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Taking Telecommuting To the Next Level - the RV
An anonymous reader writes "I have been telecommuting as a software architect for a major corporation since 2007. It has allowed me to live a quality rural lifestyle. Never content, am now considering living on the road for several years. Due to the proliferation of 4G and wireless hotspots, I see no reason I could not do this from a 5th-wheel trailer. Have any slashdotters truly cut the cord in this manner? Any advice or warnings?"
In Romania (and probably the EU), we have a law that forces all ISPs to publish service quality parameters (such as average complaint resolving time). Make sure you check them if there are any in the US, to help you decide which provider you pick.
Only stay at places with shower facilities. RV'ing can be fun, but without some comforts like the ability to take long/hot showers, it will always feel like a small step above camping.
Not something you will want to do for several years. And find places with electrical outlets. Air conditioning is something to die for during the summer, and you wont have it if you are running a generator only.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Maybe consider half way between a house & RV. Better when in cold climates.
http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/
I'm not sure what you're looking for. I thought it would be a quite normal thing to utilize 4g and similar while on the road, whether for work, on vacation or telecommuting (which invariably happens to me on vacation).
But all you need for that is a cell phone, and possibly a small directional antenna. The RV solution shouldn't have an impact?
Working on satellite antennas for moving vehicles, I can confirm those solutions exist as well... but probably a little price-y as well as physically heavy for single user use. But if you *really* need internet while driving somewhere extremely rural...
Many of the places you may want to travel to may have limited cell coverage. I have stayed in many campgrounds where 2G is the most I can hope for. Think about where you want to go before you dive into this plan.
The technology-related issues are easy to solve these days. Unless you're in the middle of the desert, 3G/4G cell phones and personal WiFi hotspots should work. If you are determined to live way, way out in the boonies, then look in to satellite-based Internet. It's not very good, but sometimes it's your only option.
The government and regulatory issues might be a bigger problem. Are you keeping your current home? If not, what will you use as an address? You will have problems with things like driver's licenses if you don't have a permanent address.
There are several RV-related web sites with articles and forums on the subject of full-timing. Make sure to check them out.
Wow. TFA says 8.9 million American households that have RVs, about a half-million live full-time on the road.
And the National Multi Housing Council site I found says there are a total of 118M households in all.
So 7.5% of all households own RVs? And 0.4% live on the road? I had no idea such a huge percentage was doing this.
Make sure you have good telecommuting support, so that you don't get disconnected for long periods of time.
I have been telecommuting fulltime for 14 years now and used it to move around the country..not in an RV however. I find 4G coverage still spotty in rural areas and even if it wasnt, the data caps will kill you unless you're grandfathered into unlimited data..Sprint's just getting around to deploying LTE so they're unlimited data is mostly 3G, 3G data is unacceptable for most interactive IT work on the net.
I find working in Rural areas rought..no hardwared internet access unless I want to drop in a T1, The new satellite services(Excede) also have data caps.
I went to a cabin in northern Minnesota this summer..it was on a lake, nice, peaceful and a perfect place for me to work..no cell coverage and certainly no internet access.
I worked a couple of summers in Yellowstone when I was in college. About half of the employees were semi-retired couples living in RVs; they worked in northern parks during the summer and headed south for the winter. That lifestyle really means finding a place to park for months at a time and quickly making friends with the people around you. Otherwise you'll be eating dinner alone every night for weeks on end.
There are RV associations which will help you with this. You will need an address for things like bills, insurance, registration of your RV, etc.
Invest in some solar. A handful of collapsible panels will keep you topped off and powered up while you're stationary, no need to run the internal ($$) generator or try and run off the main engine. In fact most main engines on RVs aren't equipped to power the interior. See about getting additional battery capacity as well.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
well and good. But how about the lack of availability of TELECOMMUTING JOBS?
Most employers do not allow it, and they are few and far between.
This is an easy issue to get around. Many RV camps provide free wifi. Get a long distance wifi antenna ($100 will get you a top of the line model).
A 4g (3g will work if all you need is ssh) tether will be fine as well.
Bigger issue is if they want you to come in for meetings occasionally with little notice.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
There's some good and bad sides to this. I actually tried this out about 3 years ago, wanted to travel while I'm still young and can do more. Me and the wife bought a 35' fifth wheel, moved out of the apartment, and put excess stuff in storage. After about 6 months, we moved out of the RV and back into another apartment. (Kept the RV though, still like to travel!)
The good:
- Having a new backyard every day/week was great.
- Met a lot of friendly people along the way. Many having dinner outside their RV would frequently ask if we wanted to sit and eat with them when we were walking around the park. In turn, we always tried to do the same when we had cooked something.
- A lot of experienced RVers and full-timers are more than willing to help out with issues you might have, as long as you're open to it.
- Seeing the country is great fun, especially the out of the way areas.
- On some days it feels like a full-time vacation (even when working).
The bad:
- High speed Internet access was spotty/unreliable. Being in a rural area, you may be familiar with this already, but when traveling around in an RV to random campsites and rest areas, you find out rather quickly that anything above 3G is still iffy on the open road. Don't count on the coverage map saying 3G or 4G is available in the middle of nowhere, especially if you have time-sensitive work you need to submit.
- Most campgrounds (i.e. RV-oriented campgrounds, not state parks and such) will offer wi-fi access, but it may be spotty, slow speed, or unreliable. And the campground office tends to either be empty when trying to find someone to tell there's a problem with the wi-fi, or if a person is there they usually aren't sure about the wi-fi setup or how to troubleshoot/reset it.
- If you travel a lot (i.e. don't hook up in one place for more than a few days) you will spend a lot on gas. And if you do stay in one place for a period of time, don't forget to account for campground fees.
- Most trailers aren't made for "permanent" living. You'll notice this most with the walls and lack of insulation, especially in peak summer and winter months. Quality counts here.
You'll definitely want to budget things out though, as you can easily spend a lot more than you would in mortgage or rent. Joining Good Sam helps some, committing to a place for 2-4 weeks at a time can help out more with campground prices. Some campgrounds will even let you do odd jobs to help decrease the "rent", but you'll usually find that "regulars" that have been there for extended periods already are doing those jobs. If you do commit to full-time, let your insurance agent know - most major carriers can convert your homeowners/renters insurance into an equivalent "full-timer" RV policy so you'll have coverage on the stuff in the camper.
In short, if you like to travel it's a good experience. If you don't like camping out, you won't have a good time (modern RVs are comfortable, but you still need to remember it's camping out, and you won't have all the amenities of a regular apartment/house). Also depending on how much you need an Internet connection, how fast you need it, and how often you need it, you may not want to commit to it full time. At least, just yet. As the infrastructure and reliability continues to improve, this will become less of an issue as time goes on (I'm sure it's improved some in the 2-3 years since we did it).
I assume if you're RVing, you want to be in reasonably rural areas -- not in city RV parks.
I RV'd through British Columbia and Alaska 3 years ago. For much of the route, 3G wasn't available. State/County campsites don't have WiFi. Commercial campsites almost always have WiFi.
However, the quality of the WiFi can vary wildly. You could easily find yourself camped on the edge of the coverage area of a consumer-grade 802.11b access point, sharing a basic DSL connection with everyone else on the site. Sometimes even basic web browsing is frustrating. I wouldn't want to be reliant on it for VOIP, screen sharing, email attachments of reasonable size, or largeish file transfers.
So I think you'll find yourself hunting out sites with reliable WiFi, which means you won't be as free as you might have hoped.
For me, the problem was not the cramped living space and lack of creature comforts, but rather that most good plots either don't have a road leading to them or there is already a house there. Maybe finding a good spot is a skill that can be acquired, and maybe you're aiming for more sparsely populated areas than I was. I ended up in parking lots, on camping grounds (which don't appeal to me), next to a noisy road or in the dark woods. As an exercise, try going for a drive and see what spots you find where you could put your future RV.
Do some research on whom you'll have to pay taxes. States care about where you were when you performed your services.
I've played with this idea in my head for a while, but decided against it since, for me, the cons far outweight the pros.
There are many blogs written by people currently doing it, including married couples with kids. Google is your friend here.
Among the inconveniences mentioned by others, decent showers and electricity are the major ones. But I'd add physical address for mail. No matter how tech oriented you are, you still need a physical address. Government agencies (especialy the IRS folks) wouldn't be too happy to know they can't get a hold of you if required.
Remember kids, this is America, if gov't can't find you, you're automatically assumed to be a law breaker or a terrorist.
There was an editor it Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calestenics and Orthodontia that did something similar - lived and worked out of a trailer for most, if not all, of the year, but his work was with embedded systems.
Hi-speed/4G coverage will be spotty (at best) where you will likely want to AND be able to park a fifth wheel trailer, and Internet cafe's (AKA book stores, coffee shops, libraries) will be a drive from the campground.
Ken
Did this in South Africa, and other than making sure you in a good spot for reception (or drops you you 2g), it went quiet smoothly. The local cellular companies have maps of coverage and what to expect through out South Africa, so I made sure I only selected places to stop that had coverage.
"You are still innocent until proven guilty. What's changed is what they do to innocent people." by notnAP (846325)
I'm mobile!
A guy did this in our office for a while. I think eventually the difficulties of finding a place to keep the 5th wheel trailer in an urban environment ended the experiment. Companies (and residential neighbors, zoning laws, HOAs) might all grow objections to having a semi-permanent resident around.
If you kept it truly mobile, though, and kept the trailer in trailer-safe places, it could be awesome for a while.
Depending on what type of job you are doing, bandwidth could be an issue. As a sysadmin, when a server goes down my boss expects me to fix it "right now". Excuses like storms took down my internet connection aren't acceptable. I was expected to have alternate internet and as a last resort, drive into the data center to fix the problem.
Some Linux servers only had GUI interfaces for the hardware connection. Dial-up wasn't fast enough for these.
A programmer could be off line for a few days and still be productive as long as phone service was available so conversations with coworkers could still take place.
Dyslexics Untie!
If you really want good advice, ask someone who has done it and it currently doing it.
Ben Willmore has a blog about converting an old bus over to a full RV. He lives most of his life in the bus, only taking a few breaks for teaching / photography trips.
http://digitalmastery.com/creativecruiser/
I was at one of his seminars and he is more than willing to talk about the good and the bad of life in a bus.
I lived in a Camper(small bed of truck type) for several years while working as a developer on site at a company in a large city. A few things to note:
1) Mailing address - I got a PO box, you could also use a friend or family physical address.
2) When boon-docking I was occasionally hassled by police. Get a nice looking clean RV and truck to minimize this.
3) For some odd reason chicks dig RV's. Oh the memories!
4) W/O a physical address you might have problems with Licenses, tabs, Insurance, etc...
5) The ability to pickup and move is awesome. Take advantage of this!
6) Look for an RV with: large water and waste storage tanks, well insulated, Good storage and at least 1 slide!
7) Look on CL for people renting RV parking, RV parks are typically setup for max RV's with little privacy.
