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POWER HUNGRY Devices and Vehicles - Ep 159
241 Plays4 years ago
We're talking field and mobile power on this week's episode. With Paul working on Chris' project and guest co-host Richie Cruz also present, we have a lot to talk about. We cover solar panels, batteries, and mobile vehicle power solutions.
Links
- Jackery SolarSaga 60W
- Anker Powerhouse 200
- Anker PowerCore Slim 10000
- All-Terrain Family on YouTube
- Magnum Energy MSH3012RV 3000 Watt, 12 Volt DC Inverter and 50 AMP AC Relay
- Victron GX Touch 50 Panel Display
- Battleborn 100ah LiPo4
- 310W Mono Solar Panel
- MPPT 150/70 Victron Solar Controller
- Micro Air Easy Start
- Bluetti Power Station
- Rock Pals 350w Power Station
- 44.3QT 3in1 12V Refrigerator iCooler
Contact
- Chris Webster
- Twitter: @archeowebby
- Email: chris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
- Paul Zimmerman
- Twitter: @lugal
- Email: paul@lugal.com
ArchPodNet
- APN Website: https://www.archpodnet.com
- APN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnet
- APN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnet
- APN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnet
- Tee Public Store
Affiliates
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Zencaster as Sponsor
00:00:00
Speaker
We're excited to announce that our very own podcasting platform, Zencaster, has become a new sponsor to the show. Check out the podcast discount link in our show notes and stay tuned for why we love using Zen for the podcast.
Opening of Archeotech Podcast Episode 159
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Archeotech Podcast, Episode 159. I'm your host, Chris Webster, with my co-host, Paul Zimmerman. Today we discuss mobile field power for your devices, your vehicles, and your RVs. Let's get to it.
00:00:33
Speaker
All right. Welcome to the show, everybody. Paul, how's it going? It's awesome today.
Recording Sessions in New York and Nevada
00:00:38
Speaker
How are you doing? Doing great. I can see that you're wearing your APN t-shirt, too. I love it. Yes. Yeah. And there's a good reason for that for today. Yeah. So Paul, this is actually the second time we've recorded. I think it's only the third time we've recorded together, but the second time in like a month and a half. So maybe two months.
00:00:57
Speaker
Because I was in New York a couple months ago, and that's where Paul lives. We recorded at New York City, and now Paul's out here, all fresh off his last job and working on an archaeological
Learning Data Collection with Rachel, the Dig Chief
00:01:09
Speaker
survey. How'd it go? Your first day today? First day was great, Rachel.
00:01:13
Speaker
Dig Chief, and she showed me the ropes with the data collection. I know generally what artifacts look like, but don't know specifically what we're looking for in this area here in northern Nevada. She was a very patient, very conscientious instructor today, as well as Dig Chief. As soon as I got over the initial jitters, it was nothing but pure fun.
00:01:36
Speaker
Awesome. Well, I'm going to call out here real quick. We're sitting outside in the high desert of Nevada in the northeastern corner of Nevada, and it is real windy. It's been pretty windy all day. Yesterday was almost no wind, and now today it's been pretty windy most of the day. You might hear some wind noise. We're in a little tent here, so you might hear that around, but I just wanted to call out the ambiance before we really get in here.
00:02:01
Speaker
But one of the other people that he's worked with me quite a bit, and you've seen him on other shows, he's been on this show before, Richie Cruz. Richie, how's it going?
Keeping Devices Charged in the Field
00:02:09
Speaker
That's good. All right. So, we are going to talk about power today. I mentioned this on a podcast, I don't know, a few episodes ago. I mentioned it on the archaeology show that we're going to talk about this on the Archaeotech podcast.
00:02:23
Speaker
Power's first thing on my mind right now because we just had, as everybody's probably heard, a big solar and lithium install on our RV, which is sitting right behind me. I can see Paul's solar panels sitting out there at his campsite right now. We're out in the middle of nowhere, as Paul knows now.
00:02:39
Speaker
And we're recording, and you need to keep your devices charged. We're using WildNote on tablets, and we've just got to keep it charged. So let's talk about field power first. Paul, I'm interested to see what you brought to camp. I'm interested to talk about that, because you brought a couple of fun gadgets that I saw
Anker Powerhouse 200 and Solar Charging
00:02:55
Speaker
yesterday. Right. OK, so my main gadget, you can't actually see it from here, because it's hiding out in the tent that I sleep in. But it is an Anker Powerhouse 200.
00:03:05
Speaker
That's one of those portable battery packs. It's got 12-volt round plug for a cigarette lighter. It's got a couple USB-C. Is that 12-volt out or in for charging? Out. Out? Okay. Yeah. Unfortunately, the power in for charging is this
00:03:22
Speaker
not exactly normal plug. You can charge it through the front with one of the USB-Cs, but I don't have anything that can output enough power over USB-C to charge it that way. Yeah, I can't imagine that would take days.
00:03:37
Speaker
It was all the way down and it also has an inverter. So it's got a it's got a 120 volt. Yeah, you know regular three prong plug hour So I've been using that to keep phones and things charged I only have to charge it up every couple of days and at the RV park that we're at we do have electrical hookup Yeah, so I can power off the 120 volt at the RV park here and then disconnect
00:04:01
Speaker
and you know put that little battery well little it's a brick about six inches by six inches by eight inches it's not especially heavy it's got a handle on top it's really kind of sexy little piece of equipment and it's been working great for me so far I mean mind you this is my third day out here but I was using that particular one a bit beforehand because I wanted to test it out the solar charger that you see there I've only used a little bit because the the rub is that I'm in the field
00:04:27
Speaker
And the things I want to keep charged are with me in
Portable Battery Packs for Fieldwork
00:04:30
Speaker
the field. And I'm not going to bring that solar charger. So that's going to be something useful for me potentially on days off. So I've got it out there just because I'm experimenting with it. That one is a Jackery Solar Sega 60. So it'll do up to 60 watts of output.
00:04:44
Speaker
Oh, that anchor is 200, 200 watts of output. And then I have an assortment of different little portable, I mean very portable, toss them in your backpack kind of portable battery packs up to 10,000 mAh. You guys spent most of the day today recording a site, so did you have to bust out your portable batteries
Challenges with iPhone Battery Life
00:05:03
Speaker
for that? Yes and no.
00:05:05
Speaker
I didn't have to plug anything special in, but on the drive out here, the battery on my iPhone 8 finally decided that it had enough of its life and really wanted to not come out here with me. It's got one of those portable battery packs that attaches directly to the phone. The case battery pack. The case battery pack, exactly. I don't know how big of one. I don't know the brand. I've had it sitting around forever.
