Van Life and Gaming: How to Power Your Console on the Road

Gaming is a popular pastime that many people enjoy, but what happens when you’re on the road living the van life? Can you still indulge in your favorite games while off the grid? In this post, we’ll explore some tips and tricks for gaming in your van, and how to calculate your power needs for running gaming consoles.

First, let’s take a look at some of the most popular gaming consoles on the market and their power consumption rates. The Xbox Series S, for example, has a power consumption of around 60 watts when in use. Meanwhile, the PS5 consumes around 150 watts, and the Nintendo Switch consumes around 15 watts and none of these figures take into consideration using a screen. These numbers can vary depending on the specific model and how you’re using the console, but they give you a good starting point for estimating power needs.

So, how do you power your gaming console while living in a van? The answer depends on a few factors, including your power source, your battery capacity, and your inverter capacity. Most van lifers use a combination of solar panels, alternators, and generators to power their setup. You can also invest in a high-capacity deep-cycle battery to power your devices. But for now lets cover some basics to make it easy to work out how long you could game on your console.

We need to know what the watt hours of a battery is. In this example I’m using a 140 amp hour battery, however with the standard batteries you can get from a typical car dealership you can only effectively use 50% of it’s capacity before damage is done.

Convert Amp hours to Watts.

Size of battery x 12 volts = watt-hours

so in our example

70 amp-hours x 12 volts = 840 watt-hours

Let’s say you have a 70 amp hour battery in your van and you’re running an Xbox Series S console. Using the formula we discussed earlier (Battery life = battery capacity in watt-hours / device power consumption in watts), we can calculate that the battery will last for approximately 14 hours. This assumes that the battery is fully charged and that there are no other devices drawing power from it. We’re also assuming here an average draw of 60 watts, if you want to know more about the xbox series s power draw, Microsoft has all the information.

Do bear in mind we haven’t added the screen for gaming so let’s look at that. For me I’m running an LG 4k monitor which, on average, runs at 55w.

This means a combined total of around 115w per hour of gaming.

840 watt-hours / 115 watts consumption = 7 hours of gaming (approx)

Bear in mind all of these figures are in ideal conditions with a decent battery and averages of power consumption.

What can you do to extend your gameplay runtime?

To maximize your battery life, you can take a few steps to reduce your power consumption. For example, you can turn down the screen brightness on your console, turn off any unnecessary features or accessories, and avoid running multiple devices at the same time. You can also invest in a low-power monitor or TV to reduce your power needs.

Another option for powering your gaming setup in your van is to use a generator. A generator can provide a steady stream of power to your devices, but it can also be noisy and require regular maintenance. If you’re camping in a remote area or want to minimize your environmental impact, a generator may not be the best choice.

In conclusion, gaming while living in a van is definitely possible, but it does require careful planning and consideration of your power needs. By using the power consumption rates of popular gaming consoles and the formula for calculating battery life, you can estimate how long your battery will last and make adjustments to your setup to maximize your power efficiency. Happy gaming!

VanLife Festival 2023 – Disabled Parking and Camping

Even with the temperatures being freezing, wind and rain heralding in the start of Christmas, its not stopped Damo from going out and posting an update on the UK biggest VanLife Festival to be held in Shrewsbury on 2 – 4th June 2023.

The update mentions the possibility of up to 100 disabled camping / parking spots for those with medical conditions and obviously those will get priority (as it should be).

Tickets can be purchased directory from https://thevanlifefestival.co.uk and up until February there are special offers going on. :note we don’t get any commission for linking to the ticket page 😀

If youre interested in what made the 2022 Vanlife Festival in Stratford Upon Avon so popular here’s my video of day 1

Van Life Epic Road Trip Part 1 – The Road To Calais

Have you ever decided on the spur of the moment to do something bonkers… that’s what I’ve done and decided that I’m going to drive to Germany for Octoberfest and see some friends and get away from the confines or where I live. To be brutally honest the last few months have been ‘interesting’ with a mix of up’s and downs mentally. So it was nice to see a bit of old me and just go “lets go” and decided to drive across Europe to Munich, home of Oktoberfest.

A Van Life Road Trip Part 2 – Dazed and Confused in Germany

It’s taken way to log to edit to say the least but part 2 of my Van life thing road trip, where I decided that driving from West Wales to Munich would be a good idea. I suppose the road trip would of been a great idea if I had booked more time off work or planned anything.

I’ll be honest I have no idea why I thought that 8 hours of driving would be “easy” seeing as I work from home, sit on a chair for 8 hours answering the phone but driving in Germany was a challenge to say the least.