8) You will go food shopping more often as the refer is much smaller.
9) You will likely discover just how little you need to be happy.
Have fun, it is an awesome experience.
Got an opportunity for a really good job but the cost of living is almost 70% more than where I currently live. I'm a motorcycle racer so I already have an RV for hauling my bikes to the track. You can "rough it" and camp but I found trailer parks will rent you a lot and have internet, power, water, and sewage hookups to be less expensive. I'll be trying it out in 2 weeks. I've done it in spurts at many race tracks across the country using my phone as a hotspot when I was on-call.
How about your data caps on your service? Clear has 'unlimited', but the AUP cuts your speed like crazy.
How reliable is your service?
What is your back-up?
Some wifi hot sports are locked down so you may not be able to use all the ports that you can use at home and likely they are nated with no port forwarding.
I used to be in contact with a guy who was doing this in the mid 90s with solar and wind power in a converted bus. His name was Dice George and I think he still has dicegeorge.com He might have a house now though.
Korma: Good
he should use a vpn to get around that anyhow, then if he has a port that's enough.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
It's really not that hard. If you stay in one place for several months at a time, you can probably get cable or DSL. If you have to go with cell coverage, you can get signal booster and external antenna. That will help tremendously. Definitely go somewhere with electricity and city water. Sewer is nice too, it really sucks having to lug gallons of effluent back and forth to a dump station.
Propane goes quick in the winter and an RV is not very well insulated. You can use space heaters pretty effectively, especially if electricity is included in your lot rent.
The small space is pretty easy to get used to. Do yourself a favor and throw out most of your junk instead of lugging it around or paying for a storage room.
As far as the red-tape, again it's pretty straight forward. If you don't keep a residential address, you can either rent a UPS box and get it listed on your driver's license (put down apt 123 not box 123) or go with a mail forwarding service. One of the benefits of this is that you can pick and choose where your official residence is and game the system on taxes, emission testing, etc.
The lifestyle is awesome. You get to live out in the country, spend lots of time outdoors, sit around a campfire whenever you want and meet new and interesting people from all over the world. If you like camping trips, I'd highly recommend it.
I guess overall, my advice would be to not sweat it too much. I've been fulltiming for 3 years now and by far the trepidation and uncertainty leading up to the move was far worse than the move itself. Plenty of people do this, it's really not that hard.
I work for a consulting firm so I'm either on-site with a client or sitting at home with my laptop writing reports and managing the rest of my team and I cut the cord last year.
I spent last winter living off the back of my motorcycle in the southwestern US, usually spent my nights in a tent but I would retreat to the occasional hotel room when the weather threatened. If I can do it on a bike you can do it in an RV. I carried a small inverter to keep my laptop charged and powered everything else directly off the bike. Between 3G tethering through my iPhone and WiFi wherever I could find it (hint: due to Mormon sensibilities there are no Starbucks in southern Utah, look for a Subway) I was able to stay online. The "Coverage?" app for iPhone really helped when I needed to find a signal (I'm sure there's something similar available for Android) and I got online in some crazy places (try Googling "Muley Point" or "Dry Fork Coyote Gulch"). I got a small storage unit in Las Vegas for $30/mo where I would keep a suitcase full of "work clothes" for when I had to fly out to a client meeting (something you wouldn't have to worry about in an RV) and as a convenient/cheap/enclosed spot to park the bike while I was away.
The bike is currently stashed in the storage unit and I'm now living on a 41' sailboat (the RV of the seas). I've set it up with a 4G hotspot and some big cell/WiFi antennas so I can get service offshore. Currently located in Manhasset Bay at the western end of Long Island Sound, sailing down the East River later today to tie up in NYC for a month or so.
I'm not an RV'er but, since the economy chased me out of my Unix sysadmin gig, I resorted to putting food on the table by becoming a freight jockey (it was also a nice change of pace). When you're on the road for 26 days out of the month (as well as single with no children) shelling out rent for an apartment is kind of a moot point, so I literally live in the truck. Wifi on the road is really no big deal anymore, especially since most major truck stops, hotels, and even quite a few interstate rest areas now have hotspots.
That being said, there are a few things I do to make online life a little easier for a road warrior:
(1) As I already mentioned, many of your typical diesel stops are going to have wifi but the network can get pretty crowded at times. Some of the best times to use wifi at these facilities is 9 am to 5 pm, when most of your competition is going to be on the road instead of hogging up the bandwidth.
(2) The signal coverage in the places can also be a little spotty: one corner of the lot may have wonderful signal strength but another can absolutely suck. If you can, park so that you can have a clear line of sight to the building in which the antenna is located. Also, try not to put the fuel islands between you and the building if it can be helped; you can go from a really good connection to being knocked offline because somebody's Peterbilt pulled in to the fuel lane at the wrong time.
(3) Many of the wifi hotspots in these stops are managed with OpenDNS and certain websites will be blocked (namely, anything having to do with torrents).
(4) Wifi obviously won't be available everywhere you stop. If you often find yourself in the middle of nowhere (like me) then consider getting something like Verizon's MiFi or Fivespot devices. Verizon's plans seem to be better for heavy users but, if all you do is surf or check email, then there are probably cheaper plans around.
(5) One of the best investments I've made was a wifi repeater with an externally-mounted antenna. A typical trailer is about 13'6" (4.5 meters) in height; when all the diesel jockeys park it for the night there's going to be a awful lot of metal for your signal to try to get through.
(6) I often use my laptop for trip planning as well as keeping my DOT logs via an approved logbook application, so my machine is often running while I'm driving (but I do keep both hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road). Don't know about RV's but trucks bounce around a lot; as you can imagine, this repeated shock-testing can't be very good for the condition of your laptop. If you're going to be doing something similar then I highly suggest getting a laptop stand which bolts to the seat (the seats are usually equipped with "air-ride" shock absorbers and can greatly reduce the constant jarring experienced while driving).
This space for rent!
I have lived on a boat for many years so have some insight.
You'll need a mail forwarding service or a friend who will do that for you. Many rv parks and marinas will let you receive mail while you are there. UPS lets you use their stores for UPS deliveries. Call the store ahead of time so they know to put your package aside.
Solar panels and batteries are getting cheap. You should be able to run your laptop fine. Try to avoid an inverter as they waste a lot of electricity, instead use a universal laptop charger that can run straight off of the rv's 12 volt system. Belkin makes a nice one. http://mikegyver.com/IdeasnProducts/ sells ready made systems for Macbooks and also has a pdf showing you how to make your own. Check out Arizona Solar http://www.arizonasolar.com/ and Sun Electronics http://www.sunelec.com/.
Internet access is tougher than it might seem. Consider how much data your OS and programs use every time they update. You will have to manage your data more carefully and make sure apps don't do silent backups. Little snitch for Mac is a great way to keep an eye on your programs net usage. For large downloads, go to a wifi location like McDonalds or Starbucks. Get yourself a good long range wifi antenna like an Alfa AWUS036H and a nice directional antenna. On an RV you have the luxury of taking a satellite dish along but I have no experience with that.
Google voice is great and voip are great. Get a phone number where your mailing address will be. Cut back on cell phone use as it gets expensive fast, especially if you are out of country.
Showers can be had at gyms, truck stops, marinas and most rv parks and campgrounds. Your fifth wheel probably has showers already but you'll have to empty your grey water tanks more often. Most state and national parks have free dump sites.
RV parks can get expensive. Many Walmarts and Sam's Clubs will let you park overnight. Some require you to ask. Highway est stops are usually safe places so take advantage of them. In either case, be discreet and safe.
These guys make a pretty good reference app http://www.allstays.com/iexit/camprv.htm for finding resources while under way.
Finally visit Canada. You'll fall in love with the place.
My father RVed (not full time, but a large fraction of the time) and consulted during his psuedo-retirement in his 50s.
First of all RVs are incredibly expensive to maintain, fuel, buy (if new) and park. They're designed to separate retirees from their money in the couple years it takes for them to get sick of it. Assuming you're not a confirmed landlubber, you're about 1e9 times better off on a live aboard sailboat. You'll get more space for cheaper and it costs virtually nothing to move it and maint costs aren't any more or less than a RV. If you love the sea you want a boat, if you love the mountains, well, maybe not. Also boats are awesome in the summer and generally suck in the winter, assuming you're in a climate that has a real winter. TIME also strikes in that simple things like doing the dishes in a sink about the size of a large salad bowl simply takes a long time compared to the dishwasher at home.
RV takes more maintenance cost / ability / TIME and guts than a house. As long as you're cool with spending 4 hours rebuilding the generator carb instead of billable hours during crunch time deadline instead of just calling the local electrical company during an outage... If you are used to doing housework/repair/improvement on saturday morning, maybe a RV will realistically require housework/repair/improvement all day saturday and maybe some of sunday if you're full time or pseudo-full time.
Clients understand if you're living in a cabin in Wyoming and they're in NYC you aren't going to just drop on by the office. Clients do not understand that at $4/gallon and 5 MPG you are not realistically able to drive from a state park in Wyoming to NYC to discuss a $1000 contract in person, I mean, you're mobile and free, right, so you should be parking your RV in their corporate parking lot, not in a national park, and being mobile means you have no commute/travel costs at all, right? Clients have problems understanding the expense per mile of a RV.
Clients understand travel time is an hour at the airport each side plus at most a couple hours in the air. Clients do not understand that RV travel means at least one full day to maybe a week to "travel" during which its physically impossible to generate billable hours.
Its not all perfect with sailboats either.... Clients do not understand how slowly sailboats move. So you want to be 200 miles away from the hurricane that is 3 days away... you need to evac NOW like 3 days before landfall, and clients think 200 miles divided by 75 MPH in a car means you should be working for them right up until hours before hurrican landfall, or at most, a day. It doesn't work that way with boats. 100 miles is a excellent daily run (depending on size of boat, weather, and skill of sailor...) and if your life depends on it, 200 miles should have at least three days budgeted. Of course there will be no marina slips 200 miles away, so you need to go further or pray wifi works out to an anchorage, or work from the remote marina clubhouse, or ... Realize that when evac from a hurricane in a sailboat you do not need to reach blue sky, you merely need to reach a level of storm you're comfortable with. 30 MPH winds are no big deal, and the odds of your marina being ground zero are very low anyway, so you might only need to evac 20 miles or something. Also clients don't understand that a hurricane striking the middle of nowhere is a big deal if your marina is in the middle of nowhere, just because the weather channel isn't FUDing New Orleans or Tampa Bay, doesn't mean there's no personal emergency for you... Clients kind of understand if they see New Orleans being evacuated but if its not leading the news...
You need to understand that you can't drive your RV during rush hour (at least in the cities) and you can't drive during the day because you're supposed to be working, but the RV park office is only open 9-5 so you have to check in and out while you're supposedly working and/or avoiding traffic jams, the logistics are much mor
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
This is a topic close to my heart as I've been living out of a small motorhome (RV to my American cousins) on and off for a few years as I balance out my desk-flying tech work by running away in the van as often as possible and being on the road working at festivals in the UK.