00:05:29
Speaker
It survived. I wasn't using that for data collection. I was using my iPad, my iPad Mini 5, and it survived the entire day. At the end of the day, it still had 60%. Nice. The 5 just came out, what, a year or two ago, didn't it? Yeah. It's one of the newer ones. Yeah, it's one of the most recent of the Minis. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, three years ago. There's a rumor a Mini M1's coming out soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, was that Richie? Three years ago. Three years ago. Three years ago for the Mini 5? Yeah. Was it really? Wow. I thought it was... Was that before the Air 4?
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I can't keep track of all the different iPads. Guys at work, well, my former work, it's still hard for me to process that. They know, they're like, oh, that's an Air 2. And they can tell at a glance. And I'm like, well, it's an iPad. Yeah, yeah. So Richie, what are your power solutions out here in the field?
00:06:18
Speaker
The stuff I've been using for monitoring, basically. I got something similar to Paul's Anchor. Mine's a rock pals. It's got a bigger battery. And it got the newest fast charge technology, which is the same thing that you've got in here. It just doesn't have the regulated output, which is why my electric fridge doesn't like it.
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Which is kind of cool because Richie has an electric refrigerator out here, you know,
Zero Lemon Batteries and Chargers
00:06:45
Speaker
set up. Is it in the truck or is it in your teepee? No, it's in my truck. It's in the truck, yeah. Nice. Set up and ready to go. That's pretty cool. So yeah, we normally, and Rachel's got one of these, but I've had two.
00:06:57
Speaker
Zero Lemon, 30,000 mAh batteries for a long time. I bought them around the time we did that project in El Centro six years ago. I also bought a whole bunch of 10,000 mAh batteries from Zero Lemon that I basically gave to everybody on the crew. I think I did that for the China Lake project that was after that. I can't remember if I did it for El Centro.
00:07:18
Speaker
But I bought one for everybody because I had to buy like eight iPads, too. And I bought everybody an iPad and everybody a solar charger. Not solar. It had a little solar panel on it. I imagine that was like a five-watt solar panel. It would take weeks to charge my battery. I can't imagine that would do anything if that big foldable old Jackery that I've got there. Yeah.
00:07:34
Speaker
That does 60 watts output. Yeah, you know yeah, I mean this thing was like I'm still looking at Richie's phone This battery is about the size of that phone same thickness and everything 10,000 milliamp hours, so it would charge the mini up. You know probably one and a half times or so yeah, and It was yeah, I had a little solar panel off that was really just for looks so Maybe if you had it attached to your backpack or something and you were doing survey And you just were like constantly like drip charging it you know right maybe it would just keep it I don't know topped off a little bit and
00:08:02
Speaker
But anyway, I mean if you're really in a pinch and you're stuck somewhere, I mean it's gonna work It's gonna it's gonna charge up. Yeah, it's better than nothing Yeah, it's totally better than nothing if you're searching rescues on its way and your phone dies But anyway, so yeah, we use those and we're always charging in the truck anytime we can that's what I always tell people is even if
00:08:22
Speaker
You're fully charged when you start in the morning. Most newer vehicles, like this Ford F-150 is a 2020, the one that we've got rented. And there's like, what, four or six USB ports in there or something like that? And then a couple of, at least one 10 outlet. Yeah. Oh, wait. No.
00:08:39
Speaker
No. It has one in the back, doesn't it? No, in the back seat. They don't even have USB in the back seat. I found out today. I thought there was USB in the back seat. It's just 12 volts and USBs. So there's two USBs up front. Isn't there a couple in the armrest, too?
00:08:54
Speaker
I don't know. Well, either way. They usually tuck them in armrests. Yeah. There's a 12 volt in the backseat because that's where we plug the light into. And there's one up in the front seat too. So anyway, there's plenty of power. And I always say, if you've got power in the vehicle, even if you started charging in the morning, a lot of people, unless you're recording device, if that's a tablet, it's just sitting in your backpack, that's fine. You probably don't need to plug that in if you started with a full charge.
00:09:14
Speaker
on your hour drive out to the site or whatever it is. But if it's like your phone, I mean a lot of people don't even think about it. They get in the vehicle, they're sitting in there driving out to the site and they're looking and playing with stuff on their phone. And just before they know it, they've lost 20% before they start the work day. So keep it plugged in any time you're in the truck. And if you hit the truck for lunch, something like that, plug it in. Run the truck and plug it in. That way you don't have to rely on your batteries if you don't need to. So that's always my field power advice right there.
00:09:43
Speaker
I'm going to give another bit of advice, and this pertains specifically to me today with that iPhone. Because it was running down quickly, and I wasn't using it, I wasn't using it as my data collection, I was using the iPad for the data collection, I looked at it and was like, I'll just put it in low power mode. I mean, I was in and out of cell service. It's not like anybody needs to reach me urgently. And if they did, I'm sorry, but you should know that I'm in and out of cell service in the mountains. It's not much I can do.
00:10:12
Speaker
Yeah, it turns out something will come in if I have service. There's no reason to be draining this faster than I need to. Especially if you're not using it. It was just in my pocket just in case my daughter freaked out over something because that seems to be her hobby right now.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, we've got a lot of things that we're trying to power, too, because we've also got the Aero 100, which is providing our submeter coordinates. And I can't say enough about that Aero 100. It was actually given to me by Anatom Geomobile Solutions, who we've talked about before. Yep, yep. We had them on.
Using Aero 100 GPS for Submeter Coordinates
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah. We actually traded that for advertising. We did a bunch of advertising for him. He sent me one of those. It's a pretty good value, I've got to tell you. But I've only used it heavily on the project that we did last year at the same location in September.
00:11:04
Speaker
So we used it almost every day for like 30 days. And now we're using it all the time out here. But to be honest, that whole time in between, I didn't charge it up. It sat in a bin in the back of my RV. And the battery was completely depleted. And it was just sitting there. And now, like Rachel said, she had it on pretty much the whole day today. You guys were recording because you were doing the GIS work, right, Richie? Yeah. So we were recording all day. And she said it lost like one light of battery for the whole entire day. And this thing is already, what, 2 and 1 by 2 years old or something like that.
00:11:32
Speaker
At least two years old, I would say. It's only been used a few times. When it's been used, it's been consistent and heavy, but it's only been used a few times on projects. That's pretty cool. It's a good device. I'm looking forward to getting to know it better because Rachel told me today that, Richie, once you're gone, I'm going to be the GPS guy, so I've got to learn how to use it.
00:11:53
Speaker
I'm not worried about that. That's going to be fun. But watching you walk around mapping the perimeter of the site and mapping the features and such reminded me of the stuff that I used to do. I did it all with the Total Station.
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah, I'm champing at the bit to try that out. I will say, there was one gotcha. Do you want to talk about what took you so long to start with it today? Oh, it just takes a while to get satellites. But that's any GPS unit. That thing feels like it's particularly bad at it, though.
