- Hey guys, Briohny and Andrew here.
We're standing in front of the 79 series.
And is it finally done, Andrew?
- Almost. Pretty much.
- What's the big change from the last video?
- Finally got the canopy on.
- What is it?
- Norweld Compact Deluxe Canopy.
- So it's all kitted out for an off-grid set up
ready to go touring, run your fridge,
keep the beers cold, use the induction cooktop.
Come and take a look at it
and also a full walk-around of the vehicle.
Let's go, Andrew?
- Yeah, let's go.
Alright guys.
Well, here we are.
This is around the power side of the car.
Alright, so we'll start with the battery.
So what we've got down here is
an Invicta 200A Bluetooth Lithium battery.
We love these batteries.
Seven-year warranty and a fantastic battery.
So basically the reason why we've gone a 200
is because we've got some
quite heavy drawer appliances in here.
We're running inductive cooktops, ovens, things like that.
And that actual max discharge current of this battery
will handle everything we've got to try and switch on.
The way we charge the battery is over here.
So to charge it,
we've actually got a couple of things going on.
So for basic normal everyday charging,
we're using the REDARC Manager30.
So the Manager30 handles my solar panel.
I got a 150W solar panel on the roof here.
And it also handles,
if you ever wanted to plug it into 240
like a caravan park or something like that.
I haven't had to do that yet.
And then the other thing it does
is it takes the alternator current
and converts that to charge it while you're driving.
So while you're driving,
I got 30 amps coming in
from the solar and the alternator as standard.
What we've done then is these two REDARC BCDC 1250s.
So what we can do,
we can turn them on while we're driving
and that gives us,
both of them combined gives us an extra 100 amps.
So that way, we can get 130 amps while we're driving.
The reason for that is
I can charge that battery then in under two hours
if it's fully discharged.
Because it's an Invicta
and it can handle the inrush current,
it is fine to do that with and so far so good.
And we've found it to be fantastic
because I can just charge it straight away.
The reason why,
everybody else, why do you have them switching?
The reason why I'm switching is because
I've also got 400 to 600 amps of lithium in my caravan.
I've got another a hundred behind the backseat
and I've got the start.
So it means that I can sort of direct the current
to wherever I want to go while I'm driving.
So having them as user-controllable has been a great feature
and really allows me to
get my caravan back up on short runs,
if it's been cloudy for a few days.
So to charge all of this, what we've fitted is
the rapid power 200A water-cooled brushless alternator.
These 79s are well-known for
having an unreliable alternator.
They're a good alternator, but they're in a terrible spot.
They're down low,
and they tend to suck in all the mud and dust
and the brushes tend to stick in them.
So the reason why we've gone the 200A brushless water-cooled
is to make the vehicle reliable.
So we can go through any sort of mud, any sort of dust,
and the alternator is a fully sealed unit
that's not cooled by air, it's cooled by a coolant.
And, you also get the added benefit
of a full 200 amps all the time while I'm driving
to be shared across all my loads.
So while we're driving, without switching on the BCDCs,
I've got just 30 amps ticking away in my canopy
to charge and run whatever's going on in there.
And then if we want to, we can turn on these two DCDCs.
Get another hundred on top.
So this battery is charging at 130,
which gives me that under two-hour charge rate.
Okay, now we've got all that power.
What to do with it?
So all that's controlled by the REDARC TVMS,
and that stands for Total Vehicle Management System.
So it's got a couple of different features
and it does some really cool stuff.
The first thing it does is monitoring.
The display's over the other side.
So we'll show you all of this, so bear with me.
The monitoring,
it will show you all the ins and outs for your battery.
So it'll show you your current in, current out,
and percentage left.
The other thing it does is it controls all your switching.
And that's all these wires here.
So it's got 10 channels of things you can switch
and they're programmable soft keys on the screen.
So a lot of what you're seeing running at the moment
is running through the TVMS because we've got,
I guess the key is turned on.
It also does a couple of different temperature sensors,
and we've used that for the fridge and freezer.
So we've got one in each.
And then it's also does for water tanks.
Haven't used that, it's not plugged in.
It's actually turned off.
But obviously, for a caravan, that's a great feature.
So before we go around the other side,
I will show you the inverter.
So that's a 2000W inverter.
It gives me 240 volt all throughout
the back of the canopy here
and also gives me a feature
where I can dump the power from that battery
into my caravan when it's needed.
And then also the TVMS switches the inverter on.
So the inverter here is a 2000 watt inverter
and basically it takes power from my 200 amp lithium battery
and converts it into 240 volt.
And that allows me to run my inductive cooktops and my GPOs.
And then I can charge all my power tools
and stuff like that.