Calais to Belgium is perhaps one of the most relaxing times on the road I can think off. It’s when you get through Brussels that’s where the good natures, persons pulling over to let you out ceases to exist and it’s a literal pedal to the metal mentality.

Mainly this is due to the speed of my van, you see I’m limited to 70 miles an hour give or take. This makes me slightly quicker than lorries on the inside or the ‘slow’ lane of the motorways, but not fast enough to warrant a consistent drive in the other lanes. With my van being over 12 years old I wasn’t too keen on pushing her any more than I had to.

One man and a van attempt to cross Europe for Octoberquest. It’s been some 24 hours on the road now and not all decisions being made are the wisest. Please drive safely and don’t do what I’ve done.

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Leaving the van behind for the weekend. Aka van vs train

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted any van life adventures so what a better time than to do it on a birthday weekend yet there was a slight difference in this adventure.

Van versus train.

All very much a spare of the moment thing I decided to spend my birthday weekend with a friend of mine in London Enfield. Just as I was in the planning stages are certain war broke out on the price of fuel shut up. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak was kind enough to give a 5p tax freeze put neglected to mention that he just increased the stamp duty on red diesel, the cheap stuff that farmers use.

The drive to Enfield from my usual location is about a five hour drive and that’s if there’s no incidents on the M25 which invariably there always is and that’s multiplied by a factor of 10 when it’s a Friday.

With the cost of fuel being £1.75 and bargaining on an average fuel efficiency of 40 miles to the gallon of estimated fuel costs for the 460 mile round-trip to be £95.

So I decided to look into a half and half approach, the rice and chips of travelling if you will, taking the decision to drive to a “major” train station an hour and a half away to jump on a train which takes me directly to the capitol city in two and a a half hours. To get to the same station taking a train from my local station would have been 2 hours.

. The cost of the train ticket was only £85 and even with the fuel costs of driving to the train station the total came to £105.

Next up is the trip from London Paddington to Liverpool steer and finally onwards to Enfield lock which was about £10

So far we’re at £125 versus £95 for getting in the van. So the question is, who is spending the extra worth it?

Absolutely sort of.

Train prices fluctuate massively I’ve seen the same journey for his little and £67 and right up to £140.

Luggage is also working soon, in my case I had two rucksacks awesome dealing with the London underground. Speaking of which you have to deal with the London underground something that I’m atrocious at.

Then there is the anxiety that comes with leaving no van, you’re home in a train station car park are you paying that has been vandalised during the time apart

I’m only talking about the travelling aspect of things and not including the hotel booked for the long weekend.

Put obviously major dealbreaker is if there is more than one person travelling with you.

On the plus side with the train journey taking 2 1/2 hours each way I’ve saved myself a minimum of five hours of driving, one leg of the journey so to speak. The M25 is a cruel and unforgiving mistress and I have never driven that road without there being some accident or delay.

The homeward bound leg was also surprisingly relaxing even if it did include a 20 minute walk to the train station to catch the overground to Liverpool Street and by sheer luck getting on the right line to end up at Paddington. The train journey axe is a nice buffer between an adventure packed weekend and slowly sliding back into reality.

Why didn’t I take the van considering his blog is all about my van life?

Quite simply put I need a break from it. The constant hunting for a place to park, peeing £5 to have a shower, not having to worry about battery usage, setting up the solar panel, hoping that my milk hasn’t gone off for my morning cup of tea because I don’t have a fridge.

So should you take the train if you’re going away for a weekend break it’s Olivia man? Absolutely! Sort of

Van Life Internet? The best internet for your Van Life

Let’s face it, when your on the open road having internet is one of life’s staples. Once you have water, food and heating in place having decent internet is up on the top of the list for most.

After 9 months on the road I thought I’d share my experiences and how I managed to get unlimited internet whilst on the road for £20 a month.

Choosing a modem

A lot of van lifers, YouTube channels will elect for having a aerial on the roof, going into a modem. This is the “best” way to do it in terms of performance and if you have the budget to do so.

My preference is to go with a portable mobile hotspot and I’ve been using the TPLink M7350 (amazon) which has served me really well. In the right locations hitting 80mbps is easy even if it is short of the theoretical maximum of 150Mbps.

Why go portable? Theres a benefit of being able to carry it around and using if you are in a cafe or place without decent wifi and even when stashed out of the way in the front of the van the signal strength holds up. A few months ago I went to Belgium and because I have 2 SIM cards 1 for my phone one for my internet this gave me a total of 24gb internet without having to pay extra.

Another advantage is less holes being put into the van. I perhaps have an irrational fear of drilling into the van and whilst yes it’s easy to waterproof I like to avoid if I can.

