RV Cell Phone & Internet Solution! Booster Reviews and Hack!!

Hey everybody, it's Robin with CreativityRV and today I'm going to give you a review of three different cell phone boosters that I have used to try and enhance my signal and I'm going to tell you which one I went with and the cool hack that I used to make it even more efficient. So like I told you guys in my last videos, I'm a digital nomad so I've done a lot of research into how to get data and a cell phone signal on the road. I'm no expert. I'm just a gal trying to make a living out here and to me getting the right equipment is important because then I beat my head against the wall a little bit less and can spend more time doing the things that I want to be doing. So what I did is I actually bought three different models of cell phone and wi-fi booster. I got the Little Drive 4GS which is meant for a car and I got the Drive 4GX OTR Truck Edition and I got the Mother of All Winegard Connect Wi-Fi and 4G LTE Extender. It's kind of like I was using the Goldilocks method like you know, too small, too big, just right and I tested them all out. I did speed tests on all of them. I connected all of them to see what works the best and let me give you an idea really quick of how they all did work and so you can decide which one is best for you. So I'll start with the Little Drive. This one as you can see by the box is really it's a little rubber antenna that's meant to be put outside on top of your car with a little magnet that is just used to boost your cell signal. I have to tell you it didn't work at all for me. I know some people liked that a lot but I really didn't see any difference in signal for my phone so that one was out right away for me. Then I tried the Winegard Connect which is an expensive piece of equipment. It's the black one you see over here in the picture that has all the prongs that go up. Not only does it increase your cell phone signal but it also increases a wi-fi signal so that was good but here was the problem. It was really difficult to install and I would have had to find a place on my roof to put it and I'm in a 25-foot B+. They had trouble finding a place for four solar panels for me and I knew that that was going to be a hassle. I would have had to get it up there permanently, cock it, run the wiring through the inside and that didn't even ensure that I had the best signal. When I called the company they said well you can just keep it outside and then move it around so that you get the best signal. I really don't have any exterior storage space here. I didn't want to do that and I didn't want to be spending all my time moving this thing around and doing a speed test all day long trying to get the best signal. I can get a little obsessive about these things. You're going to see when I show you my speed tests in a minute. I'm going to show you the receipts but I just know myself. I didn't want to spend my day doing that. That's also by the way if some of you wonder why I didn't get one of the directional ones which I know people really like which has a little white directional thing. It goes up on the back of your RV and then you can point it different directions to try and point it at a cell tower. I also didn't want to do that because I wanted it to be efficient like that without me having to mess with it. So with that in mind I did find the one that I thought was the best and that I made even better with the hack that I'm going to share with you. So the one right in the middle here that you're going to see in the red box is the Drive 4GX OTR Truck Edition. The OTR is for over the road. This antenna is really meant for truck drivers and I'm going to show you in a second. I'm going to go outside and show you how I hack it to make it even more effective. But truck drivers put this on their side mirror and they plug it into their cigarette lighter and that works well for them. This was a middle price point for me and it gave me as good of reception as the WineGuard for less money with less hassle. And so that was the one that I chose. Now with that being said it's hard to attach this to an RV the way that you would to a truck because we've got different mirrors. So I'm going to show you how I did it, how I hacked it, and how I set it up inside the RV. Hey everybody! So I'm inside my RV and I chose to put my OTR antenna receiver behind my driver's seat. I didn't have it there permanently at first. I really worked with it in lots of different places but they do suggest ultimately you put it up permanently because see these little connectors? They have to not be jostled around too much because that can make your connection go bad. And by the way I'll say here that the way I was storing it for a while which was in a backpack wrecked one of these little connectors. I called Wilson and they immediately sent me a whole new unit. No problem. So I really do recommend them. So these cords here go to a couple of different places. One of them goes to the actual antenna that goes outside and one of them goes to the internal antenna that goes inside. So I keep that separately. That looks like this and I'm going to show you how that works in a minute because I don't like to have this up permanently because I can drape it around the RV, put it right under my computer or my phone. Oh see how that light just turned red? That's because the antenna is not outside yet and it knows it's not getting a signal. So pretty easy to use. This normally comes with a 12 volt connector. I went ahead and got the adapter so I could plug it into the wall and use it on my inverter. So I'm going to do a speed test before and after it's outside and I'm going to go outside right now and show you guys how I MacGyvered this thing to get a super great signal. Hey everybody, it's Robyn. I'm outside my RV now and this is the actual antenna, just this part right here. You can see it's pretty skinny. Now this is an OTR, over the road trucker antenna and usually truckers attach this with the