So let's go around the other side,
and I'll show you what's going on there.
So here we are over the other side.
Now the TVMS we were talking about.
The other half of it and what makes it so cool
is what's called the RedVision screen.
So this RedVision screen here
has got a fair few features in it.
The main one is its actual battery calculations.
So if we look at it now,
we can see I'm using a 11.6 amps in my battery
and that's because it's running the fridge here,
and it's also running the Travel Buddy at the moment.
We've got some pies going on.
So what it does is not only it shows us that,
it's calculating the percentage left of the battery.
So at the moment, my battery is sitting at 91%,
and it's working out that at this usage,
my battery will run for 14 hours before it's discharged.
So that's how good the battery is.
It's literally got an oven running and a fridge,
14 hours with no power input and it'll keep going.
The green light flashing on and off,
that's because the sun's coming and going.
We're in some dappled light here from the trees.
Once we move out into the sun, we'll get a full 10 amps.
So it'd almost be neutral at the moment,
using no power if we were in the sun,
but it's much nicer here in the shade.
The other feature it's got is,
it's got all these keys.
So these keys are the 10 channels we spoke about.
So each button is programmed to
allow a different feature to switch on, switch off.
So this controls my whole canopy.
What we've done as well,
is we've run another cable from here, an R-BUS cable,
from this one to a second screen in the front
and the two are mimicked.
So while I'm driving, I have full access to all of this
and that's the beauty of these.
You can daisy chain the screens off each other.
Each channel has been programmed into it
to be wherever we wanted it,
to do whatever we wanted it to do,
and with whatever symbol we wanted it.
So when you wire these things up,
you can put different inputs to it.
So we've run like a ignition input,
a reverse input, a high beam input,
and that then allows me to
control each channel to turn on, turn off
whenever another circuit is activated.
So, for example, if you see here,
we've got down here, that's my battery link button.
So I've used that to control the BCDCs we spoke about.
So at the moment, there's actually a padlock on there,
and that's because the ignition isn't turned on.
So we've set that channel to turn on the BCDCs
when the ignition's turned on
and when we activate the soft key.
And that allows us full control,
and it also shows how each channel
can be programmed specifically to suit
what you want it to do,
when you want it to do it,
whether it's off a soft key or automatically.
So, for example, my fridge.
It's permanently locked out.
So it's just always going to be on,
no matter what buttons I press,
power stays to the fridge until the battery
gets to a certain percentage,
and then it'll turn off the fridge.
So that's the 10 channels.
And then your 11th channel you get,
because it's an R-BUS connection, is your inverter.
Turn that one on.
That turns the inverter on
and that gives me 240 volts throughout the canopy
for the GPOs and the inductive cooktop.
And that was the beep you just heard.
That was the inductive cooktop turning on.
So what that also means I can do
is I can run an extension lead from here into my caravan,
and I can charge my caravan.
The other features it's got is it's the Bluetooth hub.
So we'll show you that at the moment,
there's two apps that you can connect to this with.
One is just the RedVision app,
and that gives you a full replication
of this screen on your phone.
So you're sitting around the campfire.
You can press a button,
you can turn lights on and off,
you can check your battery,
you can see everything that's going on.
Also, there's a second app, the RedVision configurator.
And that's user-controlled,
so everybody's got access to that.
You take a photo of a little barcode that comes up
that connects your phone to it.
And that way the user can programme all the channels
to do whatever they want to do.
So if I decided, for example,
I'm not going to tell my caravan
I want my BCDCs to turn on all the time.
I can just log in and change that to automatically come on
with ignition or something like that.
And that can be changed at any time through the app
and it'll update on the second screen as well,
and in your RedVision app, not the configurator app.
If I had the water tanks connected up to it,
there'd be a second screen with water tanks.
We've just got that turned off at the moment,
and again, we do that through the configurator app.
Oh, and sorry. The other thing I forgot to talk about
is here is my temperature sensors.
So this is at the moment,
my freezer is sitting at -5,
and my fridge is sitting at 7.
We've had the door open a few times.
We've just popped a little hole in the side of the fridge,
which you can do on these Bushmans, anything below halfway.
And we've got a sensor in it in both.
So I can also see that while I'm driving.
So you know that while you're driving along,
you know your fridge is cold.
Everything's good.
So we'll show some of the stuff
we've actually got working in this canopy.
So the first one here, the Bushman 130.
So I went with the 130 because
it is the biggest you can get
into these canopies height-wise.
I'm all for an upright fridge,
even though they do use a bit more power,
and you do have to stack them.
I love the fact that you can just open the door,
and away you go.
Everything's there.
Easy to use and a lot more accessible.
You do really need to think about how you're packing it
if you're going to go on and off road.