One of the things I've learnt is that ready-rolled motorhomes are generally designed for pension age weekend trippers not for hardcore long-term living. The fixtures are often cheap, they're not designed to live easily 'off-grid' and there's never enough storage. If this kind of living interests you I can highly reccommend any geek to consider building your own. It's not hard, it's more satisfying and you can customise to exactly what you really need.
I'd suggest the first port of call to be to buy a copy of John Speed's excellent "Travel Vans" book :
http://www.travelvans.co.uk/
I'd then have a really good read of the Silk Road site. It's aimed at overlanders but while you might not need to care about issues such as angles of lift-off, at least 80% of the issues of long term living in a van are exactly the same :
http://www.xor.org.uk/silkroute/equipment/choosevan.htm
Next, the UK base Self-Build Motor Caravan Club (SBMCC) have lots of great examples of members projects :
http://www.sbmcc.co.uk/
Lastly, to get your juices flowing, have a look at some nice Van porn courtesy of Unicat and Action Mobil. Gives a lot of food for thought!
http://www.unicat.net/en/
http://www.actionmobil.at/
For anyone still reading this far and not bored yet, a few personal suggestions from my experience so far :
- MOST IMPORTANT : Make sure you have a permanent fixed bed and not one you have to put up and down. Its a right hassle after the first few weeks!
- Only use a small fridge. A modern compressor fridge can potentially run of 12v with enough batteries and solar (250+ Ah & 250W min solar) but the older ones won't.
- Have double the storage space you think you'll need. If not triple. Crap always accumulates.
- Allow some 'outside' storage space to store larger or dirty items.
- Have plenty of worktop & secured shelves to have things to hand.
- Showers in vans are a pain - they empty water tanks fast. Use other peoples facilities if poss.
- Find a friend who's address you can use as a permanent post-drop and registered address for bills such as wifi etc. Being no fixed abode can cause problems.
But give it a go. The freedom it offers is incredible and being able to randomly just head off anywhere you fancy is superb.
~Pev
You'll find that working mobile has amazing rewards, and can be very productive. However, I personally found that my schedule became very organic. I might put in 10 hours in a day, but they were spread out over 2 - 3 hour blocks. In between was hiking / exploring, surfing, laying on the beach... Setting expectations with your client / employer is key. Here are a few tips:
* Ensure you take some habitation time off when traveling to a new location, perhaps even just a day or two, to give yourself time to explore your new area, ensure you have good connectivity, find backup wifi hotspots should your mobile connection die, and have fun.
* Research the area beforehand, as best you can. Know numbers for local rangers or police, fire, legal, mechanic, and medical. If you're going international, having banking / financial workflow sorted.
* Cell, if you're going international, can be outrageously expensive if you plan on keeping your US carrier. Get an intermediate number, like from Skype, and have calls forwarded. If you plan on keeping a smart phone, make sure you pay double to get it unlocked. You can get SIM chips from local providers. Otherwise, just buy a cheap phone in country and pay as you go. Either way, your number will change, but with Skype (or similar provider), everyone back home will use a local number to reach you. If you plan on using VOIP, make sure you test it out before an important call when in a new location.
* Have a 2nd laptop, and external drive for file system images. Be disciplined about making backups. Should you be away from civilization and something goes wrong, this will save your bacon.
* Make sure you know how to cook. Learn to make recipies from scratch, like bread & pastries (if you have an oven), sauces, etc. Good food can be hard to come by on the road, and the last thing you want to do is live out of cans or boxes if avoidable.
* If you go international, and like to legally download movies, make sure your providers don't discriminate based on origin of IP regardless of your account. ITunes doesn't appear to, but Vudu, Netflix, and Hulu do -- as do most networks. To get around this, set up a VPN account with a provider in the source country.
It's an amazing world out there -- enjoy it!
There's a great summary about similar project with people who wanted to live off their cars/vans/RVs to cut costs.
The problem is, it's not cheaper and the quality of life isn't superior in terms of daily amenities like Internet, hot water and stone baked pizza.
I think there's a reason a majority of people only go for vacation once a year for a relatively short period of time.
I really fancy travel and I do travel a lot, but some types of work, do not mix with travel that well and by comparison, software related work, having a good and reliable connection to the Internet is one a few concessions I chose to make - by comparison to other jobs it's still great - I can work when I want, choose what I work on etc...
I finally settled down and built myself a small but nice office. It's in the middle of nowhere but it has stable Internet and it's quiet, so I get the job done, with no external distractions.
Still, if I chose to travel, and it was for a fixed amount of time (say a year or two), I'd probably look into the numbers and get a relatively small car rather than RV and stay in cheap motels/hotels such as Super 8 etc. or camp in a tent, when it's warm enough. Small car is much more nimble, will surely fit a laptop and you can go places where an RV won't fit.
If after half a year, you're tired of the idea, it means, financially, you're much better off and you don't have to worry about selling or parking the RV etc...
I work for a small consulting company. We have an office, but in an inconvenient location in the metro area. There are times where I find myself without a specific place to go but where the time spent commuting back home is kind of time wasted, and at home I'm always dealing with the commotion of home.
Lately I've been thinking it would be kind of cool to have one of those Ford Transit Connects as my daily work car, but with a desk-type setup in the back where I could work on all the miscellaneous bullshit that fills the blank time between projects at client sites without hauling ass across town to locations where I won't get anything done.
In some cases, I could probably work on remote project stuff AT the client IN the van as many clients have detectable wifi outside the building.
About the only thing that would be tough would be dealing with heat and air conditioning. These little vans don't have giant engines and sitting parked they may not be able to provide adequate cooling for the back. Heat I'd be less worried about from a comfort perspective, but I suppose it depends on the outside temperature (-10F might be hard to deal with).
The van itself would make for a fun project, but I suspect that the conversion costs wouldn't be worthwhile.
He outfitted a van with all his computer and living gear. It might not be as useful as a how-to book 30 years later. Then again, it wasn't really a how-to book back then. ... I actually can't believe that this is what I thought of when I saw the post, since I read it less than a year after it can out, when I was ~13. Weird how memory files odd stuff for later recall.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Been on road since 1999 & without a house since 2007.
Escapees RV Club (SKP) can provide you with mail forwarding, legal TX address, local medical & financial services but no state income taxes. RVs insured with SKP Livingston TX address have lower than average insurance premiums. www.escapees.com/
3gstore has advice & products for phone & data connections up to 20 miles from nearest cell site. 3gstore.com/
Prepaid phone service & prepaid cellular data services can free you from expensive contracts, especially in areas where contracted service is not available. Excellent 4G or LTE service in city center is not indicative of quality cellular service near 36,247,003 pine trees.
WIFI in RV parks ranges from decent 1 mb/s, to poor 11 kb/s, to broken (Tango) this month. Parks that charge $75 to $155 per night may have better WIFI. Expect to provide your own connection to internet. Satellite services will always have long delays due to travel times from land to satellite & back.
Mostly I work in US area south of Mason-Dixon line & east of Austin TX. 3 Sprint Android phones usually provide all we need, even in Everglades Park. Prepaid phones on other carriers have filled data gaps in odd places.
I recently changed motor homes & cellular frequency bands have changed, so I am shopping for a new cellular repeater system with directional antenna to be mounted on Winegard TV antenna lift. I have used a Wilson Electronics Trucker antenna mounted on extensible 22' flagpole with some success. Shop carefully, it is easy to buy a $500 repeater amplifier that does not cover the frequencies or protocols your cellular tracker uses.
Yahoo groups can be helpful, InternetByCellPhone group is one. Modified cell phones are helpful, see xda-developers.com & cyanogenmod.com. Unlimited data service can be yours with some how to study.
An Onan generator with quiet Kubota diesel generator can keep you in comfort for $ than paid RV parks while you travel. Yahmaha & Honda EU series portable gasoline generators are quiet & small, much better than typical 3600 R/M portable gensets.
One last thing, don't trust RV forums or RV service shops for reliable information. Learn how to maintain your 5er, even if you pay shops to do all maintenance.
I was working remotely as a sysadmin for a small US telco. Back then 3G coverage wasn't great, but it was there. I traveled constantly, and worked from my laptop. Sometimes, I just cheated a bit with presence on my phone (IM Client), when bringing my laptop somewhere wasn't an option. I didn't go for driving though, I took planes, trains, buses, boats, and every other form of public transportation available. I stayed in cheap hotels. That went on for ~2 years. I had the time of my life, and my employer at the time never noticed I left my house. Go for it, but take into account if you go for the RV, driving is a full time job in itself, and you can't drive and code (or whatever it is you do). You will travel far less than you might expect. Cheap hotels and public transportation, OTOH, allow you to fall asleep at night on a plane, and magically wake up the next in a completely different place. You get used to sleeping on the go. I'd say go for it.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Greetings! Yes, this sort of lifestyle is totally possible! Several words for it include: Technomad, Digital Nomad, Location Independent Professional, NuRVer, etc. We're currently in our late 30s, are both software developers and have been on the road working remotely full time in an RV since 2006.
We started out first in a tiny 16' teardrop trailer, then a 17' fiberglass egg trailer and now a 35' vintage bus conversion. All of our homes on wheels have been geeked out with electronics, wireless internet options and solar panels. Our bus currently even has a lithium ion phosphate battery bank to power everything.
4G is definitely making things easier and easier. When we hit the road, finding a solid 2G signal was a struggle,and 3G was just starting to roll out - and even that was workable. More and more RV parks are also installing reliable WiFi networks, and there is WiFi boosting equipment that makes it easier to pick a signal. For cellular, we like a combination of the Verizon & AT&T footprint for keeping online in most places. We purchase our Verizon through bulk reseller www.Millenicom.com - where we can buy 20GB/mo of 4G service for just $69.99 with no contract. For AT&T, we just tether off our smartphones when needed. We also have a cellular amplification system on our roof that helps us boost up a weak signal. We carry an internet satellite dish for when we're somewhere without other options.
We blog about life on the road, particularly the tech aspect of it at: http://www.technomadia.com
Of particular interest, you might enjoy:
Our series going over a lot of the logistics: http://www.technomadia.com/excuses
Our mobile internet setup: http://www.technomadia.com/excuses
And if you're considering this lifestyle, recommend joining a bunch of us doing it at: http://www.nurvers.com (the couple profiled in the article you linked to are members there as well). Many of us rendezvous on the road and co-work & socialize from amazing places.
Best wishes.. and if there are any questions you have, please feel free to be in touch!
- Cherie & Chris / technomadia.com
You can get decent broadband speed via satellite using direcway or hughes anywhere in the USA, Canada (southern) and Mexico (Northern).
...at least in Europe.
77cm dish, £20-£50/month, 18MBps down, 2MBps up -- consistently, reliably.
Depending entirely on where you are planning on staying of course, the cell service is just not quite there. You'd be better off going with a satellite company, but even there you have to make sure you are somewhere that you'll have clear view to the sky.
