Our Electronic Gadgets
What electronic gadgets do we travel with? Here is our list. Hopefully it will help you decide what to bring with you and give you ideas on how to make your travels more comfortable and safer. These are in no particular order.
Item 1 - iPhones and accessories
Taking your phone with you is a no brainer. However, we have them on our packing list just so we don’t leave them behind in the chaos of getting out on the road. We make sure we have all the appropriate cords and portable chargers (such as the Anker PowerCore - paid link). Portable chargers are nice to have on long hikes when our phones may lose their charge or we forgot to charge them before the hike. Portable chargers are a necessity when backpacking to keep our phones and cameras charged for days, but we don’t use them much for day hiking. Our phones are on an AT&T plan which has unlimited data from our phones and up to 40 GB of hotspot per phone. An AARP membership gives us a $10 discount on the plan per line.
Item 2 - WeBoost Cell Signal Amplifier
WeBoost (paid link) amplifies the cell phone signal and rebroadcasts it inside the van. It cannot create a signal from nothing, but does improve an existing cell signal some. It does not work miracles, though. See our “weBoost Installation: Campervan Project #7“ blog post for more details.
Item 3 - Verizon Jetpack
We have a grandfathered unlimited data plan with Verizon on a separate, mobile hotspot device called a Jetpack. (pad link). The first three electronic items combined help us stay connected while on the road. In some areas, the Verizon signal is better so we use the Verizon Jetpack. In other places, AT&T has better reception, so we will connect our laptops to a hotspot on our phones. If we’re running low on data on our phones, we’ll try to use Verizon more. The WeBoost helps with both networks.
Item 4 - Our laptop computers
Our laptops are essential for us. They may not be essential for you, especially if you are trying to disconnect from the world. However, they were essential when Keith was still working part time from the road and Ann needs hers to write the blog posts, edit pictures, and edit videos. They are also handy for watching YouTube videos for our entertainment in the evenings. Again, we need to remember to bring all the appropriate charging cords.
Item 5 - External mouse, keyboard, headphones, and external hard drives
Keith does not use these items, but Ann finds these essential for editing photos and videos. She is not a big fan of the touchpad. Sometimes she’ll put her laptop up on a stand, use the external keyboard and mouse, and still have room on our Lagun table for two external hard drives (paid link). She always travels with two external drives. One is for storing all the raw video, storing the Final Cut Pro libraries, and backups of the original photos. The other drive is for backing everything up. This way, if one hard drive fails, she does not lose anything. Headphones allow Ann to listen to the audio on the videos without disturbing Keith or fellow campers.
Item 6 - Portable Computer Monitor
The portable monitor (paid link) was a new item for Season Three. Using two monitors makes Ann more efficient while editing videos and writing blog posts. She’ll have the blog text up on one monitor while picking out the photos to include for each paragraph on the other monitor. Or she’ll have Final Cut Pro up on one monitor while writing down the times for each section of the video in a spreadsheet, while planning out what music to add. Another big bonus is when we both want to watch the same YouTube video in the van. We have been struggling because our two comfortable seats face each other, which makes it hard to face the same way to watch the same screen. With the external monitor attached to one of our laptops, we can have the laptop facing one of us, with the monitor facing the other person. The monitor we found works great. It is very thin and light weight. It requires no power cord. You just connect it to the laptop via a USB-C cable. The magnetic cover can be used to prop it up, or sometimes we use a small phone stand. The monitor stores easily in Ann’s laptop backpack.
Item 7 - Garmin Inreach Mini
We take a Garmin Inreach Mini (paid link) with us when we hike, just in case of an emergency. It communicates via satellite, so it is more reliable in remote areas where there is no cell service. It has an SOS trigger to notify local emergency response crews. As an extra layer of precaution, we have several standard messages set up, like “starting an adventure or drive”, “done with adventure or drive”, and “checking in, everything is OK”. We send these messages on a regular basis to our two adult children. Our GPS location is included with the message. If something happens to us while we are traveling or hiking, our kids will have our last known GPS location. We try to send a message at the start and end of a remote hike, and the start and end of our drive to a new campground. We instructed our children to try to contact us when they receive a start message but no end message by the end of the day. If they cannot get a response from us, they will notify authorities. We’re trusting that they will notice, but we haven’t tested them, yet. There is a subscription associated with this service. We turn the service off when we are home during the winter.
Item 8 - Bluetooth Speaker
The Sony Bluetooth Speaker (paid link) we have has great sound quality. It is perfect for listening to podcasts or to music while sitting in the van.
Item 9 - Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS)
A TPMS is a safety item. Ford does have tire pressure monitoring built in, but it only notifies you when there is something really wrong. Adding our own TPMS gives us more information that we can act on before something becomes an issue. The EEZTire TPMS system (paid link) that we use has sensors that are installed on the valve stems of each tire. A small monitor display is mounted on our dash. We’ll turn it on whenever we are driving down the road (and try to remember to turn it off after we park). The monitor displays the current tire pressure and temperature of each tire. That way we can notice when one tire is misbehaving, like getting low or high on pressure or running too hot. Then we can pull over and check the tire, or let them cool down, before a tire blows.
Item 10 - Blue Driver (engine code reader)
Blue Driver (paid link) is both a device and a phone app. The device plugs into the OBD2 port (on-board diagnostics) of our Ford Transit. It reads and controls the error codes that Ford reports. The device communicates with an app on our phone via Bluetooth. This helps us figure out what is wrong and possibly how to fix it when the dash indicates a problem with the vehicle without (or before) taking the van in to a mechanic. We once had an issue with the built-in tire pressure sensor. After confirming that it is probably an issue with one of the sensors and our tires were fine, we cleared the error code so we could wait and see if it comes back. It never did.
Item 11 - Bluetooth Audio Jack
The bluetooth audio jack (paid link) was another new item for Season Three. It plugs into the 12V socket, connects to your phone via Bluetooth and rebroadcasts the audio to a radio station frequency so the sound comes out the Ford’s audio speakers. In addition to providing a couple of USB ports, it has some basic controls for controlling the phone. We find this helpful when navigating and when receiving cell phone calls. It is also nice to play music or podcasts from our phones to the van’s speakers. A simple button push will answer or hang up a call, and pause or resume a podcast. The button is easier to use than trying to use the touch screen on the phone while it is mounted on the dash as we’re driving down the road. A drawback is that you cannot use the van’s radio at the same time. The only other drawback is occasionally we come across a radio station being broadcast at the same frequency as the audio jack. You can change the frequency that the audio jack uses, but we are usually too lazy and just tolerate listening to the station while it is in range. It usually seems to be an NPR station.
Item 12 - Our cameras and Accessories
We carry various cameras and accessories with us for taking pictures and recording videos as well as the ability to edit them. We covered these items in separate blogs, so we won’t repeat ourselves here. Please check out “Our Cameras” and “Our Camera Accessories”. We also mentioned the camera gear we carried with us for Season Four in our Preparing for Season Four: Alaska Bound 2022 post under item 26.
That’s the complete list. We hope that was helpful information for you. Do you have other electronic gadgets that you travel with that we didn’t list here?
Check out our related video: Our Electronic Gadgets
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