As we continue to accrue additional exterior RV gear worth chatting about, we’ll add it here. Note we do have a separate entire section for fresh water, gray and black tank related gear as well as tools and other maintenance gear such that we use on the road.
ECOFlow 220W Portable Solar Panel – (STILL TESTING) We decided to try this portable solar panel after our first solar panel died (see the stuff at the bottom for details). We still wanted something fairly light-weight and something that could easily be stowed in our back seat without taking up a lot of room. We do like that this is IP67 rated so it can take some water without concern. It is glass so it’s heavier than our old dead panel and it likely more breakable. We’ll hope to get a longer-term review in the summer of 2024 after some heavier use.
BNTechGo 10AWG Wire – I was trying something different for our external solar panel and FAILED (see the stuff we tossed below). BNTech wire is ultra flexible and has been holding up FANTASTIC on our solar panels on the roof. I should have just used this for our portable solar panel in the first place.
RV Lock – We had a different lock for a little while so upgraded to this version. This is a V4 which was key (pun intended): this has the ability to turn off that LOUD and ANNOYING lock beep. The V3 cannot do that, so make sure you get the right one. If you want to turn the beep off, simply hold down the 1 button until you hear a small beep. And that’s it! Do the same to turn it back on. Simple, easy-peasy install. Oh, btw, we had tried one of those bluetooth versions – not worth the $. Just sayin’.
Mr. Beams LED – Man, this thing is BRIGHT and with C batteries powering this sucker, it lasts for MONTHS. I had used these in my sticks-and-bricks home in between our garage and shed and usually had to replace batteries every 6 months even with cold Illinois winters! We’re actually using this below our steps to turn on when we come by. It’s super bright but low enough to not blind you. I just velcro-ed this sucker on and it’s been there for some time. Just make sure to velcro it in a way so you can still get to the batteries!
Camco Step Stool – This one comes in handy for multiple situations. We use it often for an added step when the truck camper is on the truck as well as when we’re trying to land the camper on the truck – I need that added step to better see when we’re close to our front stops. This is very sturdy and I like the collapsible legs for storing flat. This is definitely a keeper!
Camco Leveling Blocks – I still do like these blocks even though they are a little warped due to the several years of usage. These are so much better than some of our original blocks which were solid. You’d think that solid would be more robust, but NO. They also retain any water & mud from your site which is not great. These allow water/debris to flow through and a little tap on a table or the ground tends to get them relatively clean. We use these under our truck tires to level when the camper is on as well as under our camper jacks when the camper is off the truck (we use these to gain a few inches of height because of the added height of our truck bed).
Hush Pad Rubber Jack Pads – When we take the camper off, we use both the Camco leveling blocks and these rubber jack pads. I didn’t really like how the Reico jacks sat on the yellow blocks (or any of the blocks we had previously). This rubber grips onto the yellow blocks well and seems to keep the jacks more stable. I got these after trying to “unturtle” our camper on a very unlevel site. The jacks move much less with this more secure pad.
RV Level Bubble Gauges – We had some different ones until this summer when Gary backed into a mailbox and knocked our back one off, ha!
These are pretty nice since the numbers related to the # of inches off, which directly correlate to the # of levelling blocks needed
Smartplug 30A – After seeing several instances where there were fires/melting of the power connection, this seemed like a no-brainer. An easy retrofit to your existing cable and a more secure connection (with good-size terminals)!
Silicone Seal Strip – We are using this to help keep water out of the slide-out tray. So far, it’s been doing a great job but we had one side come off after about 6 months. We just bought more to replace. It’s very malleable so it hasn’t broken to pieces like other stuff we’ve tried. We also used this for a short while on our door since there always seems to be a larger gap there (letting bugs and outside-temp air in).
Surge Protector – We don’t hook up to any pedestal (or outlet when we’re mooch docking) without this thing. We spent way too much on our electrical system to not protect it. ‘Nough said.
Stablecamper System – We talked about this on a few videos but hit it most in both the loading and unloading video and the camper tour video. We should have done a separate video on this one, but we installed this back in 2019 before we were video taping!
Gate Valve Heater – We just recently installed this because it has frozen on us several times when we get into the teens. I will say that we haven’t put this through more rigorous testing, but it seems to make a lot of sense. See our blog on this gate valve heater installation here.
Mopeka Propane Tank Sensor – We have an earlier version of this sensor, but think it’s pretty close to this. When these work, they are invaluable! Sometimes the bluetooth signal was pretty weak and we had to be nearly on top of it. Also, getting it to read the first time on the bottom of the tank takes a LOT of patience. Recommendation: Get yourself a small tube of dielectric grease and put it on the magnet part of the sensor before you connect it to your tank. That helped us most the time.
OH, this app is good at letting you know when you get to a low value that you set. We typically have it go off around 15%. That’s really nice since you can then monitor and switch tanks before you have a 2am night when your propane goes out!
Mopeka Pro Propane Tank Sensor –
(May 2023) – We just purchased these sensors and will have a review on YouTube in likely a few months. But so far, so good. The Bluetooth signal strength does seem to be better than the old ones. They actually include dielectric grease with these (probably lessons learned for them).
I now know there’s an updated sensor – the PRO version. We don’t have experience with it but I heard it may be better.
If ours stops working (or if I could do it over again), I’d likely buy the Mopeka Pro just to alleviate some of the connection issues.
Mopeka Tank Halo – If you are going to buy any of the Mopeka sensors, do yourself a favor and pick this up as well. For a full year, we fumbled around with those darn metal clips they give you to put on the bottom of the tank. The clips are needed to give the sensor enough room on the bottom of the tank (so you’re not smashing it, and probably improves your Bluetooth connection. Unfortunately, the clips are easy to lose, hard to keep on, and also easy to break.
Once we bought and installed this sensor, our complaining went waaay down.
Space Heater with Manual Switches – This is not the exact version we have but it looks pretty darn close. It’s a small space heater with a thermostat and 3 fan speeds.
The biggest value I see is that with manual switches you can set the thermostat and fan (usually to low for us) and then plug it into a bluetooth “hockey puck” that allows you to turn the heater on and off from inside the camper.
You could also just get a bluetooth space heater as well, but it’s sometimes nice to use that bluetooth option to turn on and off other items as you need (like outdoor lights, fan, etc.).
Bluetooth On/Off Switch – The bluetooth switch I bought is no longer on Amazon, but this looks remarkably similar. This fits better on your two-outlet plug in the basement (ours has to nestle between the water heater lines).
We use this to turn the above space heater on and off during the winter but this also comes in handy if you have lights outside that you want to turn on and off remotely (with your phone).
We were even able to program when to turn on and off – so if you had a light you wanted to turn on and off while you’re gone this would certainly do the trick!
Stuff we Tossed (Recycled, etc.)
VCUTech 200W Portable Solar Panel – We bought this in Feb 2023 and it died in Oct 2023. The middle panel wasn’t putting out any voltage which caused the whole panel to not work. This is one of the few that have each panel in series. So if one panel isn’t getting light, the entire panel is essentially dead. You want to look for a panel that is in parallel (which is the vast majority). Don’t waste your money – try something else.
Gear IT 10AWG Sheathed Wire – We bought this also in Feb 2023 and within a few months we saw 2 of the red wires with cracked outer coating. We originally thought that may have been us that did that so we cut off and re-crimped. It ended up happening to each end where we removed the white outer sheathing and also at the MC connectors that we added. I cannot see how we would have cut the red or black insulation that many times without seeing it. We ended up tossing the entire cable due to concerns of future breakage. Stick to the BNTech Cable we talk about above instead.