00:12:27
Speaker
You know, like if you don't start it up in the exact same position that you turn it off in, it takes forever to acquire satellites. And did you start acquiring when you guys got down in that canyon on the site? Mm-hmm. So right there, you probably lost half the sky of satellites. Yeah. You know, because that's like north facing, I think. And most of the satellites are probably south. Yeah. So yeah, you probably lost a lot of satellites that it was trying to probably reacquire the ones it had before. Couldn't find those. And now had to start looking for different ones. And it just takes a while. Yeah.
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah, but it's good to remember, you know, maybe while you're on your way out to the site, turn it on, let it start acquiring. Everybody does that with a Trimble. We're used to that because you got to look at stuff and, you know, anytime we just get in the vehicle and you've got a Trimble, the first thing people do is turn it on, set it in the dash so it can start acquiring. Turn it on while you're getting your breakfast ready. Yeah, pretty much, right? So that's the nice thing about that Arrow too, why it lasts a lot longer too is unlike a Trimble, it doesn't have a screen to power.
00:13:20
Speaker
It doesn't have all that processing to make things displayable and the brightness and all that. It's just an antenna. So that's pretty cool. All right. Well, we're going to continue talking about power stuff here. I'm wondering if we shouldn't just take a break and then come back and talk maybe some mobile power. We'll talk about the RV and the setup that Richie wants to do and is kind of half doing on his truck right now.
00:13:44
Speaker
So let's take a break and when we come back, we'll talk about that. Chris Webster here for the Archeology Podcast Network. We strive for high quality interviews and content so you can find information on any topic in archeology from around the world. One way we do that is by recording interviews with our hosts and guests located in many parts of the world all at once. We do that through the use of Zencaster. That's Z-E-N-C-A-S-T-R.
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:15:10
Speaker
Welcome back to the Architec podcast, episode 159. And we're talking power today. So we've talked field power. We've talked a lot about field power in the past too. We've brought it up before. I don't see the need to beat that dead horse because there is just, everybody's aware of it now. Even if you're not recording digitally, people are always bringing in small little batteries and stuff for their phones or whatever, just to keep them going, just for safety even, just to have some communication. And so people are used to that.
00:15:39
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, we had the mind safety training on site today. Yeah. And and that was one of the things, you know, in a few different ways was it don't use your phone while you're driving a haul truck. Yeah, everybody, everybody across the board is kind of glued to their phones.
00:15:56
Speaker
Yeah, my favorite thing I saw here, and this was actually a few years ago now, was you often see, like, legit cowboys driving cattle. And I'll just never forget seeing one sitting there. He was kind of hanging back probably because he was, I don't know, checking Facebook or something. But he's sitting there on his, like, iPhone or Android or whatever he had, but on his smartphone sitting on his horse, dressed up like a cowboy with cattle just walking by. And he's sitting there checking his socials, whatever he's doing.
00:16:21
Speaker
Well, the horse is doing most of the driving. Well, yeah. It's a self-driving car he's got there. Yeah. Yeah. So it's only one horsepower, but it gets the job done. Oh, is that bad? Sorry. Leave it in. I know. So anyway, let's talk about power. So I've mentioned in the past that, of course, we wanted to get a solar and lithium set up on the RV. And it's mostly driven by watching a bunch of YouTube videos where people have already done that, but it's also
00:16:48
Speaker
Driven by two other things. First off, this was a five-year-old RV when we bought it and the house batteries. So let me back up a little bit. You have a chassis battery, which helps run your engine and all the stuff associated with the front end of your vehicle when it's a Class A RV. And then you've got house batteries. And we had 12 volts of house battery power, two big six-volt batteries, lead acid batteries that you had to keep the distilled water topped off on. I check it about once every month and keep it topped off.
00:17:15
Speaker
And those are the batteries that power basically everything else that's DC-related inside the RV. It looks like different kinds of batteries then, right? Between what runs the engine and what runs the house? Yeah, their deep cycle. Yeah, yeah. I mean, essentially, they're the same kind of battery. Right, so one of them is more tolerant of being drained all the way down and then fully recharged, and the other...
00:17:36
Speaker
Right. But even then, when our charge on those house batteries would drop below about 10.5 volts, it's practically unusable. Lights would start to flicker, because all our lights are DC-based, and everything would start to flicker. And then we have an inverter. When we turn the inverter on, that's of course using power from the batteries. And it used to be that the inverter would only actually power, I think there was one outlet in the bedroom,
00:17:58
Speaker
and one outlet in the kitchen and not even like the outlet in the bathroom. We have outlets all over the place, but it would only power like three outlets spaced throughout the coach because it just can't handle more than that on just batteries. So that was one of the reasons was the batteries were actually garbage too. We ran them down a lot. Like when we were down in Florida over the winter,
00:18:18
Speaker
It was just terrible. We were in the Everglades, and we spent a week in the Everglades National Park, and there's no power, no hookups whatsoever, no power, no sewer and no water at these RV sites.
Power Management in an RV While Camping
00:18:28
Speaker
And so that was our, I wouldn't say our first time, but that was one of our first times really having to deal with that. And since it was so warm out, I mean, you couldn't run the generator overnight and run our air conditioners. If we ran the generator, we got 40 amps of power, and we can run basically anything we want. But you can't run the generator overnight. Not only is it rude, but it's not allowed in those parks.
00:18:48
Speaker
The one thing we would do, though, in our bedroom, we've got two windows, one on either side of the bed. And if you open those windows and then you run the exhaust fan in the kitchen area, basically, it sucks air out the ceiling there. And any window that's open, it drags air in. And the nice, cool-ish air of Florida in January and February would be coming in. And then all the no-see-ums would get stuck in the screen. And that was gross.
00:19:17
Speaker
Anyway, there was a number of times when we didn't have good power management because we weren't used to it. We weren't checking the voltage, and we went to sleep with too little voltage. We started running the generator for about two hours between 6 and 8 p.m. at night, and that would top off our batteries.
00:19:33
Speaker
We could usually go through the night, but sometimes the batteries were completely dead by morning. Oh, really? There's nothing I could do. I'd have to turn the generator on and power everything back up. Interesting. Any alarms go off when that happens? No. No alarms. No notification whatsoever. Better batteries are dead. Weird, because I've seen those. I've seen campers that do that. Well, you can get alarms. We just don't have one. Nothing came with our RV, and we never picked anything up.
00:19:59
Speaker
Then, maybe a few months ago, I think there's supposed to be an isolator switch between the house batteries and the chassis batteries, so you don't use the house batteries and run down your chassis battery. In fact, if you do run down your chassis battery for some reason, we've got a boost switch that will actually use the
00:20:16
Speaker
house batteries to start the engine, to basically jump start the chassis battery and start the engine. And we had the RV parked, I wasn't running anything except the refrigerator, and the refrigerator runs pretty low because it's on propane most of the time when you're boondocking, but it does use a little bit of electricity from the batteries to do some things, but mostly it's on propane.