I've been telecommuting from the road since 2009. I kept telling people that I could work from anywhere so I got on my bicycle in Florida and rode to California, working the whole way. To this day no one in the company knows I did the trip.
Now I'm in a 5th wheel traveling around the western US. Working from wherever I park for the day, week or month. Its a great way to live!
You'll still be stuck driving around in a huge truck when you unhook. Get a motorhome and tow a small car behind it, on a trailer. Then you'll have a backup vehicle to go get help in case of a breakdown.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A trailer has this shittyness to it... tiny cramped shower and fake toilet if it has anything at all and doesn’t force you to go to one of these disgusting camping showers/toilets. ...way too simple, uncomfortable bed... and there's generally way too little free space to live in. Like living in a laying battery. Good luck having a baking oven and four hot plates... let alone the 100 Mb/s line for an affordable price you're used to.
And where would you even put your executive chair and computer setup? You can forget about ever putting a 5.1 hifi sound system with a big subwoofer in there. Or multiple big screens. Don't even dream about a projector. And also forget about shelves for your stuff. They go in the holes deep under the bed or somewhere else hard to reach.
And worst of all, you have no place to actually call "home". Somewhere familiar, where one knows each other. Where the walls are thick and sturdy, and a storm doesn’t feel unnerving at all, behind your nice big windows, and everything quiets down once you close them. Where you can go lay in your bathtub and relax.
A trailer? No. Thanks.
I can barely imagine a worse place to live.
When I started my career in the early 1990s I planned to get enough resume experience by about 2000 that I'd be totally mobile. I'd sail a boat from SF to Tokyo, linked to the Internet all the way by satellite. I'd get jobs from Internet listings, collaborate with teams across the Net, write Internet SW, upload it, get paid direct deposit, pay (few) bills by charges over the Net.
All that seemed possible, though maybe only a few thousand humans would have agreed at the time. My career took a different (more money, less freedom) path, but the Internet has delivered its infrastructure for that dream.
Except maybe the satellite. What kind of bandwidth is available across the Pacific? How much coverage?
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make install -not war
http://tynan.com/rv2012
Get yourself a mast , an stick a wifi antenna on it. Most RV camps that have wifi , have it stuck on a pole up high.
Wifi antennas usually probate the signal in a plate like shape , so most of it is going to be up there , and not much down where the actual RV's are.
I worked as a commuting consulting technical architect for about a decade. Most days are spent on conference calls, but a few days every month were spent either in a lab, at a vendor or physically meeting with clients. If I can I arrange all these physical visits to happen on the same days. With software, you probably don't need to be "in the lab" like I did, but don't under estimate the need to physically walk into an office and talk face-to-face with people sometimes.
More and more, companies are adding remote slide sharing apps to their team meetings. This ups the bandwidth that is required and if you can't see those slides, makes you look like a failure. OTOH, if your part of the project isn't central, then you can probably fake it. 90% of the meetings I was on were for my project and my designs. No faking was possible.
My parents were full-time RVers and I'd visit them a few times a year. They'd claim the RV park had wifi, but almost always that didn't work unless you sat inside the office. More and more, full-hookups also means an ethernet connection, but you really, really, really need to verify that with a 3rd party onsite. I ended up getting Mom to run a port scan before I'd visit to figure out which ports were open, at least outbound.
For me, if I can't connect to the client, I don't get paid, so losing $1500/day over a stupid internet connection wasn't worth it. I schedule more and longer vacations now and set the expectation that I will not be able to check anything ... "going overseas" to rural areas usually covers that. I work about 9 months every year, so there is plenty of time to have great vacations where I can concentrate on that, not work and deadlines.
Some RV parks are like hotels and outsource all the internet connectivity. That means VPNs (IPsec or OpenVPN) usually don't work. Only HTTP and HTTPS access works ... so they can snoop on your connection. I've had this issue at 1-star and 5-star hotels around the world. Ma and Pa running the RV camp usually doesn't know sqwat about internet.
4G is not everywhere regardless of the coverage maps. I worked inside a telecom company and we paid our wireless provider for coverage across the USA for a huge (50K) fleet of trucks. We didn't have access to the real coverage maps even with our monthly payments. Heck, we probably could have built better maps than the mobility guys had with our fleet driving on every road in the USA. Why do you think the coverage maps are so secret? It is because they are complete crap. Get a little away from a city and 10 miles from an interstate and you are screwed. Mountains = screwed.
RVing can be a great time! It is far better than camping. Even a quick and hot shower is amazing compared to some places I've visited. Sure, lots of water pressure would be nice, but you don't need that all the time. I have trouble sleeping around cities or when there is road noise, but crickets and nature sounds are fine. RV walls are thin. Bring some earplugs because there will be nights that you have no choice but to park 200ft from the interstate.
So, you need to decide how much your reputation and being able to do a good job really is for your financial commitments and happiness. Being disconnected is a fact of life when you are traveling. How many big, important meetings might you miss over a stupid internet connection?
I'd take a few trial RV vacations to test the waters before committing. Walk cautiously grasshopper.
He's looked into this and done it.. From riding a bike across the US with radio interconnect, to a tricked out trimaran, to various other nomadic techniques.
microship.com is one place to look.
I have a friend who was converting a city bus to this kind of scheme back in the 80s.
You will find that there are some practical problems (these days, connectivity isn't as much a problem). Fuel economy sucks, so you want to park it and travel short distances (super market, etc.) with another vehicle (scooter? SmartCar? EV?). Water and sewage are problems (although maybe you could do some sort of incinerator/dehydrator to solve the latter). Electrical power is no problem. Cooking may or may not be a problem, depending on your location and desires. If you're a oats and top ramen and peanut butter guy/gal, then you're set. If you want to bake cakes or do a roast, most RV ovens aren't all that wonderful. Bathroom facilities are a pain. If you're custom designing, you can deal with this, but the tiny closet like shower/toilet in many RVs gets old fast, and gets *real old* if you want a significant other to hang out. OTOH, if you're doing the surf bum thing following the waves, then maybe your daily dip in the sea takes care of it. See, e.g., "Step into Liquid" and Dale Webster, who surfed more than 10,000 days in a row.
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/feb/24/news/os-dale24; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Webster
My friend was going to do the ski resort thing in the winter (a mutual friend of ours did a stint at Mammoth.. coder by day, bartender by night); my friend was going to do ski by day, code by night. Some research found that parking by the side of the road in these areas is basically infeasible. And on top of it, there is the whole creature comforts thing: most RVs are NOT designed for -20 weather and feet of snow, although that is clearly fixable with sufficient insulation, good design, and a good supply of propane. Oh, there's also the "find a level spot" problem.
There are a lot of places where you might want to park for "work convenience" that other people aren't so wild about. You, no doubt, have dreams of parking alongside PCH at the beach, or in the mountains. Well, those kinds of places tend to be RV unfriendly, or, what theoretically seems to be available, in practice isn't. (In southern california, the beachside RV parking is de-facto run by these telephone tree organizations, who arrange to always have a spot filled for the maximum 7 or 14 days, and have someone standing by to pull another RV in as the first pulls out)
And, face it, living in parking lots isn't all it's cracked up to be.
You don't have to live out of a RV to do technical stuff on the road. RVs are for people who simply must have the luxuries of civilization, like space and showers. A person with a camping and backpacking mentality can use an ordinary car. I sling a REI camp bed diagonally in the back of a hatchback. I'm 6 feet tall and I just barely fit diagonally, I can sleep flat. The key to this kind of approach is not to carry very much stuff. The interior of an average car is comparable to the interior of a small tent, so just think about what it would take to not drive you crazy in a small tent. Using an ordinary car, the cost savings are huge. You don't have to buy an expensive RV, you don't have to pay huge dollars for gas when you move around, and you can get to all kinds of places that a RV cannot. You don't have to park anywhere special in cities, and yes, you can get away with "urban camping" aka living out of your car just fine. You don't have to pay anything to camp out in National Forests, just find yourself a "dispersed" campsite and park. If you've got enough room to park your car, and it's off the road and not destroying vegetation, you've got a campsite. You don't have to pitch a tent; the car is the tent and it saves a lot of setup and takedown time. If you want a shower, put a gallon bottle of water out in the sun, then pour it down your back with one hand. If it's too cold for that, go south until it's warmer, or boil your water.
Granted, I have not tried this lifestyle in a "constantly in contact with some business back in civilization" sense. It works ok for my own indie game development, where I don't have to answer to anybody. It's an approach that anyone with a reliable car can do. My car is not well suited to forest roads, it's low clearance, it's not anywhere near as large inside as I might like it to be. But it works, and you'd be surprised where you can get to if you drive carefully. Also, I'm sharing my space with my dog. If I had to share space with a woman and a dog, I'd want a bigger car.
I've done a lot of driving in the American west - and I've been impressed at the proliferation of WiFi at truck stops; even those in ten people towns in Montana and Wyoming. Of course, this restricts you to interstate travel for the most part, but that's the same case with 4G I'm guessing.
The Trucker's Guide to the Internet gives some advice on this, and talks a little about MiFi, which may or may not be of use to you. Truckers have solved many of the problems you may face and I'm guessing will have some sound practical advice.
Good luck in this. My approach is similar but involves a sailboat with up times doing software testing when I'm in a marina with WiFi. I can break software from a sailboat salon in the Bahamas as easily as I can in the Rocky Mountains. I won't have any access while sailing, of course, but like truck stops most marinas offer WiFi and many of those have free access.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Which has essentially no 4G. Of course even if you're a Verizon customer, the normal workaday load on 4G is going to bankrupt you.
#1 - strip your RV of ALL fancy vinyl graphics and paint it stark white. You need urban camouflage. Bonus to add AT&T or VERIZON logo graphics on it to further make it look like a Company work trailer.
#2 - All Walmarts let you boondock in their parking lots for 2 nights without hassle. more if you go to the edge and look unobtrusive. The camouflage works here too.
#3 - Buy and install Limo Tint on all the RV windows. also install black curtains on all windows so at night nobody outside can see that you are inside. A cop will investigate your Rig, but if it looks like a corporate work RV and nobody is in it, he will go away after checking that it is secure. Putting lettering by the door that says "Fiberoptic Splicing TRAILER" help convince a cop you belong there.
#4 - learn where fill and dump stations are, but try to not use your toilet in the RV unless you have to. It is a lot easier to find where to fill up fresh water at, and you can dump the grey water on the ground. but finding a dump station to get rid of all your turds is not a fun part of doing this. Leave your duces at restaurants and stores.
#5 - if you dont own the RV, get a "toy hauler" that has a garage. that way you can bring a scooter, Motorcycle or Smartcar and not burn 3mpg gas driving around.
