I've been getting a lot of questions about how I am able to work remotely from this condo on wheels. I am fortunate enough to be able to work remotely 100% of the time, for now at least. In order to be successful working on the road I knew my top priority was connectivity. I did a lot of research and in the end decided to purchase the Ultimate Road Warrior Package from MobileMustHave.com. (I'm going to put a list of all my techie gear at the end of this blog for reference.) *Warning for the technophobes who are just here for pretty pictures and playful banter: This post is rather "techie" so you may want to skip ahead...
This Ultimate Road Warrior Bundle (RV & Boat Internet Hardware Bundle - Pepwave/MobileMark (mobilemusthave.com) includes a Parsec roof-mounted cell and wifi antenna which connects to a Pepwave dual Cat-12 cellular modem (seen here). The antenna cables feed directly to the Pepwave modem from the Parsec roof antenna and has a 12-volt power connection which was easily accessible from this cabinet location directly above the television.
So far this has provided a very reliable solution that is easy to update with new wifi connections when I change locations, but the RV wifi address remains the same so I don't have to constantly update my phone, iPad, Roku, etc. I attend at least 4 to 6 hours of video meetings (MS Teams) every work-day which ends up consuming about 7 to 11GB per day. I currently have two data plans (T-Mobile, Verizon) that provide up to 150GB per month and am in the process of getting an AT&T plan that will provide over 1500GB per month. One of the great features of the Pepwave cellular modem I have is that I can put sims for multiple data plans in the unit and then I can control which plan my RV wifi uses from the Pepwave web admin page. However, so far, I have been fortunate to stay in RV locations that have decent free wifi that I can prioritize in the Pepwave web admin page so I don't use up cellular data.
As you can see, my "desk" is the dinette. I have my work laptop docking station on the dinette table and my personal PC CPU underneath the table. For my video conferencing I use a logitech HD 1080p camera and a USB Plantronics Speaker (because I'm not a fan of headsets). Both my work laptop and personal PC are connected to the same monitor, keyboard, and mouse using a KVM switch which has a button that I push to switch between computers. I also have a 4-port USB 3.0 hub plugged into my personal PC which make it easy to plug in data cards from my camera. Last, but not least, I didn't want to leave behind my wireless printer/scanner so it occupies the other dinette seat.
So far this has proved to be a great setup. Follow along as I check and adjust along the way. One of the "upgrades" on my list is to replace the dinette with an actual desk and office chair! Stay tuned.
I'm traveling again this weekend - next stop is Elm Creek, Nebraska this Friday!
Cellular Internet Package (Antenna and cellular modem/wifi router) $1499
C35 Curved Monitor
Logitech video camera
Plantronics USB Speaker
Logitech solar/wireless keyboard & wrist rest
Kensington Trackball Mouse
KVM Switch
4 port USB hub
Epson ET-3760 color printer/scanner
My personal PC did not have a wifi card so I installed this