00:20:37
Speaker
But we had it parked while we were staying at this resort thing down in Reno. And every night, I would come over and run the generator to charge the batteries back up. But a few times, the frickin' chassis batteries and house batteries were both drained down to nothing. And we had to jump it with our car. We had to jump the RV with the car. So we finally just replaced the chassis battery completely. That's brand new now. But then a few weeks later, we got our solar installed at a place called 12-Gun 6-Volt in Reno.
Solar Panels and Lithium Batteries Installation
00:21:06
Speaker
And they don't do a lot of class A's, I gotta say. He's only done a couple of them. Mostly what they do are like truck campers. People get a lithium and solar set up in a truck camper. And they can do that in less than a day usually, just the install. They do lots of those, lots of those. But they don't do too many class A's. How long did this one take? Just took a week. We dropped it off on a Monday and picked it up on a Friday.
00:21:27
Speaker
And it took them all that time because when we got there to pick it up, they were still doing some final tests on the system. But I knew it was working well when he posted on Instagram the day before. I started following on Instagram and he posted on Instagram a video of him making an espresso with our coffee machine on battery power alone.
00:21:45
Speaker
with the solar panels charging it up. And I was like, that's what I've been looking for. Espresso on battery power. Because we can never do that with our old system. Even if we turn the inverter on and plug it into one of those plugs that's working, the espresso machine requires more power than that. And it just wouldn't operate. Interesting. How does that compare to your first time camping in Florida?
00:22:07
Speaker
You mean like 10 years ago when I was about ready to just do it all in? Oh my god, I hated it so much. It was so bad. Camping in a tent on the weekends because the project was Monday through Friday and I was in like, you know, south of Lake Okeechobee in south central Florida in August and September.
00:22:24
Speaker
It was the worst experience of my life, so this was decidedly better. I think that's funny. We've got like three totally different levels of how we're doing this because I'm in a couple of tents and an awning with some battery packs and the occasional hookup to power if I want to heat some water.
00:22:43
Speaker
And you've got the big RV with the whiz-bang electrical system. And Richie sits in the middle and is pushing more towards the RV end, right? Sort of. I mean, I've got a big tent. You know, a really big tent. It's something. Oh, yeah. It's a big teepee hold. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice. Did you see that other teepee out all year? Yeah. Ann Marie, our friend she knows here, it's his. And he set it up that, so she sleeps in it occasionally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.
00:23:11
Speaker
But anyway, yeah, so the system we got here is and, you know, to put it in context, I didn't just go bring out a big fancy RV for this project. We live in it. Everybody knows that. They listen to the show. We've been in it for about 13 months now, I think, as of right about this week, probably next week, maybe.
00:23:28
Speaker
And we love it. I get so itchy feet all the time anyway when I'm sitting somewhere and especially just living at home. And I'm getting itchy feet right now, and we've only been here a month and a half. And I'm like, I'm liking being out here, getting the project done. There's a lot of satisfaction in that. But I also just can't wait to pack everything up and get back on the road and start moving again.
00:23:50
Speaker
Well, we're going to the Pacific Northwest for a little while. Got one campsite already booked up there. My grandma lives up there. My parents live up there. I just want to get some cool weather. I know that wasn't the name of the game of the Pacific Northwest a few weeks ago, but even the coastal areas, which is where we're going to be, like on the beaches and stuff, they're usually anywhere from the upper 60s to the low 70s in the middle of the summer. So that's not bad. So you're not going to have this searing, hot, dry winds that we've got up here? Hopefully not. Hopefully not. Man, it's a smoke.
00:24:19
Speaker
Might have some smoke. We might have some smoke. But right on the coast, usually not, because the smoke is being blown off the coast with the offshore winds. Then we've got to come back down to Reno for the Reno heiresses, which I work at in my celestial squadron every September. That is going out this year. Yep, it's on so far. Interesting. Are you going to have the food booth again?
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah, we're ready to go. So we've got it all set up. So we're going to be doing that. And then our next milestone, we're going to be in Reno for two weeks that time because Rachel's family's coming out. We're going to spend a week in Lake Tahoe after the races. And then we are going to our first Formula One race in Austin, Texas in the end of October.
00:24:57
Speaker
So that's the next thing we're going to. I don't know what we're doing in between, somewhere in the Southwest. We're hoping to do a lot of boondocking with this solar setup. But let me tell you what we got. Paul was talking about that 60 watt panel he's got over there. We have 300 watt panels on the roof. And I'll try to post a picture. I took a drone shot yesterday of it. And I'll try to take a picture and put it in the show notes. But it takes up a lot of real estate. But the thing I like about it is
00:25:24
Speaker
They use the big panels. I've seen smaller panels, and the guy's like, why do that when you've got the real estate to just put up three bigger panels? It's more efficient that way. And the nice thing is, when you look up on our roof, we've got room for probably three more of those. Because all three panels are on here on the back end, and nothing is on the front end.
00:25:43
Speaker
So we've got room for at least two more panels, maybe three, depending on how they're structured. So 900 watts of solar. What does that do for us? Well, when I look at the controller panel up in the bedroom where they installed it, in the height of the day, we're in the summertime. We just had the solstice not too long ago, so the sun is as overhead as it's going to get up here.
00:26:03
Speaker
And in around 2 p.m. or so, when the sun is really at its height and there's no haze, there's no clouds or anything, I've seen that thing pulling in up to over 750 to close to 800 watts of solar. Wow, so you're getting most of it. Yeah, you're never going to get all of it, right? And I mean, if we could angle the panels towards the sun, maybe. That's what I was going to ask. Yeah, but we can't. So they're just flat on top of the area. They're just flat and they're fixed.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, I have seen ones where you can get up on the roof and ratchet it up at an angle, but we don't have that set up. But you honestly don't really need it if you've got 900 watts. If you've got 400 watts and maybe you're trying to maximize that, that would be a thing. But I feel like we just put more panels up there and we'll get more wattage out of it. But now we're really acutely aware, because we weren't before, but we're acutely aware of what everything pulls. I know that when we're plugged into the 30 amp service here at the park,
00:26:56
Speaker
We can run an air conditioner, either the forward one or the back one. The back one seems to take less power than the forward one for some reason. They look like they're the same air conditioner, but the back one just takes less power. I don't really know why. The front one has the windshield. When they're both working at max capacity though, it seems like the back one draws less energy, draws less wattage. I'm not really sure what's going on there. Yeah, who knows what that is.
