Wifi and Satellite Questions

[silverta16]

Now that I've got a real camper that is kid friendly I'm looking at TV options. I do have the roof TV antenna and look forward to trying that out when I get towards a more populated area. I went to my local RV dealer yesterday browsing and saw a portable $650 satellite dome reciever. Neat looking setup, do any of you use satellite? Could you use your home subscription or do you have to have a seperate setup? I know big $$$ motorhomes have those expensive antennas but I was sort of suprised they made a more affordable alternative. I never owned a camper till last summer and when we went the first time our neighbor had a small camper and had a Dish or direct setup on a tripod and watched TV outside all weekend. It was a cool setup.

Also the kids have ipads and every campground we've ever went to the wifi signals weren't strong enough to pickup where we were camping. What options are out there for camper celluar wifi? Do they make a reciever of some sort and a service you can buy? Thanks in advance.

[Grumpy]

There are all kinds of Sat dishes available to use with one of your home receivers. However with Direct TV the automatic dishes only work with standard definition and not High Def. If you have DISH at home they will work with HD. The manual sat antenna will work great but can be a bit of a chore at times. Winegard makes several portable manual, semi automatic and automatic sat antennas.

http://www.winegard.com/portable-sat...index.php?q=rv

There are many wifi options as well and again your wallet will probably determine what you want. Playing games and downloading videos as well as music can burn up a lot of megabytes and be expensive if using your cellular carrier. Verizon has a independent "Hot Spot" with different plans and we have always had luck with coverage when needed.

[silverta16]

Girlfriend has dish at home I'm pretty familiar with that. That antenna is what I saw at my local RV dealer. I may look into a tailgater model or one of the tripod mounted ones as they seem pretty cheap for learning. So most likely she could get an additonal reciever and pay an extra monthly fee and I could just leave it in the camper? I have zero knowledge of dish or satellites and boxes and programming only had cable at home.

So pretty much all the options for wifi are the hotspot boxes? I saw a Suburban the other day at the mall that had a similiar looking reciever ontop to the satellite one, I assumed it was some sort of mobile hotspot but it must have been for satellite. That is extreme for a truck. My parents had a small hotspot box for awhile but I really didn't like it as it was painfully slow.

[speckfisher]

I have dish and was aiming the dish every time I went some where. I got to where I stopped taking it because it was a pain. Good Friday I purchased a Tailgator to try it out and I was surprised how easy it was and how good the HD picture was.

[Imnaha.Mansion]

In my TT we tried the portable manual aim satellite dish with Direct, PITA. We stopped brining it also. We are going with Dish and a self aim satellite, eager to try it. We are going with Dish because you can pay month to month, and for football.

Has anyone mounted a cell phone booster in there Trailer?

[silverta16]

I would be afraid to leave the $650 satellite just setting on the ground for someone to steal, do you guys plan on mounting yours ontop or ?

[RVhiker]

I have a manually aimed simple dish that I set up for DirecTv. It usually takes 15 minutes to set it up; the only time it takes longer is at a site with heavy tree cover, in which case the search for a proper hole in the leaf cover through which to view the satellites can take a while. Once you learn how to aim a manual dish, it just is not hard to do... assuming you have the proper tools to do it with.

[Imnaha.Mansion]

If I were to use a portable self aiming Satellite dish I would get the alarm and padlock it to the trailer. I went with roof mount knowing I will have to park in open areas.

[Grumpy]

Originally Posted by silverta16

I would be afraid to leave the $650 satellite just setting on the ground for someone to steal, do you guys plan on mounting yours ontop or ?

They come with a tab for a lock and chain so they can be secured if your worried about theft.

[Mustang65]

We use the Tailgater and a long bike locking cable that we secure the Tailgater to the frame of the TT. If you are looking at getting a roof mount unit, you may want to think twice. The problem is when you get to your site and it is probably going to be shaded, you MAY not have a CLEAR shot to the SW sky (trees), to get your signal. We took a trip out west last year and a lot of the RV's had a roof mount and a ground dish, as they could not get a signal (under trees) and had to use the ground dish. The Tailgater is GREAT!!

Ah, but you may want to pick up your local Tv stations!! Ok, there is a product called Slingbox (slingbox.com) and this box connects to your home cable box and transmits the cable box output to your laptop/Smartphone/tablet... over the internet. We like watching the Ray's baseball games, so we mostly use the Slingbox. Allows us to also keep up with the hurricane status.

But you are encountering a POOR Wi-Fi Signal at the CG's. Ok, for product # 3, get yourself a Wi-Fi signal extender (Example -EnGenius High-Powered, Long-Range 2.4 GHz Wireless N300 Outdoor Client Bridge) which is a high power AP/Client Bridge unit. In easy terms, it amplifies the Wi-Fi signal from the CG's Access Point and it amplifies your laptop signal going to the CG's AP. Example: We were at a state park in Colorado, no Wi-Fi signal on the laptop. At the top of a hill a little over a mile away (in plain view) was a Home Depot store (yes - FREE Wi-Fi). Well since half of my dollars goes to Home Depot, I set up my EnGenius antenna (which is mounted on the ladder of the TT, see my albums for details) and was able to connect to their customer free Wi-Fi and have 4 bars. The signal was strong enough to watch the Rays game on our Slingbox, with no signal drops.

Of course the security of the Wi-Fi signals is only as good as the software you have protecting your computers so be careful. I use VPN back to my house computer (runs 24/7), which is an added layer of security, using a tunneling protocol.

Good Luck, as there will be many more GOOD suggestions.

Don

[silverta16]

Thanks a bunch. I'm so excited to get all this stuff put together.