#6 - unless you get an insane deal. do NOT buy a motor-home. Motor-homes are crap compared to a pickup truck and 5th wheel. Why? if you have any breakdown on your truck, you can park and get the truck fixed. If the Motor-home breaks down, you are in a hotel for a week while the RV repair center rapes you and your wallet over and over again. Having your 5th wheel towed to a local KOA campground for a week is a lot cheaper and you still have your home.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Technically, I don't think you're supposed to stop those up as they are transmitters and receivers, but I had to adjust my dish often when I lived outside of cabled options. Found the software to track and adjust signal. High latency, but bandwidth is good and no dependence on others. Can travel just about another, except to the far north with a large looming mountain to your south.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Why not rent an RV for two weeks and see how it goes?
I've never done it full time on RV-based, but I've spent sometimes more than a month away from my conventional home, and working from the road on either solo or two-person road trips. For a few years I did a 4-6 week cross-country trip from Seattle to various east coast destinations and back. Some great upsides to it:
- While gas is (relative to the rest of the world) cheap in the U.S., it gives a (again, relative) bargain on seeing an interesting country. If you have friends scattered over North America and the flexibility in schedule to visit them, it's more economical than dozens of commercial plane flights. I've gotten to see old friends all over the country this way, and that's a hard thing to overprice, because seeing friends in small batches is my ideal social experience. It's neat to catch up to people, make dinner with them, see how their kids resemble them or not, etc.
- You can follow the seasons as you see fit. I happen to like Seattle weather year 'round, Texas weather part of the year, and New England mountain weather when I'm not the one driving on a road made of equal parts ice, mud, and gravel.
But I was driving a passenger car, not an RV -- I spent my nights either parked in a safe spot (safish, at least), visiting with friends and family, camping, or at a hotel. While RVs are cool technology, as you know the big ones take a lot of gas and take more planning to park for the night.
Besides gas and parking, the worst-case scenarios with a full-size RV could be pretty bad ... if you hit ice and slip off the road, even if no one's injured it takes a pretty big effort to get it back on the road. Even without going off the road, there are camp roads, long driveways, and twisty paths along which I'd rather be in my nimble little car than in anything much bigger. When I have idly considered trying the RV-only life for a while, my plan has always been for a small one, like a RoadTek conversion van or just a small SUV outfitted for sleeping -- I'd rather pay for shower facilities on a piecemeal basis than have a vehicle big enough to contain a full-size one. (There are some van-sized shower units, but I wonder whether they're too much contortion and hassle ...)
Horses for courses; if RV travel is your thing, you may see the worst-case scenarios as easy to avoid or just interesting challenges, and just build in the expense or hassle of getting places the RV won't easily reach.
Connectivity is getting better all the time. I have used a Mi-Fi connection quite a bit (using both Verizon and Virgin devices), and found it to be a mixed blessing: when it works, it's fine, but slow as the 3G device that it is, and a bit flaky. When it doesn't work, well, I hope you don't *really* need to be online in the next little while. As with cellphones, the coverage map is always a lie. (Verizon, on this one front, has had better customer service and more consistent coverage, but the actual service is much more expensive; Virgin, in my experience -- matched by Samzenpus's -- tends to fail more often, and for longer at a stretch, and has customer service that Douglas Adams could have used without exaggeration in some part of the Hitchhiker's books. Cheery, youth-oriented, and hip is not what I want in a phone tree.
But with the carrying capacity of an RV, there are now some decent satellite options, and of course many more 3G/4G internet choices, including tethering. All depends how much your per-month budget for communications is, and how much your work requires being ensconced in your own office / surroundings and how much you need big data transfers. Even with "unlimited" service, if you've got a 3G connection, you're not watching streaming video much ;) [If you're patient, low-bandwidth video -- YouTube, for instance -- can work pretty well.] Some days, I can work fine from a Starbucks, and do -- that's been a frequent spot from which to work: they are nearly always friendly, have good-enough-for-me coffee, and sometimes nice cush
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
If you could claim it as a "home office" on your taxes it might offset some of the costs. Not sure if that is allowed.
A boat is a hole in the water that you throw money into.
So, I live in a cabin "off-grid", and I'm a technology professional. I'm fortunate: my employer operates an LTE system that I'm just BARELY in the coverage area of, and there seems to be adequate service from most of the major US cell carriers that I have backup options when the LTE goes out (which it does every time the wind blows my directional antenna off the mark).
Believe me, you develop a "sixth sense" for Starbucks locations when they are the primary source of high speed Internet. Granted, I'm in the Pacific Northwest.. but I know where every usable hotspot is between my shack and downtown Seattle (some 300 miles away). I've learned which coffee shops to avoid, too.
The trick seems to be to have LOTS of options and be flexible. In addition to the service I get from work, I keep a Verizon USB dongle handy. It isn't cheap, but having that little bit of insurance means I'm not completely offline. I also still have a phone modem, and I can drive 12 miles to the store and use their phone line in an emergency for 10-15 minutes. Truck stops sometimes have phone ports for this purpose, BTW.
A couple of bucks and you can buy a gallon of bleach. Throw a cup in the water every so often.
If you've got kids around and want something safer, go to a pool supply place and get some chlorine tabs. A little more expensive but same result.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Make sure you're using git, even if the server is using svn. It will a thousand times less stressful. You probably already knew that though.
John Madden's fear of flying has translated in having his coach bus with all the comforts. Satellite internet is one of them:
http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/John-Madden-s-first-class-coach-Voice-of-2770534.php
My question would be, what will be the address to which the items will be couriered/mailed? [Are you saying you will buy everything from stores?]
First of all, just how big of a truck are you planning on pulling your 5th wheel RV trailer with? You might need a higher class/grade of license for it, and the plates and insurance that goes with it. Might even want to invest in a Safe Driving Course to keep your Home safe(r) from driving mishaps! Ever hear of Low Bridges? Know your Height, and watch those Signs ;)
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Second, you'll want to consider 'Full Self-containment' and how long you can stay fully disconnected. Are you planning on being always in an RV park, or just "most of the time"? Diesel or Gasoline generator? Any solar or wind to minimize the fuel consumption? Size of your holding tanks (water/waste etc) A little high-efficiency solar, with a decent fold-away wind generator can go a Long Way towards saving your batteries from pre-mature charging needs! Lots of 110v or even 12v goodies? Try to learn how to Live Lite on usage, and you'll do much better.
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Thirdly, range extenders for Wi-Fi and/or Cellular signals may be more-than-useful! Just bear in mind they also require Power.
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Fourth, many "Public Wi-fi" are also heavily monitored, and/or Throttled! They might not support VPNs, streaming (or BT downloads) and are likely to have a list of Banned sites. TA/Petro as well as the Pilot/Flying-J Truckstops are Notorious for this! Hotels can be very nosy, too. They all want (need, thanks to Homeland Security) to know what their networks are being used for AT ALL TIMES, so you might experience unexpected signal drops as their firewalling software drops your IP due to "restricted activity" on their network. Add to this, the commonality of the IP pool, and your Net Neighbors possibly snooping into your shared folders. How's your system locked down?
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Fifth, have all the non-power related Creature Comforts that will make your "Life-In-A-Box" worth living! A truly comfy mattress goes a Very Long Way to sanity control. Addicted to TV? Might want to seek a cure. Have to watch The Big Game? Try Hooters (or a similar sports-related venue) and share the experience over having the Big Screen in your RV eating your battery power like nachos and bean dip. What is your diet like? Having a decent restaurant nearby may help as well, unless you're the Iron Chef of 12v Coolers, and propane stoves!
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Speaking of propane, Sixth, we have that most needed of gases. How familiar are you with its safe usage, storage, etc? Might want to Get familiar, as heat and cooking are going to be a really important part of LIAB. Not blowing up, or running out unexpectedly are two factors. Being ALLOWED to even Have propane is a factor in choosing a Campsite as well. Getting refills in a cost-efficient and timely manner is something of note, too.
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Seventh: Climate Control. Need I say more? How do you plan on keeping comfortable and productive in the excessive heat, or bitter cold? Is it all Reliable, and what happens if it goes out in the middle of the day or night? Ever seen a laptop try to run at 104 F sans-humidity? Ever tried to boot a system at -20 F?
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As if all that wasn't enough, I have Item the Eighth: Safety. Not just where to park, or not blowing yourself up with propane, but not getting broken into or RV-jacked. Personal safety is a big issue in a dangerous world. Urban camouflage is great. Making it look like you don't have the place loaded with high-resale items is wise. Thieves will be less likely to target a shabby-looking family rig, than a rental unit,likely to be jammed full of easily fenced pocket electronic goods left behind by bored teens dragged along against their will... Try to look spartan, or like you're perhaps delivering a New one, and not packing anything they'd take. Keep track of your hauling truck! They can be fodder for thieves! And for too many reasons to list.
Such a life is Risky, most assuredly. The freedom and happiness that can be had, however, may be more than enough compensation for you!
Have a Happy and Safe Life out there,and Good Luck!
Hi:
Lots of good observations in this thread from both land and water born travelers. But here is a suggestion that didn't come up.
The Great Loop is a 6,000 mile waterway built by the Corps of Engineers to protect U.S. shipping. It's pretty incredible and every year sees sunbirds making the migration from the Great Lakes down to Gulf, hybernating in FL for the winter, then returning north via the Inland Waterway along the eastern seaboard.
Passage is slow, through both rural and urban landscapes. Marinas are welcoming and you can anchor just about anywhere you want. There are associations that support loopers with the logistics. This might be an alternative to boondocking if you like the water.
You can even pull a houseboat if you like!
Also, somewhere in this thread mention was made of tumbleweeds. If you are travelling alone and if you can live in a small space this would definately be my choice. Litterally a tiny home.
Well insulated, comfortable, small footprint. Very towable.
Have a blast!
resist propaganda
How many MPG do fully loaded RVs get? I drive about 25Kmi a year including daily commute, but I get about 25MPG average. That's only about 1Kgal:year. If an RV gets only 8MPG, 1Kgal is 8Kmi, which is less than coast-to-coast (3Kmi direct) 3 times a year. The average driver goes only about 15Kmi:year, though getting an average 22MPG, or 682gal; an 8MPG RV will go only 5450mi, not even roundtrip Disneyworld/Seattle, even by the most direct route.
Also my house is highly energy efficient, both in its consumption (including lots of bulky insulation) and in generation and the grid that feeds it. RVs seem to be very inefficient, especially if heating during cold months (instead of driving to the sun).
Are they really lowering their impact? Or are they far exceeding what is sustainable in this country?
--
make install -not war
Nobody runs the regular engine for electrical power.
RVs have had gasoline generators for a really long time. They are put into sound deadening areas so only your neighbors really hear them, you don't. They sip gas. Some can run of LP-gas too.
Solar only makes sense if you are in those places where it makes sense for a home - SW USA. Most other places, it is a terrible waste of money relative to the other alternatives from an economic perspective.
BTW, most RVs prefer to park in the shade too. Parking in direct sun is asking to burn up inside or require the A/C to run all the time. Solar can't handle that. Park in the shade and get some cross ventalation breeze happening inside. With a light wind, it is amazing how cool 84 degF feels.
Irish "Travellers" have been doing this for donks in the UK.
But they even manage it without a laptop. Or permits. And without paying any taxes.