00:27:20
Speaker
And then we can run that and we usually relieve the refrigerator on electric too because on these hot days if we flip the gas to try to alleviate some of the pressure on the system, the gas just can't keep up with the heat. The sun is on the refrigerator basically all day long on the outside of the RV because our refrigerator is facing south and it's just
00:27:37
Speaker
It is just cranking on that thing. I've seen the refrigerator get up to 46, 47 degrees, because we've got a temperature display right on the outside. Now, 40 to 42 is what they say to keep the refrigerator at, so that's not terrible. But if we've got it on electric all day, it'll keep it down to 38, 39. When I wake up in the morning, it's usually on 35 or so, which is where it evens out at. Which is way better than the swamp I've got going in my cooler. I mean, if you're going to have a swamp out here, your cooler is the place you want it. True.
00:28:08
Speaker
So yeah, we've got, they took out the old inverter, they put in a massive, I don't know what amperage the old inverter was capable of, but they put in a 50 amp inverter, which means it's plugged into basically all of our plugs. So we can run anything off inverter and battery power. Now if we turned everything on at one time, ran the microwave, both air conditioners, and had stuff plugged into all the outlets, we would blow a circuit, for sure. Like we'd blow something, right?
00:28:35
Speaker
But we have, on the batteries, we've run both air conditioners, kicked on the coffee maker for a little while, and then, you know, gone over and turned on the microwave for a little while and, you know, did something there, the convection oven, with no problems. And it's been amazing. I'm actually kind of curious because I know house wiring.
00:28:50
Speaker
I have no idea about RV wiring. What happens if you blow a circuit? You have a circuit breaker panel in there or something? We've got a few of them, and we've got fuses everywhere. There's actual fuses for a lot of the DC stuff, because there's a lot of DC systems on an RV. The awning over here is DC. In fact, it blew out, and it took me
00:29:10
Speaker
a month and a half of watching YouTube videos and tearing this thing apart to find a fuse for the awning. It was insane. Now I know where it's at. I didn't even know the panel where it was existed. There's like five different fuse panels all over this thing. But in our bedroom, we've got a panel right next to another bank of fuses that's all the AC circuit breakers. So they're just typical breaker switches that you would see. Three position, on, off, and tripped. Basically, yeah. Yeah. So we've never tripped one.
00:29:38
Speaker
So that's good. Even just doing other things, we've never had a power surge problem or anything like that. The RV comes with a surge protector if we're plugged into service. So there's that. A lot of people have a surge protector that they plug in between their plug and the park power. Ours has got one built in, so we don't have to worry about that. And I don't know if that's saved us or not, because park power can be...
00:29:58
Speaker
It can be fluctuating. We noticed that here. When we're at night, if we shut everything off and it's at night, I can see what's coming in on the grid on that panel. And the grid is anywhere from 1,200 amps to if we really start turning things on, it might pull like 1,500 amps or watts. Sorry, 1,500 watts. And that's what's pulling in from the grid to service what we're doing. And then on the other side of that display, you see what you're drawing.
00:30:27
Speaker
So if we're running both air conditioners, the fridge is on electric, we're probably pulling about 2,600 watts. That's what we're using. And you can see that the grid is supplying anywhere from 1,100 to 1,500. It's never consistent. You would think it would coming from a plug, but it's never consistent. And then if it's in the middle of the day, you can see what the solar is bringing in. And it will only bring in as much as it needs. The solar is secondary. It's going to take grid first, and then it pulls in the solar. And if we're well over what we're using,
00:30:54
Speaker
It's going to be max solar, whatever it can. And then the third thing that it pulls from is the batteries. So we have three 100 amp hour lithium batteries from Battle Born Batteries. And those things are just workhorses. We've screwed up a few times and run them all the way down to nothing. And they charge right back up. Yeah, well, those are rated, those are like the newest ones that are rated for something like 3,500 recharges.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and they've got a 10-year warranty. It's Battlemore batteries. So if we end up having problems with them, they'll just replace them. And that's why they cost like $1,000 each. These were $995 a piece. I'm not going to lie. About $1,000. Yeah. I'm not going to lie. This isn't cheap, the setup that we got. Because I asked the guy, I was like, well, first off, I called the guy.
00:31:45
Speaker
six months ago, and when I was looking around, I actually called Battleborn, and I said, I want your batteries and your setup, but they don't do installs, and he gave me a couple numbers to call, and this guy I started talking to in Sparks, Nevada. I said, okay, I want to be able to run everything. I don't want any limitations, and I want a whole roof of solar. What's that going to cost me? He sent me back a quote by email that was $24,000.
Cost of RV Solar Setup
00:32:07
Speaker
Ooh, is that what you paid? No.
00:32:11
Speaker
And I said, all right, so what can I get into this for? And he sent me back another quote that was for about $6,000. It was for, I think, two lithiums, a smaller inverter, and not very much wattage on the roof, right? And that's full install with those guys doing all the work, which is what I wanted. I probably could have figured it out, but I was like, this first time around, this is my house. I'm going to have a professional do it.
00:32:31
Speaker
We ended up meeting in the middle, so we've got the 900 watts of solar, we've got the three batteries, the 50 watt inverter is something I was insisting on. We got the big inverter. The one thing, oh, and they put soft start, which is not cheap, on both air conditioners. Turns out one of them already had it, but they put a soft start on the other one, which basically means when an air conditioner compressor kicks on, it could trip your breaker, even though it could handle the power. That initial surge. That initial load, yeah. Yeah, so they put this thing called soft start on, which eases it into the start, which is pretty cool. But we ended up paying about 12.5.
00:33:00
Speaker
For the whole thing huh so bad yeah, and people keep asking me What's the ROI on that like when you're gonna get your money back? And I was like I mean it's almost impossible to calculate yeah to be honest
00:33:10
Speaker
If you're looking at park fees, I mean, to stay two weeks at a park, you're looking at anywhere from $200 or $300, depending on where you're at, to maybe even up to $1,000, depending on where you are. So, we could pay for this in our ability to boondock and do whatever we want. We could pay for this install in a year. Or, if we stay in more of our free parks that we have a membership to, it might take us a few years. But either way, I'm not too concerned with it, because with the setup we have here,
00:33:37
Speaker
We just increased the value of this thing by that much, you know, so it makes it more desirable Yeah, and the dude put in like for what I can tell he put in all the basically the newest everything is like the latest technology Yeah, and let's talk about that on the other side of the break
00:33:56
Speaker
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00:34:16
Speaker
Welcome back to the Archiotech podcast, episode 159. Today, we're getting power hungry. That's right. That's the new title of the show, by the way. That's going to be power hungry. I wanted to mention, I didn't want to monopolize the whole conversation about the RV solar, but I did want to mention some of the components that Richie brought up near the end there.