External Antenna Modems

The net gear nighthawk is an awesome beast and the price reflects it. External antennas will help get a better signal but the cheaper ones can add to signal loss. Then the cost of the cowl, mastic it can soon mount up.

Avoid those small USB plug in modems. Whilst they work in good locations, driver support is beyond poor and support will next to nothing

One advantage the TP link has is being USB powered. No invertor needed to keep it powered but it doesn’t have a network port. Whilst it’s rare to need it, when you do… you do

Unlimited mobile internet for £20

I hate writing the click bait titles but this is down to the internet. I’ve been using Smarty {affiliate link} for 18 months now and I’ve found it to be pretty darn good. Smarty is part of the Three network which still gets classed as being “crap” but to give some perspective here.

I’ve been living in West Wales for the last 8 years, I’ve been on the three network for 6 of those and it has been very rare I don’t have a good signal or good enough signal to get what I need to be done. I think people see not getting a full 4g signal as being slower than a full 3g signal.

EE is the biggest network for sure but it also has the most amount of other branded mobile networks using it’s services. Comparing apples to apples EE does offer unlimited internet for £35 a month. It does get complicated very quickly because you could get 120gb of data and stream Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, YouTube Kids, BBC iPlayer Kids, BBC iPlayer, Twisted Mirror, BT Sport, MTV Play, BritBox and TV Player without it coming out of your data allowance. Of course the twist is a 24 month plan at £20

Is Smarty Mobile Unlimited data?

Don’t ask me how but some months on the road I’ve clocked 100gb consistently. My days are spent on teams calls with video, joining a podcast, uploading videos and enjoying some YouTube, Netflix with a scary amount of addiction that someone from the herion capital of Scotland would find worrying. There is a fair use cap of 1TB of data a month.

Is it perfect, course not but what swayed me was the one month contract. If it doesn’t work swap out to a sim that does (for reference EE is £34 for 100gb for 1 month).

Final thoughts

I’m not trying to say Smarty or Three mobile is the best because it’s not. I’ve not mentioned 02 or vodafone

30 day unlimited internet

VendorCostNotes
EE£35Look at less data options with bolt on’s for streaming video
02£36
Vodafone£45For fully unlimited with no speed restrictions

The thing is choosing who you get your internet with is pretty complex, its not where you are it’s where you might be down the road which is why I choose 30 day contracts.

Rounding things up.
If you’re going to post int he comments my signal is crap do give some details. What are you using it for? Does your sim have wifi calling to mitigate a poor indoor signal.

As I’ve tried to keep re iterating, this is just my experience with this provider using this kit in the locations that I’ve been to. To give another perspective the times where I’ve parked up with no or little signal, just like other providers might have, I’ve enjoyed it. No distractions from getting on with editing videos or just enjoying the peace and quiet.

2 Years Ago Today – A Van Life Thing Started

How time flies! 2 years ago I started on a van lifestyle where I’d be eat, sleep, breathe being in my van for the working week. Some might say this isn’t true van life but I looked as going “home” as nothing more than a decent campsite for the night with facilities. Trust me told a camp site worth it’s salt really isn’t that much cheaper than coming back to base at the weekend.

The van lifestyle has changed a little bit recently as I’m now working from home but I do have plans for getting back out and working from the van. No this isn’t the working of editing a video and then finding somewhere to upload, this is proper needing a decent and speedy internet connection type work. More on that to come soon.

If you head to the YouTubes you’ll see I’ve mad an effort to rebrand.. well actually just band up and try to make something of these adventures. I get the whole YouTube vibe of everything is awesome but I’ve always been interested if people will watch the real story and life of working in a van. For now even tho I’m not out on the road much these days content is still there.

Cooking With Gousto

One of the biggest struggles of van living for me was being able to get a decent meal. I had visions of finding a nice local coffee shop or an independent restaurant where I could become a regular and get to know the owners. The sort of friendly place you see on all the social medias. I’ll be clear right here the Valleys has no such place. If you like McDonald’s, KFC or pizza you are in luck but trying to find any food that has… vegetables just simple doesn’t exist (see the crown experience for more info)

So being back at home I’ve ventured into the world of meal kits just o see if they are and good and possibly cooking them from the van. So I present to you my interim series of Cooking with Gousto.

Gousto Discount Code

Yesss there is a Gousto discount code where you can get 60% off your first box (like I did) and then 30% off the next to. Just goto cook.gousto.co.uk/raf/?promo_code=MARK42620293 use that code and do let m know how you rate Gousto.

I really recommend the Thai prawns for what it’s worth, just a shame that once again I ran out of phone storage when recording.