brackets that come with it onto their side mirror but that doesn't work with our side mirrors because they're big and thick and plastic. So I had to figure out a way to mount this and believe me, I did 20 different things before I found this thing that worked really, really great. So let me walk you through it. Here's the antenna and here's the cord. The cord in the instructions is supposed to go through the rubber portion of the window but it's meant to be really tough so things can be shut on it. Now I did call Wilson and they said that I can shut it in the door. It may last two years instead of five but I found a spot that was next to my gas tank right here that actually there's a space right here. So that is where I shut this cord. Now remember how I showed you the big mess of cord that was back there? When I'm going to put the antenna outside I undo that so I have a whole bunch of cord and this whole baby is actually stored behind my driver's seat. You know the little hook that you hook like a suit jacket on like we're going to wear a suit jacket. I attach this with a piece of velcro there and I don't see it and I never know it's there but I don't crush it and when I'm ready for it I just put it outside the driver's door and then this is what gave me the best signal ever. Wait till you see the speed test. When it's just a little antenna like this it doesn't get very high and even when I mounted it on my side mirror I was still getting blocked from part of my RV or a mountain or trees or whatever was out there. So what I did is through a lot of trial and error is I zip tied the actual antenna to like a painter's extension pole and I'm going to put all these components in the links below so you can find the antenna and you can find the pole and the zip ties and then to put it out on the outside of the RV I use two command strip broom holders and I don't know if you guys can see that. I'll get a close-up shot if you can't see that but they're up there on the side and what I do I'm going to show you right now is I literally extend this pole and then I pop the entire thing up on the side of my RV about 50 feet high. I can go into canyons, I can go into mountains and I get great signal through this. So let me show you how I do it. I go like this. I can even do this one if it's not too windy of a day. I don't think you guys I don't even think you guys can see that in this shot. It is huge but so you do it with whatever you need whatever you feel comfortable with and then the command strips can stick in sometimes so let me show you how I actually do it. I have to open the door and I'm short right so I get up on the side rail I make sure that these are out and then I lift this up and I pop it in. That easy. So now let me show you how tall this is and I didn't even extend it all the way. This is what it looks like. Oh oh look at that oh it's so tall. My signal gets amazing when I do it this way. Sorry for the jostling everybody and let me get a close-up of the command hooks that are holding it. That's it. I've had them up for almost a year well maybe eight months and they're not falling off. They've been in snow, they've been in wind, they've been in rain, they've been in heat and they are still holding strong. Thank you command strips. I love command strip everything but basically that's how I get my antenna up. I only put it up when I'm parked but when I go to really remote areas this gives me a signal. Now let's go ahead and do a speed test. I did one before which was pretty abysmal and now let's do one after I'll show you. So everybody now I'm going to show you the speed test which I went back through and looked at my speed test since November and it's March now and I keep a log of them and it has been really spectacular. So first let me show you that the speed test that I just did that I promised you from when I plugged it in inside the RV to when I put it up outside the RV it's time stamped. I have to run the antenna off my inverter. So the first one I did while the power was off and you're going to see that that was around 20 megabytes per second for a download speed. Now that's not bad. Like I said I'm in the Toronto Pinnacles and I've had an okay signal here but look what happens when I boosted that antenna up on that pole and turned on the power. Then I got 60, 65 as a megabyte per second download. My bars skyrocketed, my download speeds skyrocketed. Now just to double check myself I went back and found these screenshots for you. So you're going to see here that I tested it all the way back and I'm going to show you a couple of days of tests. Now I don't have video because I wasn't doing YouTube then of these tests but you're going to see that in some places the signal went from like 0.8 megabytes per second to 30. And when you look at these different numbers on the same day in these tests I was doing what I was doing was I was testing it and then I was testing it inside and then I was testing it outside and I was testing it up on the roof with that extension pole. And you can see the difference in the speed levels that I got when I attached it to that pole. So that hack has worked really really well for me. So guys this is one video in a series of videos that I'm doing on cell phone and data hacks for digital nomads. If you missed my other video that I did on how to find free camping with a cell signal please check that out. I also did another one on how I make a living as a digital nomad. So thanks for watching everybody. I hope you found this helpful. Of course I have put the links for all three antennas down below including my favorite the OTR. In addition I've put links for that awesome extension pole, the zip ties, and the command hicks that you can use to pop it up on the side of your RV like I do if that is going to work for you. Thanks again for watching everybody. If you like it please do like and subscribe and comment and tell all your friends. Thanks everybody. Be safe out there. Happy travels and be free. you