Efficiency of Victron and AM Solar Components
00:34:34
Speaker
I did want stuff that would last, for sure. That's why we went with the Battleborn batteries and their 10-year warranty. Yeah, and there's the newest LEAPO4, which would only mean something to people who know about lithium batteries.
00:34:44
Speaker
Yeah, not all lithium batteries are made the same. Yeah, like some of them last for 500 full charges. This one you've got to last for like, I think they're rated usually for around 3,500 charges. And then you've got the super fast solar charger, which a lot of people don't even realize that there is such a thing.
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the cool thing about all this stuff. We wanted efficiency. And to be honest, you have to pay for that kind of efficiency, right? I mean, it's not going to be cheap. Most of our components, aside from the batteries and the panels, are Victron. And the only thing that's not is actually the solar controller. That's from AM Solar. And the only reason is, and they're good, too, because this company we use, they use AM Solar. The only reason we didn't do that is because there were supply chain problems with the Victron controller. They just couldn't get it in.
00:35:27
Speaker
it was going to take months. And so he's like, you know, it's the same price. I just ordered the AM solar one and put it in and it works fine. So, um, but some features of this system with this whole Victron set up, we've got a really cool, like four by three inch color display that's back in the bedroom that shows us what our, um, shows us what our power distribution is. If you ever seen an electric car where you can see the little power distribution that says, Oh, you got some going to AC and you've got some going to these wheels and all this stuff.
00:35:52
Speaker
It shows us where the power's coming in and where it's going out and how much it's going out. And we can see pretty much an immediate result when we turn something off or on. And the other thing I like too is it measures the DC separately. So we can see separate DC amp display and you can see it when you flip the bedroom light switch on and you flip it back off, the DC changes.
00:36:12
Speaker
And you can see whether or not it's charging the batteries or discharging the batteries and you can see what amperage rate it's doing it at, you know, like usually when I'm running during the day and we're just, you know, working during the daytime. It's usually discharging the batteries until the sun really comes up high.
00:36:27
Speaker
with the air conditioning on and really just the refrigerator and maybe some DC stuff, and like my coffee pot or my coffee mug or something. It's discharging the batteries at about three amps per hour, which when you've got 300 amps, it'll calculate that for you, but you can calculate that. That is a long time. And then once the sun comes up high enough, it's not discharging at all.
00:36:46
Speaker
It's charging the batteries back up to 100%. And then the cool thing is, since we're plugged in, you see the solar input actually drop to zero. So the solar controller just takes a break because grid is covering it. So it's a pretty slick system the way the whole thing works. Yeah, or sci-fi. I can imagine that you sit there most of your day in front of that panel. I look at it a lot. A lot.
00:37:06
Speaker
I mean, it doesn't help that I already... I mean, I'm a huge Star Trek fan. It doesn't help that I already see this RV as like a shuttlecraft, like a spaceship, because I drive it from the front, I sit in the front as my office. Right behind that is our dining room and kitchen area and then our living room. I mean, we could really be autonomous inside that thing and almost never leave it. If we lived in Oregon, somebody else would even fill the gas and we could have Uber Eats deliver food. We'd never have to leave.
00:37:34
Speaker
I do my workouts in there. I do my VR workouts right in the kitchen area. I mean, today I hit my hand twice on the stove. That wasn't cool. I had to take the headset off because I thought maybe I turned the gas on because I saw that I smelled something when I hit it with my hand. But no, I love it. I'm really looking forward to stretching the legs on this thing.
00:37:58
Speaker
Well, we're definitely going to be in Quartzsite, Arizona. So if anybody's listening to this, there's a huge gathering of RVers in Quartzsite for pretty much the whole month. But I think the middle two weeks is when it's really official. Because they've got a whole show out there. You can buy stuff and get installs and all kinds of stuff. But it's basically boondocking out on BLM land. I mean, there's a few paid sites in Quartzsite that are full hookups. But those are probably gone now already. Maybe. And for people who are unaware, that's the event they show in Nomadland.
00:38:27
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, go to court site. Yeah, for sure. Yep. And so we're definitely looking into getting into some stuff like that, especially since starting in January, I won't be working, you know, 70 hours a week anymore. I'll be down to, I mean, well, 65.
00:38:42
Speaker
Yeah. I'll be down to probably 65, but it's all my hours, right? I'm not going to be working for somebody else at that, which is really what I'm looking for. So I'm just going to ramp up all my own projects. So that'll be good. But anyway, and hopefully we'll have Starlink by then. Oh, yeah. Starlink satellite is supposed to be here, it says mid to late 2021, which is now, as far as I'm concerned.
Richie's Solar and Battery Plans for Truck Camper
00:39:04
Speaker
Oh, that's true. So we'll move on if you're listening.
00:39:06
Speaker
I need my Starlink satellite. He's a regular listener. You didn't know that? I'm sure he is. Yeah. It's tech podcast. He loves tech. So anyway, I want to talk about what you're doing with your Tacoma. Yeah. So you've talked about a solar panel that you're putting on the roof. What is that charging and what are you powering with all this? Oh, well, like I've been doing monitoring and I was really inspired by some of the setups that I've seen a lot of the biologists using because I'm obviously all the archaeologists I was working with. They're using rentals, but the biologists, they're all camping out there.
00:39:34
Speaker
Are they like vans or truck campers or what? Both. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's kind of crazy. Like I saw every sort of setup you could imagine, which is how I ended up with my current contractor camp or shell. And what I'm going to do is basically what I've seen on YouTube, which is they put a hundred watt solar panel on the roof and then they power like a
00:39:55
Speaker
something similar to what you've got with your anchor, except I'm gonna get something slightly more modern. Because theoretically, the battery box, I've got my car, should theoretically be able to power my fridge for something like 24 hours straight. It's like the fridge was literally cranking for 24 hours, but it's not, obviously. When you say battery box, do you mean just like the battery in your engine compartment or a different battery? No, that's what I call my... Do a little portable battery. Yeah, yeah. Gotcha, gotcha.
00:40:21
Speaker
It should theoretically power my fridge for like 24 hours. Nice. I was going to get one that I'm slightly more modern one that should power it for 50 hours. Okay. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. And charging this battery, obviously you got the solar panel plugged in. Yeah. Are you going to have it hooked up to where when the truck is running, it's charging it as well? No. Okay. Well, it depends. I got to do it a couple of different ways because right now when I'm going back and forth, you know, when I'm like driving around with my fridge, basically I've got the little
00:40:51
Speaker
the rock pal's battery box sitting on the passenger seat that way if it when it turns off as it inevitably does since it's not regulated you know i can just turn it on right there okay yeah and then it and then that's plugged into the cigarette lighter and most of the time it doesn't really unless at times just stays charged
00:41:06
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah. That reminds me, one thing I did forget to mention, other charging sources for our batteries, we can turn the engine on. So when we're driving, we're charging the batteries, which is a pretty standard feature of RVs anyway.