So you've got some way to go yet, my friend.
I was going to post a link to ya'll, but I see you beat me to it. :-)
How about another moving to another country for few months?
If you are single and no kids, how about trying to telecommute in another country? maybe for a couple of months.. you can try Indonesia, India or Philippines. .. not big but more than enough for a single person. You have at least vacation and work at the same time.
For $300 - $800 you can get a decent hotel/apartment
So if you're in Philippines, you can get a usb 3g device that costs about $30 and connection fee of about $30 for a month.
If it doesn't work .. you can returm anytime.
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/81236906/The-Consultant
I made the switch last year to living full time in a 31-foot Winnebago motor home. I love it and have no regrets. I am a single man, traveling alone, which is a bit unusual. Most full-time RVers are couples. However, I have met more people, been invited to more events, and now have more friends than I ever had before when living alone in a condo. It has been very successful socially. I head to the southern states in the winter and northern states in the summer. I have air conditioning but rarely have a need for it. I do plan to continue this for several more years.
I am a writer. All I need to earn a living is a laptop and an Internet connection. Most RV resorts have wi-fi these days although the quality and speed varies widely. Some resorts advertise that they have wi-fi but, when you get there, you find it is either very, very slow or very short range. Many times, the wi-fi is only available near the campground's administration building and does not reach to your camp site. Sometimes it is free, sometimes not.
I also have two different air cards from two different cell phone companies for backup purposes and can usually obtain an Internet connection. In the western U.S., however, many areas are beyond the reach of air cards. Depending upon how much you need Internet access, you may have to plan your travels accordingly. I tried tethering my cell phone but found it to be much slower than a dedicated air card. Other RVers I meet tell me the same thing about their tethered cell phones. That's OK for occasional use but you won't want to earn a living with a tethered cell phone.
Satellite-based Internet is available most anyplace you can see the southern sky in the U.S. but is very expensive and is easily blocked by trees and shrubbery. A line of trees will block TV and Internet access completely. Heavy rain can also slow things down or, in extreme cases, block all Internet access. I have been told that snow will do the same but I make sure I have gone south long before the snow falls. I haven't experienced that.
Obtaining a valid driver's license and a permanent home address is a non-issue these days. Anyone who tells you otherwise obviously has never tried it. There are many mail forwarding services who will help you with mail forwarding, obtaining drivers' licenses and vehicle registration, voter registration, and more. South Dakota is probably the easiest state to deal with but Montana, Nevada, Texas, Florida, and New Hampshire are also friendly towards nomads. Other than South Dakota, most states will require six months' residence before issuing a driver's license, however. Check on Google for "South Dakota mail forwarding" to find a LOT of information.
Good luck with your travels!
I can't speak to the subject of full-time van living but if you interested in converting a $2,500 white Ford van into an RV here's my postings on the subject. Step one. Bought the van
Linux -- the Ultimate Windows Service Pack
...is that, um, like a coder or a developer?
Or do you really build houses from floppy disks?
http://microship.com/bike/winnebiko/book.html
This chap decided to adopt a "technomadic lifestyle" in the 80s (or maybe early 90s?) and telecommute from wherever he happened to have ridden his recumbent bicycle to. This was back in days before popular use of the internet, so he was signing in primarily to use the facilities of a dial-up service provider, chat online, check e-mail, etc - using an acoustic coupler on public payphones.
He had to hire someone to work in an office to field calls etc for him whilst he was out on the road - these days, there'd be less need for that sort of thing, since it's more practical to be in constant contact and basically all clients will also have e-mail available. Some or all of the work he was actually doing seemed to involve writing about how he was travelling nomadically whilst working ... a bit circular!
On one of his bikes (the second, I think) he could also type by directly chording ASCII characters using switches on his handlebars - that's proper hacker skill!
Unexpectedly, when I read the book, he also turned out to be a bit of a Cassanova and had great success with the ladies on his travels. I wasn't anticipating that so much!
If there are two fire ant hills close by, a shovelful of dirt and ants from hill one into hill two (and vice versa) can start of quite a little war (they will ignore your camper for the few days you are there). Assuming the two hills aren't part of the same colony which I know of no way to check.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Many RVs have an aluminum roof, and many also have aluminum siding on aluminum superstructures as well as metallic thermal-reduction glazing of the windows, making them quite effective Faraday Cages. Try to find an RV with fibreglass or other RF-transparent roofing and siding, or else be prepared to install external rooftop antennae for such things as AM/FM radio, TV, GPS, 4G/LTE, etc. etc. and also be sure that your internal 12VDC wiring provides enough sockets and juice for all your electronic devices. A pair of new AGM batteries connected in parallel and augmented with a generator will serve you long and well in non-serviced sites, while modern RV electrical systems provide clean, regulated power whether plugged into the grid or remaining on battery.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
We live in rural W Va, and have no hi speed option but sat dish service. Now I commonly see sat dishes for RVs that will even work while moving for TV... not sure about for data connection.
Of course no gaming works well with orbital distances, the time lag get you shot/fallen/lost/abandoned almost immediately. But for systems work, or other types of telecommuting for software related careers it seems to be fine.
As you see, it gets me on /. just fine...
Think of the Irony!
Seriously, these guys have done almost all the work for you:
http://www.technomadia.com/
Curious on what kind of jobs can one do where you can be RV'ing while you work? I mean beyond the obvious "programming" or creative jobs where one can be tasked and then go off by themselves to work and meet later in an asynchronous fashion? I would think that most jobs require some type of constant "hands on" interaction where being off-line for a time would be detrimental?
To equate a gas guzzling RV with "cutting the cord".
The phone and cable companies are Putin. And the RIAA and MPAA are the KGB.
road salt kills the plants, but not the ants. so that is a pointless comparison.
also the EU's main concern on Borax is as a *food additive*. The US has banned the use of Borax in food for decades. There are no studies showing using it for soap cause infertility. (although it can make your hands red, because it's a harsh soap better used for washing clothes than hands)
100 years ago there were no fire ants in the US, but there were borax mines and even campers. (but no RVs, people used tents)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
RF penetration sounds hot.
I worked as a contract controls engineer (still do), and did a lot of startups & commissioning gigs.
I lived in a 40' 5th wheel, and enjoyed the flexibility. I could go from fully set up to fully set up within 24 hours. The flexibility made it a LOT easier for my employer to stick me into a gig, so the job security improved a lot.
The moves were not that often (every few months or so), so my employer hired an over-the-road truck to move the RV and I met them at the new site. It's cheaper than a week in a hotel, and WAY cheaper than paying to move an employee.
As an out-of-town resource, I still received the same housing and M&IE per diems as any other contractor (see your federal regulations on that one; there's charts for every major metro & surrounding area). This pays for the site as well as repaying the cost of the investment in the RV. (Investment--a thing where you spend money and expect to make money with the thing you bought. Like a carpenter who buys a good set of tools.)
I worked a lot of automotive gigs and found that there was NEVER a gig more than about 1/2 hour from a full-time park with Winter sites. Generally if you stay for a few months, they will give you a big discount on the slot, esp. Winter. Only one site didn't have sewer hookup (it did have electric & water), and the honey wagon came by every week.
I met some really great people full-timing in an RV; there's a real community out there. I've never had a bad neighbor, and the good thing is if you do, you can always move! Also, I met my wife while full-timing. We lived together in that 5th wheel for 3 years, and if we had an argument, there was no avoiding an issue by stomping off to the other end of the house. We pretty much had to deal with it then and there!
Some suggestions
You will need a "tax home" when you file your taxes and to maintain your driver license. If you qualify for residency in a state without income taxes, this is a good choice. If you move around a lot, get a forwarding mail service. This can also help with the item above. Personally, I used the post office of Mom & Dad. Every month or so they'd throw all my mail into a box & UPS it to me. If I needed something in a hurry, there was fax (ok, I guess it was a while ago...) and email.
If you plan to do this for a while, get a nice RV. If you live in rathole you will feel like a rat.
If you buy the RV new, have it prewired for generator, satellite on the roof and cable in the side. I used sat & cable both when I was on the road; cable is better, but SAT is not so bad. After you've done it a couple of times you can point the dish in about 10 minutes. I never needed a generator, so I never bought one. RV generators are not cheap, they're noisy, and the take up a lot of space.
If you need AC, get more than the vendor says you need. The folks that sell them lie. On the days you need it you will be very glad you got it. Either a roof-mounted RV unit (or two) or a window unit. You have to reinstall the window unit every time you move, but it's a lot cheaper and works just as good.
Water in Winter
Get some Raychem Frostex and heavy pipe insulation for your water hookup if you plan to Winter in a cold area. Dig out the water tap to below the frost line and run the heat trace and insulate. Buy a tankless water heater! I installed a precision temp RV-500, and believe me--a long hot shower in the middle of Winter is wonderful.
Heating in Winter
Don't get the tile floor. They crack up and are cold as hell. Do buy some good thick house slippers. I think we had "Uggs" or a knockoff like them. Thick wool sheepskin slippers. RVs floors get cold in Winter; your feet will thank you. Keep a spare furnace motor on hand. The DC motor has carbon brushes which are a wear item. Once they're go, you need a new motor. And they die when it's cold. Get the double-insulated windows, or just cut some Plexi to size and cover the windows on the inside. It makes a significant difference in the temperature and your propane bill.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Yeah, and those ^%$#@! generators will make you incredibly popular with everyone else in the campground as well. Everyone loves the asshole that come out into the middle of the woods and proceeds to run a noisy generator that completely ruins the ambiance.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Another thing to consider: I've heard that RV's depreciate in value as much as a mobile home, which is horrible to say the least. Also, what about sending/receiving packages? Most places require you to have a physical address. That means you're stuck at the RV place until your packaage arrives.
Check with voter registration, the DMV, & other such official agencies. Some of them may require a permanent physical address. What if you're required by some court to show up for jury duty and you are out of that state and you never even got the summons due to your living arrangement? If you get a speeding ticket or get in a vehicle accident, then you may be stuck in that area until you can get that situation taken care of.
In other words, count the cost, the TCO, in all senses of the word, to make sure you don't run into any major show stoppers before you embark on your journey.
Being an outdoor professional (Skier, climber, and linesman,) operating outdoors or away from the wonders of civilization is something I've done a lot of. Indeed, that's pretty much the job title. When I have to bring somebody who is typically an office worker to an environment where the indoor/outdoor line is blurred, they typically run into a few issues:
1. Environmental factors (particularly moisture)
Humidity is a bitch, and I've personally had a large number of electronic devices fail on me as a result of high humidity. Cold and heat are also prime suspects for equipment failure and data loss. Check your product specs carefully, or be prepared to keep a space in your RV that has environmental controls. I've found marine equipment and housing to be quite effective, though bulky. Oftentimes we have had to install a central wireless link and connect everybody through cables.
Also, being outdoors a lot of the time will increase your calorie requirements, even if the temperature drops a few degrees (a friend of mine once lost 5 lbs by turning down his thermostat and not changing his caloric intake.) If you don't account for this, it will slowly drain your energy reserves and, over the long run, send you back home.
