen control panel, with lights, water pump, and vent:

Fridge controls:

Bedside controls, with lights, ceiling fan, bed lift, generator start/stop, door unlock/lock, and another light master to quickly turn them all on or off:

The bedroom has its own thermostat, plus a touch control panel:

More recent coaches have fancier “Spyder” control panels around the coach, which I would have preferred, but this covers many of the features.

Let me show a bunch of pages of that control panel, starting with the home page, with water tank levels, Aqua-Hot continuous hot water controls, and battery status:

Master lights page:

Bed lights page:

Fans page:

Slides page for the two bedroom slides; the front slides are controlled by switches on the sides of the cockpit seats:

Floor heat page; yes, it has heated tile floors:

Shades page; open or close all day or night shades with the touch of a button:

There are other pages for individual shades etc.

Finally, the bathroom control panel:

Highly fascinating, eh?!