00:41:22
Speaker
One thing I want to get that I thought, well, we had discussions about it, and I thought they were actually installing it, but they weren't. And apparently, it's like an extra $200 or $300, which when you spend 12.5, it's not that big a deal, I guess. But there was no time. They didn't have the parts, and I just have to do it later. I might just try to do it myself. But there's a thing called, so we have our generator. It's a 40 amp generator. It's a really good generator. The way we can turn that on is there's a switch on the dash.
00:41:48
Speaker
And this actually is pretty cool too because when we stop for gas, when we're on a long haul and we stop for gas or something like that, a lot of times I'll be getting gas. It'll usually take close to 30 minutes to get gas if I took it way down because pumps stop at $100. They do? Yeah, most pumps do. If you can get on the trucker side and you can find one with a regular gas, not diesel, that's hard to find on the trucker side of truck stops, a gas pump over there. They're almost all diesel.
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah, and even if you do find one that's gas, they have those like highest pressure nozzles. Yeah. And we don't have that. So it's really hard to find. So anyway, I usually just pull into the regular auto stuff and it just takes forever because we're usually, given today's gas prices, we're usually, if we take it way down to 40 to 50 miles to empty, it's usually about 250 to fill it up. Wow. Give or take. But you know,
00:42:43
Speaker
People talk about gas mileage and stuff. We get about seven miles to the gallon, give or take, and that's even pulling the car. My common retort to that is, how many miles to the gallon does your house get? Because ours is probably better. Unless your house is a diesel, then it's probably better.
00:43:01
Speaker
When we're stopped or when we're driving down the road, I'll do a long haul and I won't stop driving for seven hours. I can do that. I'm drinking coffee, I'm doing whatever. My wife, she's got to go to the bathroom every hour, but I don't have to stop because I'm carrying a bathroom with me, so she just goes right back there. When she gets up, I'll be like, hey, can you make me a latte or can you make me a coffee or something like that with our espresso machine? Well, to do that, I have the generator switch on my dash and I have to turn the generator on while we're going down the interstate.
00:43:30
Speaker
which you can do, and then she'll make the coffee, she might make something in the oven, she might get something going on the Instant Pot or something like that, all while we're going down the road, or while we're stopped at a gas station or something, and we've got to run the generator for that. But now, with this 50-watt inverter, or 50-amp inverter, we don't have to anymore.
00:43:49
Speaker
And we can just run it. And in fact, if we're going down through the middle of the day and it's nice and sunny, we can actually run, because there's dash air conditioner in this thing, like any vehicle. But there's a lot of volume behind me. And when it's a hot day, the dash air conditioner is doing a real hard job trying to catch up. But now with this 50-amp inverter,
00:44:08
Speaker
we can just run the front AC while we're going down the road, the front house AC while we're going down the road without turning on the generator. But the thing I was going to have installed is an automatic generator start. So we've got the generator on the switch on the front, there's a switch on the generator which is in the back, but they have an auto gen start that you can plug into the system, it's designed for it, where basically if your batteries get down to a determined level that you determine, your generator just kicks on.
00:44:34
Speaker
It charges your batteries back up and then shuts itself back off, which is super cool. It's a total autonomous system because the generator doesn't have separate gas or anything. It runs off your gas tank and it would just be totally automatic. Well, just yesterday my wife called because they lost power on the street that we live in and we do have a little generator. She called because she doesn't know how to start it up and she was talking to her neighbor and he's like, it doesn't start up automatically because most of the house generators will do that.
00:45:03
Speaker
Ours doesn't. If you lose power a lot, it's a good thing to have. Yeah, yeah. We lost power for like a day less. Yeah, right. Start of 2020. Yeah. And just across into Connecticut, they lost power for a week to 10 days. Jeez. Wow. In the winter? No, it was in the early spring. Okay. But this was right at the start of COVID. Yeah. And we used to lose power every, every time it stormed.
00:45:31
Speaker
So I bought this at a really good deal. The house has always been wired for a generator, but you have to take the cable and plug it in and go into the basement and flip a switch so you move it from grid power to the generator power, and then start up the generator, blah, blah, blah.
00:45:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think that it ameliorated the weather gods because this is the first time since then, a year and a half later, that we actually lost power. It used to be weekly to monthly occurrence. Did she get it started? She didn't have to. It was a transform of the blue on our block.
00:46:06
Speaker
Okay. So a couple hours later they had it fixed. I gotta say though, seven hours driving, drinking coffee, I'm in awe of your bladder. I'm a camel. She always says that about me. Holy cow.
00:46:21
Speaker
And we put 16,000 miles on this in the last year. And we typically don't try to drive more than seven, eight hours top end. But we're not usually ever going that far anyway. When we're really moving, we'll move every two weeks on the weekends. We'll take Saturday and Sunday to do a move. Hopefully only Saturday so we can set up Sunday. Yeah, when we do that.
00:46:43
Speaker
You know, we're not going crazy distances. The most driving that we did actually was when we were in New York and we took two weeks to come back here. Now, I was working full time. You got here in like three days, Paul. But it took us two weeks to get here because we're doing 65 max. I don't care what the speed limit is. We're doing 65 max.
00:47:01
Speaker
That's usually what I do. And we are doing it just a few hours a day. We had some longer hauls on the weekends, but still only about seven hours. And then during the weekdays, when I have to work between client calls and stuff, we do a couple hours in the morning, maybe an hour in the afternoon, and then we'd stop at a parking lot or rest area, whatever. And then I would do my calls because my work is basically client-based.
00:47:24
Speaker
It's just calls all day long and so we tailored it around that but yeah on those halls where we're doing four to seven hours I mean I can easily Unless we have to stop for gas or something. I usually just wait until we stop naturally if we stop for gas I'll definitely go to the bathroom You know it's there, and I may as well yeah, but I don't have to you know I mean weird so Interesting yeah, and I'm like you know on like three cups of coffee in the morning, and you know drinking water, and yeah I store it somewhere
00:47:55
Speaker
See, one more note about Tacoma, because I feel like some people are going to mention it. They do sell multi-battery kits for Tacomas for someone like me who has a fridge. But that costs a lot more than just getting a pre-built battery box, basically. Because I was looking into it, it's like $1,200 for the kit before the batteries and before the install.
00:48:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's literally like this. So basically you got your accessory battery for your fridge or whatever you're putting into it. And then you got the little circuit block so that it doesn't run down the starter battery and then all that stuff. And that's not cheap. I was looking into that.
