Park Review – The Hill Top

Rating: 
Location: Brenham, TX
Type: Commercial
Check-in/Check-out times: 1:00/11:00
Site Quality / Amenities: Asphalt roads with concrete pads. Propane is available on site. There’s also a pool, exercise room and clubhouse.
Access: From TX-36 take a right on north Park street then left at the first street.
Staff: Very friendly and super helpful.
Cellular/WiFi: Cellular service was strong and fast. The park had WiFi but we did not try it.
Restaurants:
Nearby parks: We didn’t look at nearby parks.
What we liked: Nice friendly park near town and great central point for all the nearby attractions.
What we didn’t like: Road noise on SH-36 is very loud if staying in the Southern most sites on the west side of the park. Sites farther north (at least 1/2 way down) should be much better.
Verdict: This is definitely a great place for longer stays in the Brenham area.

Harry S Truman Visitor Center – Pioneer Village Area

Warsaw

Park Review – Bucksaw Campground

Rating: 
Location: Clinton, MO
Type: COE
Check-in/Check-out times: 6:00/6:00
Site Quality / Amenities: Gravel pads and roads. Each site has a picnic table and a fire ring.
Access: Off MO-7 east of Clinton, MO then south on SE Highway U to the entrance of the park.
Staff: We had no interaction with staff.
Cellular/WiFi: Cellular was a bit marginal, luckily we had Starlink and could get a clear enough view of the sky for decent signal.
Verdict: Nice park to explore with decent campsites.

Park Review – Ozarks Landing RV Resort

Rating: 
Location: Lake Ozark, MO
Type: Commercial
Check-in/Check-out times: 1:00/11:00
Site Quality / Amenities: Gravel roads and pads with a picnic table and fire ring at each site.
Access: Easy access from US-54 in Lake Ozark.
Restaurants: Baxter’s Lakeside Grill was a great place for a birthday dinner.
What we liked: Nice pond behind most sites. Lake of the Ozarks area is pretty but right around the lake is very built out.
What we didn’t like: Sites were a bit tight and difficult to get into.
Verdict: If we were in this area again I think we’d try someplace else just to get another point of view.

Hermann Missouri

Hannibal Missouri – Home of Mark Twain

Park Review – Lazy Day Campground

Rating: 1/2
Location: Danville, MO
Type: Commercial
Check-in/Check-out times: 12:00/11:00
Site Quality / Amenities: Gravel roads and pads.
Access: From I-70 take State Highway J south to the park entrance.
Staff: Friendly family run park.
What we liked: Nice trail in the park and lots of wood carvings throughout the park. There is a pool but we didn’t use it. Day trips to Hermann and Hannibal.
Verdict: This park is sort of in the middle of nowhere but it’s close enough for some fun day trips to the German settlement of Hermann and to Mark Twain’s home of Hannibal.

Lincoln Home in Springfield Illinois

Lincoln Burial

Park Review – Double J Campground and RV Park

Rating: 
Location: Chatham, IL
Type: Commercial
Check-in/Check-out times: 1:00/12:00
Site Quality / Amenities: Roads and sites were gravel. Each site had a picnic table and a fire ring. There was a walking trail but we never walked it.
Access: Adjacent to I-55 on Palm Rd.
Staff: This is a friendly family run campground.
What we liked: Decent park that was close to Anna’s brother in Springfield, IL. It was also interesting visiting the historical areas for Abraham Lincoln.
Verdict: Nice area to visit with lots of historical areas related to Abraham Lincoln.

Fisher Cave

Park Review – Meramec State Park

Rating: 
Location: Sullivan, MO
Type: State Park
Check-in/Check-out times: 3:00/2:00
Site Quality / Amenities: Asphalt roads and sand/gravel sites. Each site had a picnic table and a fire pit. There is a lot of wildlife in the park to watch. The river provides an opportunity to swim or wade and there is a cave in the park near the campground that can be explored with a guide.
Access: From I-44 near Sullivan take MO-185 east to the park entrance.
What we liked: During the weekend the park was quite full but during the week it really emptied out. Then it was very quiet and we were able to relax and enjoy the peace and quiet of nature while looking for wildlife. It was fun exploring Fisher cave to and enjoying the cooler temperatures underground.
Verdict: Nice State Park with lots of stuff to do to keep busy.

Got us out of trouble on more than one occasion.