2. Process
Everyone has their own process for doing their job, and it can be affected by a wide array of variables. Having made the move from office to home office, you should have a better idea of what your needs will be. To be sure, though, it would be worth putting your new mobile office in the worst conditions you can find (bad weather, heavy noise, sketchy connection, shady neighborhood, etc.) and see how productive you can really be. This would make an excellent blog post, nobody wants to hear about how things went right.
3. Endurance/Sustainability
Going green is something I'll leave to you, but I can tell you from experience that if you don't pay attention to your efficiency, or fail to rest and recover adequately, you will burn out fairly quickly. This ties in with point #2. With a poor process, drawing on your body's energy reserves, it will be possible to maintain your desired level of productivity for a few weeks or months before you start to feel demotivated. Be sure to schedule in enough time to enjoy your travels, and recover your energy between projects. Proper nutrition is important, you're going to be burning more calories living this way.
4. Motivation
Despite taking precautions against the other issues, it may be that you simply do not find this lifestyle conducive to your needs. It may be as simple as gas prices rising, or as complex as interpersonal issues or a close call/accident. Either way, be sure to have a firm idea of why you are doing this in your mind before you start out.
Best of luck!
(I"ve done this twice for over a year each time)
Definitely recommend these folks' web site (Cherie and Chris)
Also HIGHLY recommend the Escapees Club (http://www.escapees.com and http://www.rvnetwork.com/ for the discussion board). This is one of the original organizations for full timers. If you can, their "Boot Camps" are a great way to learn about living on the road and RV's in general. About 1/2 of the people will not have bought their RV yet.
If you don't have a trailer or truck yet, research, shop, shop, research. NEVER believe a trailer salesman about how little truck you need or a truck salesman about how big of a trailer you can pull.
Jim Wildman jim@rossberry.com
Having worked as a freelance programmer for 4 years living in my RV.
1. Networks is the number one problem.
A. Not all wifi networks are the same - as a result when I pull into an RV park there's going to be one of 5 different wifi cards that will work - never know which.
B. If you pull into an RV park - try to tell them in advance that you have needs for a network - usually they will put you in a spot that's close to the wifi - but not usually so desirable a spot.
C. Buy yourself an yagi antenna - it makes the network a whole lot more stable.
D. Your network will drop during various times of the day. The frequency from the back of a microwave overlaps that of wifi - if you are in a crowded RV park - your neighbor's microwave will drop your signal.
E. In general, I found that choosing the RV park based on the network provider is a good way of making sure you are going to have a network. E.g. if I want to go somewhere, I go look at the wireless providers that provide service in the RV parks, and find the closest RV park based on that.
F. a verizon mifi unit helps - but often it won't matter because the verizon unit will be on the same line as the network as the wifi in the RV park - the further out from civilization the less number of lines to get to the net.
2. Equipment is your second problem. Equipment breaks. Every once in a while you are going to move your RV - think about when was the last time that you shook your laptop or desktop. Sooner or later it breaks. You have to plan for replacements.
It happens about once a month that some equipment breaks.
Along with a equipment is power and heat requirements. My RV has a 30 amp system - this limits the amount of equipment that can run - on a normal day I have 3-4 machines running. It generates heat, so there's an AC unit. If I tun on the microwave or the oven - I sometimes just run out of power. RVs come in 30 amp and 50 amp systems. If you are a tech - go for the 50 amp system. 50 amp systems will still run on a 30 amp outlet. You just need a converter plug. Usually the RV parks charge more for the 50 amp outlet.
3. The transaction to living in an RV is much much harder than you imagine. I have sold or given away approximately 95% of my worldly posessions. Downscaling is a major life change. Its much harder than you think. Its a good feeling - but its also quite difficult.
4. Addresses and mail becomes a problem. The answer is what's called a mail forwarding company. You have your mail sent to an address and then once a month or so you have them fedex it to you. These days you can usually decide online which particular item to have sent.
5. Once you commit to living in an RV - the question is what type of RV. RVs don't come prewired. You have to wire them yourselves for networks. Unlike homes, RVs don't appreciate. You lose money on the RVs the newer you buy them. About 10 years or older the price starts stabilizing. Buy something used, with about 40,000 miles on it. Its backwards from buying a car. If the RV doesn't have miles on it - its sat in one spot. A vehicle that sits in one spot will have issues. If you buy something older, you won't have the fear of changing things - and likely as a tech person you will need to change stuff. Usually RVs don't really have a desk concept. If you spend your entire day in your RV - and there isn't somewhere comfortable to sit you won't do your work. If you have a brand new 100,000 dollar RV - you are not going to make the physical changes that will allow you to continue doing your work.
6. There's a whole lot of learning that goes into owning an RV - there's lots of literature out there.... Your RV is a piece of equipment with a lot of parts to it. It was designed to go away for two to 3 weeks - they were not designed to liv
hey mate,
i spent 7 months aboard a yacht i was refitting in an aim to get handy!! In that time I maintained a system or two for some customers and wrote a lot of spare time software I am now finishing that I'm back on land.
3g internet was great. having enough headroom to be able to sit/stand straight is the most important.
the rest you will figure out.
have a blast...it was a blur of 7 months - went by so quickly
I've worked remotely from my sailboat in the Bahamas -- there was decent enough internet in Abacos for me to work from at anchor, did the same from a mooring in Miami for a while too using 3g card. I crewed for a boat owner across the Indian Ocean that was a developer who would work on projects offline from the boat and then go in to a coffee shop or similar to FTP his work in , pretty sweet deal if you ask me, they did a circumnavigation in ~ 3 years while he was continuing to work remotely -- so I'd say it's possible
I just spent the last 5 weeks on a cross-country road-trip doing something similar. I'd travel to a destination with my family, and then while they explored the new locale I'd work during biz hours. Over the 5 weeks I used two weeks vacation and enjoyed an immensely satisfying vacation with my family, seeing a lot of the USA I'd have never seen otherwise.
BUT: I'm accustomed to the southeast & northeast. I'd never spent any substantial amount of time in the west. Once we travelled much past Indiana T-Mobile coverage became MUCH more sporadic. There were huge stretches of highway with no coverage at all. In my 'normal' life I'd never seen any coverage lapses and T-Mo was always stellar, but out west the coverage was absent in a lot of areas. I'd guess the same is true of the other carriers but don't really know.
+1 insightful, no mod points left.
Tomorrow is another day...
I'm a web developer, teacher and author who has been on the road in a 5th wheel for ~ 17 months now. It's entirely do-able. We started with a 1-year trip as a family of four (two teenagers), came back, sold our house, gave away most of our stuff and are now back on the road again and loving every minute of it.
There's a ton of good advice here, and a ton of stuff that that seems kind of out of left field. I'd recommend the OP follow up with Chris and Cherie of technomdia.com (who posted above) as they have some excellent resources for anyone considering this lifestyle.
We also posted a series of "lessons learned" after our year on the road to our blog:
http://boyinks4adventure.com/our-travels/category/michigan/P30/
Good luck, and be sure to contact me as well if you specific questions from someone currently on the road.
Michael Boyink
boyinks4adventure.com
You should check out the following sites. (Disclaimer - the second is my father's who spent 12 years full time on the road.)
http://www.rvnetwork.com/index.php
http://adventure.1tree.net
My parents found that there are still plenty of areas that have poor to no cell phone (or data) reception.
Make sure you don't get the wrong tow vehicle. My brother got a used truck. One of the previous owners had a fifth wheel installed for a horse trailer I believe. Turns out the truck was a giveaway because both the axle and tranny were dying. Both were severely underspecced for towing something as light as a horse trailer. Read the magazines and online reviews. Don't go cheap.
Second, get thee to a truck stop (or Amazon) and purchase a Rand McNally trucker's atlas. I was particularly fond of the large print one while I was driving. Don't rely on your consumer GPS. You'll want to go to the paper. If you must have GPS, get one specifically for trucks. If decent, it will route you away from roads that have corners that are too sharp and bridges that are too low. You'll also want to pick up a truckstop guide. A few years ago, that little book was about $4. Worth its weight in gold.
When fueling, if you are at a truck stop, don't get in the truckers' way. They are trying to make time and make money. They aren't on holiday. In fact, get out of the trucker lanes and go to the other side of the station. There is usually a nice diesel (your tow vehicle IS diesel, right?) pump with plenty of room to get your rig in and out of. Moving a rig like that through the car pumps is no fun (and there's often not enough overhead clearance). And pick up some loyalty cards. Every so many gallons of diesel (usually 100) you get a free shower. Not the best in the world at most places, but better than the ones at campgrounds. And if you don't ask, everyone will likely look the other way if you and the Mrs. enter at the same time. (Wear shower shoes whether at the truck stop or at the campground)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I've been doing mostly telecommuting embedded linux and android work for years now, and for the last two have been doing much of it from my RV. I have a Verizon MiFi hotspot, and it works really well.
The Bolachek Journals
In early 2010 I gave up my NYC apartment to live in on the road to pursue my art. I've been 'at large' ever since, and I've traveled in a style similar to what you describe.
First, if you must stay connected you will probably need cell service with tethering/mobile wifi hotspot from both the two major carriers. Even then, decent service is spotty, at best. The best places to go, typically, have the worst coverage.
Secondly, a robust electrical system is critical. My suggestion is two heavy duty, deep cycle AGM batteries in addition to the vehicle's battery. Even a heavy duty alternator isn't designed to charge a battery aggressively. Most RV's have an AC to hookup to charge batteries at night, but high wattage folding solar panels offer dependable juice without being tethered to the RV hookup world. How do you feel about campgrounds and the itinerant RV culture?
The third question is vehicle choice. Are you travelling alone? A big RV or trailer is difficult to hide especially in any kind of city or small town. Some W*lm*rt's offer boondocker's a place to stop, but parking lots lack aesthetic appeal. Trailer's are better than mobile home's for sure. Vans are awfully small. Sprinters offer more space but repairs are expensive in remote places. The simpler your setup the more versatile you can be. Where will you keep the trailer? Campgrounds?
Fourthly, how do you feel about war driving? Sometimes, despite the best cell coverage, the only connection will be an unlocked wifi, or bar/restaurant/campground wifi? Does that work for you?
Fifth, security. What happens to your life and work if someone steals your whole kit? How will you protect your precious gear and unique identifiers? What will you do about your mail? Insurance?
Short answer, it's totally worth it. Divesting one's personal property can be excellent and liberating. The view of the country is gorgeous, and the people are varied and fascinating.
Friend of mine has been telecommuting while driving from Seattle through South America. If he can be successful with that, seems its pretty doable.
He has some good articles about challenges he has faced here
4G and WiFi hotspots aren't as prevalent as you'd think, based on the advertising and claims of the players in the game.
Verizon's still taking their sweet time getting LTE lit along I-25, for example. Other markets have big gaps as well.
