WIFI
We travel full time and we run our creative agency from the road so having fast reliable internet wherever we go is important for us to be able to stay connected with our clients and keep our business running. We also love to camp way off the grid and far far away from any towns (also a certain someone in the van loves his Netflix and chill) Here’s the products we’ve added to our rig to stay connected.
SIGNAL BOOSTER
We use the We Boost Truck set up. We learned from our first build that the antenna which comes with the regular RV kit is not strong enough for the areas we like to camp in. So we added the 19 inch truck antenna and instantly had better results. This set up is now available in a single kit for trucks! The We Boost along with thoughtful positioning has so far kept us at 3-4 bars and on LTE. We use the bracket on the right to have the super large truck antenna flip up quickly when we need it and lay flat across our Backwoods roof rack when we are driving.
POSITION MATTERS
Even with the booster think about your position. If we are tucked into trees or rocks we park with our antenna facing out and this can make a huge difference in service. Our internal antenna is positioned in the B pillar which is near to where we have our Lagun table for working. If signal is particularly weak we rest our phones right on the internal antenna and use the phones hotspot.
DATA PLANS
We use two different providers, AT&T and Verizon. This helps us maximise coverage, often one provider will have better signal than the other. We have a phone and iPad mini with Verizon, we use the iPad mini on a Schosche magnetic mount (link to buy below) for our maps when we drive. The Verizon phone has an unlimited data plan allowing 30gb or hotspot data and the iPad allows 15gb hotspot on a limited plan. We have another phone and a large iPad with AT&T. Here’s why we put the large iPad with AT&T - AT&T will allow you to have an iPad on a phone plan which gives it unlimited data, seeing as we use the large iPad to watch TV having it on an unlimited plan is really great. Both those devices give us 45gb of hot spot data. All up thats a total of 135gb of hotspot data each month and runs us around $300
It’s important to look at your shared data allocation on these plans as that is what counts for using your phone as a hotspot for your laptop. We also try to do as much work as possible directly on the phones, this way the shared data is only used for sending work to or from our clients.
SKYROAM OPTION
We previously have tried the Skyroam Solis which offers a $99 month plan of unlimited data and works globally. Okay some things about unlimited here… these types of products run off other service towers in the area, as such the service they can generate will be provided to them as a secondary to the customers connected to plans directly liked to those towers. eg if its using an AT&T tower priority would be given to all the AT&T customers before your little Skyroam can get any love. This means that theres a noticeable difference when other people are around - our Netflix will run great at empty camps but if there’s other people around it will go slower. But all in all, the Skyroam with the We Boost is good for Netflix when you have your Netflix set to the lower playback settings - keep reading for how to change those settings (NOTE: it was not good enough without the We Boost and could not run Netflix at full quality)
THE SET UP
We have our We Boost connected directly to DC power with a switch to be able to turn it completely off when not in use.
When we had the Skyroam Solis we set it up permanently plugged into a USB and mounted next to the We Boost internal antenna as it would run out of power very quickly.
CONTROL YOUR NETFLIX DATA USE
Netflix allows you to change the quality settings of playback, if you pick the mid level you will get better results. Here’s how to do that:
Sign in to Netflix.com.
Select the profile you'd like to change your data usage settings for.
Select Account.
Under My Profile, select Playback Settings.
Select your desired data usage setting.
Select Save. Your changes will take effect within 8 hours.
Enjoy your Netflix and chill in your van!