Geek Speak: Software Developer setup in an RV

[VTPete]

Maybe I’ll go with a Bedouin set up next

 

[Neal]

Not a bad idea actually to have an outdoor office. If you can find room for a desk, chair, and tent you're in!

 

[lemondrop9344]

I have been supporting my son's business since late 2007. He asked me to design & create some software applications for his business as he found Quicken not to his taste. I created a back office application that provides for work requests, scheduling, reporting, receivables, payable along with a variety of other functions to include data analytics. All was created with a combination of EXCEL, ACCESS & SQL. This continues to be a work in progress.

As his business grew, his home/office data requirements grew, & the importance of disaster recovery due to hurricanes in coastal SE North Carolina. In order to provide the level of support he required, that meant my home/office network needed to grow. In particular, off site backups & timely restoration of data was important to us. We acquired two NAS devices to support our off site backup strategy. His data is backed up to his NAS every night, my data is backed up every night to my NAS. We then backup the NAS devices to each other. As these are incremental backups, data consumption is not too bad.

Fast forward to December, 2019. We went full time in our RV. The equipment I had in my home office would never reasonably fit in my RV & the question of reliable internet connectivity was foremost in my mind. My travels in our RV had demonstrated RV park WiFi was at best, questionable, so I would need some sort of cellular data plan in addition to the 15 gb's on my laptop PC (Sierra Wireless 4G) & the data I could use with my phone tethered to the USB port on the laptop.

COVID 19 was a mixed blessing for us. It significantly reduced the amount of work available due to lock downs & gave me an opportunity to evaluate what I needed to function & continue to support my son's business. I have never been a big fan of Laptops and always built my own desktops. However, with traveling in the RV, it was not practical to unplug one of my desktops to put on the RV for trips (ask me how I know that as I tried). Lenovo offers an employee discount to IBM retirees. I purchased a P71 ThinkPad with a Xeon processor, 16 gb of RAM, a 500 gb SSD & Win 10 Pro 64 bit OS. That would need to replace the desktops.

As a matter of practice, I segregate all my data on separate devices isolate for the disk with the OS & applications. With a little bit of rearranging of my data, I could easily accomplish the same thing via USB drives. My big issue was how to access the NAS in the RV & access my son's NAS & some of his clients servers.

Lot's of research led me to Cradlepoint & Peplink. I finally decided on a Peplink MAX Transit CAT-18 with an AT&T GUDP provided by a reseller & some grand fathered 30 gb data only plans from Verizon, my cellular provider. This equipment was installed late May of this year. I'm happy to say I am very pleased with the Peplink unit so far & I can accomplish most everything now from the RV that I could from my home network.

My present physical work station set up leaves a lot to be desired & I have yet to determine where I will permanently mount the Peplink & NAS (NAS requires Ethernet connection). The laptop sits in its docking station with a wireless KB & mouse and a 24" monitor. Permanent location of the Peplink device depends on the placement of the Poynting 7-1 external antenna. Progress is sometimes slow.

All in all, it's working & we are enjoying being full timers.