Heat Pumps

We found that the propane furnaces don’t work all that great and they use a lot of propane. Since we added heat pumps to our AC units we could got by down to about 40 without using them. The “fake” fireplace and a ceramic space heater got us down to about 32, maybe a bit lower. Much below that and we needed to run the furnace to keep the basement warm so pipes didn’t freeze up but the fireplace and ceramic heater kept us nice and warm. We got down to -7 at one point.

Power Reel

35′ or so of 50A power cord gets quite heavy and a bit difficult to store. We found that out the few times we’ve had to use our extension cord. It’s much easier for our main cord using the electric reel.

Power Sequencer

Another device we added when our rig was built, this was only used a couple of times but it’s a big deal. When we had to go to a 30A site, the sequencer sheds loads when you do something like start the microwave when the AC is running. Otherwise, youl’d be taking a trip out to the pedestal to flip the breaker back on.

Auto Leveling

It’s wonderful to pull into a site, press a button and a few seconds later the rig is leveled and ready to go. Our’s never quite works that well as we usually have to tweak the level a bit but it still takes just a few minutes. We see others using blocks to level and then putting down stabilizers. That can take 15-30 minutes depending on how good they are at doing it and they may or may not be that level when done.

Park Review – Silver Springs RV Park

Rating: 
Location: West Plains, MO
Type: Commercial
Site Quality / Amenities: Gravel pads and roads. Basic site with no amenities other than a green space area at one end of the park with some picnic tables and a few grills. There was an onsite swimming pool but we didn’t use it.
Access: Easy access from US 63 in West Plains then NW 462 to the park entrance.
Staff: Very nice and accommodating.
What we liked: Convenient to West Plains and Dora where Anna’s mother grew up on a farm.
What we didn’t like: A lot of people in the park were obviously down on their luck but that was expected in this part of the country. We never felt unsafe, however, and most people there were very friendly.
Verdict: This is a decent park for this area with several things to see and do nearby.

Mirror Lake

Blanchard Springs Cavern

Historic Swinging Bridge over Sylamore Creek

City Rock Bluff

Park Review – White River Campground and Cabins

Rating: 1/2
Location: Flippin, AR
Type: Commercial
Check-in/Check-out times: 3:00/11:00
Site Quality / Amenities: Gravel roads and sites that were level. We had a picnic table and fire ring.
Access: Easy access from US-412 to Business 62 toward Cotter then exit onto White River Trail.
Staff: We had limited interactions with the owners.On arrival they directed me the wrong way to the site given our size and we had to circle around and go back to the site the way I expected I’d need to.
What we liked: Our site backed up to the White River with views of the railroad trestle and the old Cotter bridge. Because the water was cold coming off the bottom of Bull Shoals lake it helped moderate the summer temperatures. Ideal park for fishing.
What we didn’t like: Black Widow spider in the men’s bathroom.
Verdict: This is a nice park to relax along the White River as well as to explore the surrounding area.

As I thought about it, I had planned to create a single controller to incorporate all the features. Then while visiting my son for Christmas we got into a discussion about the automation system that came with his home and integration of WiFi switches into it. I wondered why WiFi wasn’t used more often since almost everyone has it these days and so I began to investigate. The weak point for me was the fact that all the WiFI products I found use cloud connections for control. I had two issues with that. First, I consider it a security issue to have everything controlled and monitored by someone else. Second, unlike a home with cheap unlimited internet capability we mostly utilize cellular data and it is somewhat limited and at times unreliable.

Then I found a product by a company called Sonoff. By default they also use a cloud connection for control but there are open source firmware alternatives that allow local control without a cloud connection. After research, I chose the open source firmware called Tasmota. As you will soon see, Sonoff and Tasmota allowed me to quickly and efficiently implement several of my desired features.

Before I cover the implementation details here is a list of the features I initially wanted to implement:

• No cloud control, all features must be able to function locally.
• For remote monitoring, minimize the data sent over the internet.
• Web Dashboard capability.
• Monitor the front bay temperature and control a heater to keep the battery temperature above freezing.
• Monitor up to 2 temperature sensors in the basement and control the heater to prevent the tanks and pipes from freezing in cold weather.
• Incoming AC voltage monitoring.
• Monitor battery voltage, current, state of charge, etc. and if possible the inverter and solar controller parameters.
• Indoor temperature (up to 2 sensors).

You will see in the details that follow that all of the initial goals have been met or in many cases exceeded. I will continue with details of each component from the least technical to the most technical as most people probably won’t get to the bottom of the post.