But Tupperware containers, a bit of smart stacking,
and I really haven't had a problem kind of thing.
The next thing we've got, I guess, is the TV.
Who doesn't need a TV.
So that is honestly just the cheapy Harvey Norman one.
You buy a 12 volt TV.
It's also got a built in DVD player
and you can plug in with.
So I can plug my phone into it,
and I can stream Netflix for the kids wherever I am.
And it's been a bit of a lifesaver,
some nights to be honest.
Alright, so down here.
We've got a Breville 2100W inductive cooktop.
This thing has been great.
Obviously, now I need no gas to cook.
It's fully windproof.
Any night, day, you don't have to wait for it to heat up,
and it cools down incredibly fast.
So once you finished with it, just slide it away.
Off it goes.
Whenever we're camping,
everybody always seems to show up to me
with their coffee mugs waiting for me to boil the water
because it is so quick.
And yeah, this thing really has been
the best thing I've installed out of everything.
This is what I can recommend.
We've done another video on what you need
to run an inductive cooktop on your vehicle,
which you can check out here.
And it's well worth you watching because this one,
90 bucks from Harvey Norman
has been the best thing I've put in the canopy.
Now, internal lighting,
that's controlled by my hardcore one metre tricolour lights.
So we've got a switch going on here if I can get it right.
And that brings the lights on.
They do three colours.
So we've got just basically a bright white,
a warm white, and then the insect orange.
So the orange is for nighttime,
doesn't attract mosquitoes, insects,
anywhere as bad as the white light.
And the other thing about them
is they're fully controllable, dimmable.
So we'll dim them down and we'll bring them back up.
That's on the warm setting,
and it gets a warm setting
by bringing on the orange slightly as well.
We've got four of them throughout the canopy.
Two on this side.
So one here, one just back, and then two on the other side.
Both that are controlled by a switch on either side.
So half and half.
Pretty much it for here.
We'll go around the other side.
You feeling hungry?
Alright, while we've been filming this,
we've had my Travel Buddy running.
So this is a Travel Buddy, 12 volt marine version.
Genuine Travel Buddy.
So only a genuine one.
And inside we've got the Somerville Metalworks deep tray,
and I've also done
the Somerville Metalworks insulation door.
So in here, we've got a couple of pies,
a couple of sausage rolls for the team.
And yeah, it's been cooking away.
They've probably got another half hour to go,
and the boys will be very happy once they're ready.
So this has been great.
While we've been travelling,
we've done roast chickens, we've done lamb shanks.
We've done all sorts of things
because we've got that big, Somerville Metalworks tray,
We can throw chicken in a bag,
with some veggies,
all in the tray.
Take a big trip when you get there.
Especially if you leaving around lunch
and you're getting somewhere around dinner time.
Roast chicken, ready to go.
And then I guess the last thing to show you,
is being an auto electrician,
can't go anywhere without my tools.
Normally I've got a stack a mile high
but we took them out for the video.
But this is Milwaukee Packout.
So all it is, is these containers and they all just lock in.
So I've started using it for everything to be honest.
I've got one set up of fishing, all sorts of things,
and also a cutlery runner.
I've got a cutlery run ongoing.
But they were really designed for tools
so you can get all different sizes.
I've also got larger ones.
Basically, as you want to move stuff around,
can just click and unclick, and they go in.
You get these pack-out trays.
I've just screwed them down.
And there's also a trolley and so on that goes with it.
But I've found it a really good way to secure my tools,
and all my other stuff in the vehicle
is just to have some of these bases down.
Clip them in and off we go.
And yeah, I rate them really highly.
Another new addition we've fitted since the last video
is a Cel-Fi Go.
I've got that behind the backseat.
So come have a look at that.
Okay.
So another addition we've got going on is back here,
I'm gonna flip my seat,
is a Cel-Fi Go.
Now we've installed that back here,
and it actually runs off this second lithium battery.
And what that is, is a full mobile phone signal booster.
So it takes a signal with a large area on the front
and boosts it up through the box to a signal
through a smaller antenna that's hidden away in here.
And that actually just gives me
full cellular coverage wherever I am
as long as I can get one bar of 3G.
Okay, So from here, we'll show you
our new Bushman XT Max 270-degree Awning.
(upbeat music)
Alright.
So up here, my Bushcompany XT Max 270-degree Awning.
So it's a little bit high, but we'll work with that.
Basically, unfold these.
It all falls out.
There are my pegs.
They sit there and then we just walk it out.
(upbeat music)
Alright.
So that's all the cool stuff we've done in the canopy.
If you want to check out
the rest of the build videos on my car, they're here.
And YouTube reckons you should watch this down here.
(upbeat music)