My offroad Camper

[Gerdo]

Steve,

Great awning!

I love watching your progress. I, too, have wanted to add a rooftop tent. I build my trailer with mounting points in the walls. However, I have one problem.

How do you plan to work your roof vent with the tent on top of the trailer?

I can't figure this one out yet. It would be nice to use both.

Mark

I installed a lower profile vent so I could at least open it a little, the RTT wont be on there all the time though. Anyway, mounted the tent today and pulled it out just to check stability and to check it out. On the weekend I'll set it all up with tent, annex, awning etc.

The tent also has the covered entrance over the ladder but I didn't bother with that either. I'm very pleased with the outcome and I can still lift the tongue easily enough so it hasn't added too much weight up front.







Cheers
Steve

I'm digging the RTT.

[Steve F]

Finally wired the 170W solar panel on the roof to an anderson plug on the roof of the camper so it can charge the battery while on the road instead of just having it plugged in whilst in camp (had an extension lead that went in through the tailgate)

This is a house panel so is very tough and is optimised for 38v not 12v like most mobile panels. You can see it's half shaded and it's an overcast day so not putting out much at all, once you get any part of the panel in shade it greatly drops the whole panels output.





Because of this I use a MPPT control which can cope with anything up to 48v. Here you can see the panel is putting out 38v and only 0.2A due to the shade and lack of sun.

This is the remote control panel mounted above the MPPT regulator



Because it's an MPPT control it monitors the battery, detects the voltage and takes that 37V and 0.2A and converts it down to (in this case) 14.3V and 0.6A



And the best bit, state of charge 100%



Now it's all ready for Easter and then the Australian Jeep Jamboree in September. As an aside on a good day I've seen the big panel puting 16A per hour into the battery and on a sunny day I'm fully charged up by mid morning

Cheers
Steve