Dashboard

The dashboard is a web page accessible from anywhere in the world. It is hosted by a commercial web hosting service which is also where this blog site is hosted. You may notice at the top of the page a field called Data Source. Data for the page can be supplied either by the local MQTT broker (more on this later) or from data kept on the remote host server. Broker data is updated in real time but you must be on the local network of the RV to connect to the broker. Server data is updated once a minute but only while the dashboard is being displayed and the user viewing it is not local. This helps keep internet usage to and from the RV to a minimum.

Each of the devices used around the RV for automation communicate using a protocol called MQTT and that data is accumulated and stored by the Mosquitto MQTT server on a local computer within the RV. This allows the remote devices to minimize communication overhead while providing the capability for multiple consumers to obtain the data. There is plenty of information online about the benefits of using MQTT and how to set up a server so I won’t go into this further here.

There is no ability to control any settings from the dashboard as it is intentionally read only. This is by design for security reasons. There really isn’t any need to be able to change settings remotely anyway and everything can be configured using other methods locally.

Analog values are displayed using gauges available from https://bernii.github.io/gauge.js/. There are a few text only fields and the remaining are “LED” type fields. They are green under normal circumstances and flash red for abnormal circumstances. With the flashing Leds and color coded gauges, the status of the RV can be quickly checked to determine if everything is in a normal range.

Front Bay Control

One of the first things I implemented was a heater in the front bay to keep temperatures there above freezing. Our Lithium batteries cannot charge when the temperature is below freezing. For the temperature control, I bought an off the shelf Sonoff TH16 for about $20 from Amazon.

The default firmware will use a cloud based connection for control so I re-flashed the firmware with Tasmota (https://tasmota.github.io/). This procedure involves adding a header to the circuit board and using a USB to TTL converter to flash from a computer. The exact procedure is beyond the scope of this post but is fully documented on the Tasmota web site.

Tasmota allows you to create internal rules to perform actions based on events such as temperature getting too low. For the front bay heat I originally used a set of temperature control rules from a “cookbook” article on the Tasmota site (At the time of this post, there is a thermostat capability that can be built into the firmware). Once I moved on the the basement controller, I used the same rule in both places to simplify future maintenance. See the Basement Control section for more information.

The heater for the front bay is simply an old style (non-LED) bulb for safety. At the time of this post, it has not been needed even with below freezing temperatures but it’s nice to know it is there for the day it is needed.

Basement Control

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AC Power Monitor

As I started researching how to measure the voltage of the two voltage legs coming into the RV from the RV park pedestal, I came across Circuit Setup (https://circuitsetup.us/). Their Split Single Phase Real Time Whole House Energy Meter Kit can be purchased for less than $100 including 2 current probes and 2 9V power transformers. This allows monitoring both legs on a 50 Amp RV for both current and voltage. Power usage as well as power factor is calculated by the firmware of the device.

Like the temperature controllers, the energy meter can communicate all the electrical measurements to the MQTT server so that other devices can display or make use of the data. That information is used for the data displayed by the dashboard.

Unlike the Sonoff devices, the firmware for this should work off the shelf. Of course, I couldn’t just do that however. The mode that allows a second voltage input only has one calibration value for both inputs. I found a difference of several volts for each leg once calibrated which isn’t a lot but I wanted better accuracy. I added a second calibration value so that each leg could be calibrated separately giving much better results.

Circuit Setup also includes free software called EmonCMS which can be used to track energy usage over time. It is possible to use this via a cloud based implementation but I chose a local installation instead. This is not well supported but if you have a linux server and decent skills you can figure out how to set it up using their installation scripts as a guide. Unfortunately the installation scripts are not 100% right (or weren’t for my installation) so I had to manually figure it all out. Once working, you can get nice graphs of consumption over various time periods using either a web browser or an Android or IOS application.

Inverter/Solar Controller Monitor

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Indoor Temperature Sensors

Even though this was one of the main requirements for this project I have not yet implemented the feature. Using the Magnum Monitor hardware I have a temporary solution but ultimately I want to build something, likely battery powered, that looks good which can be permanently used.

Future Goals

In addition to the indoor temperature sensors, there are two more sensors I’d like to implement.

We have two Mopeka Propane level sensors that use Bluetooth for communication. I’d like to be able to intercept those communications and be able to incorporate propane levels in the dashboard. I have the ability to see the communication but so far I haven’t yet figured out how to decode the information.

I’d also like to add the ability to intercept the black and grey tank levels from our See Level II system. I believe I have information which should help to do that but it will have to be in a future project.