AT&T's HSPA+ that they're claiming is 4G like T-Mobile's claiming isn't as covering as they claim it is- and they're going LTE like the rest.
T-Mobile...heh... You might get 4G, you might not.
Sprint/Clear...heh... WiMax had potential...Clear botched it.
As an observation, you'll probably want to score a Cradlepoint router, travel or home model. A CTR35 or MBR95 works wonders for this sort of thing. A MiFi works "okay" for moderate values thereof so long as you only need a couple of devices on the "network" and you're not trying to do anything "fancy". Be prepared (and expect) for a lot of 3G areas where you might be going. Not a bad thing in and of itself, but if you're serious that pretty much means Verizon or AT&T (T-Mobile works pretty good in urban areas, but if you're RV'ing it...that's not a foregone conclusion... Sprint's "okay" but it's coverage is spottier than the other two in many of the areas you might be RV'ing it.). I chose Verizon and while I wasn't RV'ing it, I was doing a lot of extended stay hotels. Hotels have craptastic "high speed Internet" in most cases. You're sharing a 12 Mbit or worse connection with everyone else in the Hotel. If you're planning on a lot of Hotspot use, you might as well basically relegate yourself to 3G performance levels. Works decently unless you're doing a commit to a remote version control system. Commits I did to the after-hours projects I was doing were fired off at bedtime and typically were sorted out sometime before I got up in the morning.
4G? Heh... The marketing will tell you it's marvellous and you're probably covered in many areas. Take it with a giant 1-ton block of salt. If you're in an Urban area, you'll have 4G mainly in the claimed markets. Mainly. If your'e RV'ing it...don't expect any better than 3G for most situations for at least the next 2-4 years. If you're in Estes Park, CO, the KOA has 4G, the Good Sam does not because of the Coverage Plat and where they are in town- for example. You'll find a lot of that all over the place. In some cases, the 3G has the same sorts of stories I am relating with the 4G.
In short, it's doable. But don't expect the data access you think you're going to get. Isn't there and won't be for a while yet to come.
I've lived in my RV for 3 years as a DBA (and writing this from my RV office). Just browsing through this thread there are quite a lot of negative, wrong, and closed-minded comments.. kind of lowers my confidence in slashdot dev content in general. Set up: I live in a 21 foot travel trailer (4900 pounds fully loaded) that I bought new for $13K (industry is struggling and was able to get 40% off MSRP). I pull with a Toyota 4Runner V8 (7300 pound tow capacity) I bought used for $18K. It tows nice.. it isn't a big loud diesel truck. You don't need a diesel these days if you select the right trailer. Less is more. Smaller allows you to fit in way more camp sites and your gas mileage increases (I get 11-12 MPG towing). If I had to make these decisions again.. I would have gotten a 19ft trailer or maybe go the Class B. route (this adds some interesting urban stealth options). I have way more room than I need.. but is nice when I have visitors (but that only solves for a 5% use case). This is my home.. when I visit friends along the way.. they offer a guest room.. and I decline telling them I'm way more comfortable in my home parked outside. First of all, 4G is making for exciting times ahead! Not so much on the coverage-front.. but instead of tweaking the system to get .7 Mb.. you'll now be fine-tuning to pull in 12 Mb! Never rely on wifi signals in RV parks.. as they get overloaded or are severely underpowered. On that note.. stay in RV parks as little as possible.. they are expensive, have amenities you don't need, and clientele are not really that interesting. Go to State Parks ($15-$35), National Forests (free-$20), BLM land (free), National Parks ($12-$45), and Provincial Parks in Canada (free to $50). I stay in RV parks every 5 days or so to reload up on water, top off the batteries, do laundy, and dump the tanks... and if I really need some high bandwidth.. but that is hit or miss. Sometimes I'll stay in an RV park for a week (they offer cheaper weekly rates) when I just need to be at a convenient more urban location during an important project. Use rvparksreviews.com to determine best ones (sometimes they'll mention how the wifi signal is)
On that note, get some solar panels (300 watts should be sufficient.. but you need to check your average load) and possibly a small quiet generator for cloudy days (2KW is enough). Some of these parks have full hookups.. but the best and cheapest ones will be no hookup (possibly w/ electric). You need to pair this with some good batteries. I have two 6 volt 230 amp batteries. If I had the room I'd get four total.
Get a cell booster (Sleek 4G or SoHo 3G.. better 4G boosters on the way though) and a 4G directional antenna (also an omnidirectional as a backup) and mount it on a painter's pole that you can extend 8 ft about your rig. This helps with oscillation issues and gets you over any dense obstacles. You will be able to pull in 3 bars signal where without you would not get service. I use Verizon exclusively and I've been able to stay at all but the most remote campsites. Use Verizon's coverage map to determining where you can stay ahead of time.
If you need to pull in wifi signal.. get an Engenius booster with a directional antenna or an Ubiquiti Bullet. They come in handy. I'm a DBA.. and backups are my bread and butter.. having multiple signal options is critical.
Tear out the useless cramped dinette and put in a full custom desk and mount your spare LED panel on an articulated mount. I worked from the dinette the first year.. and my butt hurt after every work day. I ripped that out and put a 2' by 5' slab of 1.25" thick oak on some ikea cabinets/stands and a used Herman Miller chair for a total of $450 (most of it the chair).
Your bathroom is fully as functional as home.. but if you can go number two in the camp bathroom.. than you'll lengthen how long you can go with dumping the black tank before it starts smelling.
This is your home.. tweak/hack things as you need.. don't feel like you need to keep the RV in pristine for sale condition. I have so many
I am a software developer and have lived full time in my RV for the last four years. The first two years I commuted to an office, but finally I cut the ties and put in for a full time telecommuting option. I have traveled all over the place. I will say this, you post "living the rural lifestyle" if that is your plan, then don't count on 4G. You're better off to find a park with a good wifi signal. Some are pay for, some are free, but ALL are cheaper and more reliable than 4G in remote locations.
on that note, get yourself a cisco bridge to catch that wifi signal and feed that to a router. This will keep your devices less visible to any one in the park. And as always, SECURE your router!!!
I strongly encourage anyone that has ever thought about doing this to give it a go! I've been on the road for two years now and absolutely love it. I make my daily standup call by telephone and work through chat and phone calls to other team members. The view out my back window changes often and it's a great way to see the country and meet new folks!
Get out there and roll on!!!
I intend to become a vandweller. I do not have the money for an RV. I will live in a van (yah, I know, down by the river). I will use on board batteries and solar panels for power (computers, lights, fans, etc), I will use minimal water and have minimal waste. That makes my carbon footprint much smaller than a city dweller. The city dwellers rely heavily on electrical power. I can move with the seasons and move away from neighbors.
how do you plan to code while you are driving?
Have been working at home (telecommuting) for the past 5 years or so. Last year, did some extensive planning on spending a year on the road while working. The plan was to pack up the motorcycle and spend a year riding the country while working. Looks like that isn't happening now, but the plan was sound. Here are a few things I came up with to help out on my little trip. I don't see them previously mentioned, but might be... Didn't read all of the comments. :-P
1) Backups... Have two methods of backups for your PCs. One method should be local, the other remote. The local version could be flash/thumb drives, a little NAS device or whatever. The remote one should be a good on-line backup service.
2) If possible, have a remote machine to use. I have a remote machine out on the internet I can connect to through VPN if my main PC goes down.
3) Have a second machine at the ready. Your main machine could be a super-powered multi-core machine, but if it goes down for some reason, you need a backup. If you have a remote machine, then perhaps something like an HP-Mini would work. You could just Remote Desktop into your remote machine from your backup hardware & keep working while your main hardware is repaired or replaced.
4) Be sure all your hardware is minimally protected with a password. Depending on your work, more protection might be necessary / prudent.
5) Recovery/stolen computer locator service may or may not be worth the cost or hassle. A buddy of mine subscribed to a stolen laptop locator service. His house was broken into & laptop stolen. The locator service found it, but local police said it wasn't enough information to get a warrant or do much searching. If the service will brick the hardware if stolen/lost, that might be a good thing.
6) Always have two options regarding WiFi / internet connectivity. If the campground Wi-Fi isn't so good, maybe the fast-food joint 40 miles away would work... or maybe the coffee shop. For my plans, this was an important consideration.
7) Have a secondary cell phone on a different network. Even if it is a prepay, get it and keep it charged. There are many places where one service will work and the other will not.
-Just a few notes from my notebook. Good luck!
I've been living a mobile lifestyle in a motorhome for almost seven years now. It's a great lifestyle if you like constant changes in scenery. As a photographer that really floats my boat.
I'd say that internet access is one of the most frustrating things about living this lifestyle, since you don't always know how good your wireless signal will be. 4G is spreading like crazy this year, which gives much promise. You might just need to limit your travels to areas where you know there is a very solid signal. If you want to travel to overly remote areas or hang out at national parks, then you might want to consider a satellite setup for internet since you can get a connection anytime you have a clear view of the sky.
If you see RV parks that list Wifi, keep in mind that not all places have high speed access and some will have a limitation saying that it's only for email and light web browsing. Other campgrounds can have great wifi, but I don't know how to tell one from the other without showing up or talking to someone who has been there. Also, look into a wifi and cellular booster so you can pull in signals from farther away places.
You might want to monitor how much bandwidth you use right now and compare it to what's available on various wireless and satellite services since they all have bandwidth caps... going over will either cause your connection speed to go down (satellite), or for you to get an extra charge on your bill (wireless). That makes it so you won't end up renting too many movies online.
If the mobile lifestyle calls to you, then I'd spend more time investigating your options (look on forums related to RVs or wireless internet instead of general ones where you get too many answers from people who haven't done it themselves) and I'd encourage you to give it a try. I love the lifestyle.
Technomadia.com is a great resource for general info. You can follow my adventures at WhereIsBen.com
I've just spent a couple of months living in a self-converted minibus in the French Pyrenees. Low budget, no campsites, high and remote locations.
Sure there are problems with the internet connection, but the main interruption is that the scenery is so spectacular that it's distracting. I'm working less and less, and hiking more and more.
A while back I considered this a problem, but now that I've properly chilled out I'm not so sure that it isn't a solution.
My parents have been doing this for two years in a 24' class-B RV. They have no problems remaining connected via WiFi as they travel. My dad being a retired analog radio engineer -- and thus not very computer savvy -- had very few issues creating a reliable mobile server/router to handle secure local services, and secure uplink through WiFi or data-modem.
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Care to expand? I'm geniunely curious. Thanks.
I recall an article in the UK's Computing magazine a very long time ago about a freelancer who bought a canal narrowboat and went from gig to gig. She just found a close mooring, hired it for the duration, and commuted with a Mini that travelled with her on the roof of the houseboat. She even got work in Europe, sailing up the Rhine (canals are larger in Europe)!
For here, look at HughesNet for satellite internet (Arianespace just launched them a new satellite!), check out FlyingJ truck stops (large car parks to overnight in, food, toilets, and showers all under one roof, and there's lots of them!