00:48:36
Speaker
I didn't do any overlanding, but I was really kind of into the scene of overlanding with old Land Cruisers, and everybody had setups like that. I'd just look at them, and they're like, I can't afford it. I don't really have the excuse to living on the East Coast. That's why a lot of overlanders now use any Jackeries, or the brand I'm looking at as Blue Eddy, and a whole bunch of other ones, because it's just simpler. And when the technology wears out, the battery wears out, you just get a new box.
00:49:02
Speaker
Well, Paul, that's a good segue, because with your newfound job freedom, employment freedom, to do basically whatever you want now, this project is going to go for another few weeks. You've got a Tacoma.
00:49:15
Speaker
I don't know what your plans are from a fieldwork perspective, but Dr. Fieldtech, what are you ... I'm going to make that nickname stick. It's not going to stick. You're going to come back next year and it's like, it's Dr. Crew Chief, damn it. So, I'm wondering, do you have any plans of amping up your field setup? Because I know you want to do a lot more fieldwork.
00:49:39
Speaker
And if it's local, you may not have to. A lot of places put you in hotel rooms. But if you are here in the West ... It really depends where I end up working. But that's it. It's location-based. So if I manage to get a gig or a series of gigs out east, if it's overnight stuff, they set you up for the night so you've got to work. So you're in a hotel. If I end up working, coming out West periodically, I would probably get something like a teardrop trailer.
00:50:05
Speaker
It's just, it's an older, it's a 2010, it's incredibly reliable, it was really good 4x4. But I look at it and you know Richie you've got a very similar one, you got a 2007. Mine is the regular cab, yours is the access cab. Looks great with the lift.
00:50:22
Speaker
But I don't know that I ever drive anywhere that I need a lift or more aggressive tires. But again, you know, since I was into those Land Cruisers, I constantly looking at lifts. You don't know to your tires. I know I don't need it.
00:50:37
Speaker
But I can tell you from living in the tent, even only these few days, that having a slightly more substantial structure, especially out here with the wind, would be big. I mean, I think the way that you're doing it, Richie, with the tent and the truck with the topper is probably
00:50:55
Speaker
where my comfort zone would be with this. Yeah. Well, speaking of Overland, I'll take that second to promote one of my friend's channels. He's got a YouTube channel called All Terrain Family. The guy's actually a videographer by trade. That's what he does is video and editing and stuff like that. So All Terrain Family is a pretty well-produced channel because he's got a family and they go camping. I feel like they're camping more than they're at home, especially in 2020. And he had an older Toyota and then he bought a Tacoma.
00:51:24
Speaker
Oh, he did? Yeah, he bought Tacoma a couple years ago that was newer. Which irritates me because I was selling my Tacoma and he's like, I don't want that. He's like, I want my DIY thing. And then he goes and buys one exactly like mine. He's in color and everything, Mike. But anyway, check out All Terrain Family because he does a lot of good tech and gear reviews, a lot of DIY stuff, and a lot of really cool overlanding stuff in really the Nevada, California area.
00:51:47
Speaker
All right, any final thoughts on power? I think we're going to have a lot of links in the show notes. Yeah, I got to get those from you guys. I need a list. Yeah, definitely check out the show notes. Hopefully we get a bunch of stuff in there that you guys can check out. A lot of stuff we talked about, maybe stuff we didn't talk about. And check it out. The big answer here is whether you're talking about field power or mobile power or your mobile home on wheels power,
00:52:13
Speaker
there's no one answer. There are so many different setups. This is why when we did this solar setup on the RV, I wanted someone else to do it. I told the guy what my requirements are, just like when I work with my clients on the safe software install, I find out what their requirements are and I build to that specification. I told this guy,
00:52:31
Speaker
This is what I want. This is around where I'm comfortable spending. What can I get for that? And it might get me happy with it. And so far, the only thing I feel like I would add to this system right away is more solar panels. Because I can already see that having more solar real estate, of course, is the big thing up there. So just for faster charging, I think. Because you only get a limited amount of time during the day where you've got peak solar. And the more panels you have, the more charging you're going to get.
00:52:58
Speaker
So, that's the one thing I've learned just in a month of having this. Sure, more batteries would be nice, but if you can charge fewer batteries better and more often, then maybe you don't need to spend that extra $1,000. Because I almost got four lithium batteries. Because I was like, I don't know if three is going to be enough, but I think three is enough, especially if we were to get another couple panels up there. Well, I mean, they're real quick charging. Yeah, it doesn't take them long.
00:53:19
Speaker
And one thing I will say is that whether you like the van life or not, you have to give it credit to them for making everything a lot cheaper. The batteries are cheaper, the technology is moving along a lot faster. Like that fridge, when I first started looking at fridges 10 years ago, that was like $1,500 and I got that one for 400 something. Nice. Yeah, and double the cooler. I'll look at that later.
00:53:45
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, we've got a fridge in ours too. It's a full residential style refrigerator with an ice maker. It's the Coleman cooler that I've got here. It's definitely the weak link in my setup. Well, that Yeti will hold ice for days. It will. It will, yeah.
00:54:03
Speaker
So, that's the other thing, too. Look at your gear that you have. I mean, if you buy the right gear, you may not need that much power in some cases, right? If you got the right stuff, because Richie's pointing that we've got a full-size Yeti cooler, and yeah, even sitting in the hot truck, you guys would put ice in that thing, and there'd still be ice in it like three days later, and the truck is 150 degrees inside. It's phenomenal how well the Yetis work.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah, we got that one on Amazon's day sale last year. I think we got it for like $250 off. It was like $200. That's what I did this year with that Jackery with the solar panel. Yeah, exactly. It was on Amazon day and Prime Day. There you go. Prime Day, that's what it's called.
00:54:43
Speaker
All right, well, thanks, guys. And check out the links in the show notes. I'll get a list from these guys, and we'll get some stuff up there for what they have. And send us an email with what you've got. My email is chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Paul's is Paul at Lugol.com. L-U-G-A-L.
00:54:59
Speaker
and both of those are in the show notes at arcpodnet.com forward slash archaeotech forward slash one five nine and Richie can be found you can see him on instagram at oh well um not just instagram but your website too yeah um basically that's half oh wait shoot is that happy archaeology fun time well at least the youtube video the youtube channel is at least
00:55:20
Speaker
Put those words into your browser. I know. Yeah, if you Google happy archaeology fun time, there's probably only one thing that's going to show up. Yeah. True. So all right. Well, thanks, guys. And we'll see you next time. Let us know what you're using.
00:55:40
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paul at lugall.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
00:56:06
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV Traveling America, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, in the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:56:29
Speaker
Thanks again for listening to this episode and for supporting the Archaeology Podcast Network. If you want these shows to keep going, consider becoming a member for just $7.99 US dollars a month. That's cheaper than a venti quad eggnog latte. Go to archpodnet.com slash members for more info.