Here’s an overview of this very cheap GPS tracker (seen on Ebay and Amazon)… 

This post goes over how I fitted this cheap GPS tracker, I bought on Amazon, to my campervan.

For less than £30 I was surprised by not only the build quality of this GPS unit but also pretty stunned by the incredible amount of features which are not even seen on trackers costing 5 times the price…

Unbranded GPS tracker – what stuff does it do?

As with most of these cheap Chinese/eBay products, this tracker is unbranded, but it does have a model number: TK103A. There’s no point my listing everything it can do. Have a look at the Amazon reviews to get an idea of all the different ways people are using these – the reviews do a better job at selling this GPS tracker than the actual product description which does happen from time to time on Amazon. Features:

• has the SiRF III chip-set as used in top branded GPS units (Garmin, TomTom)
• highly sensitive. Can decode GPS signals as low as -160dBm
• programmable via remote text messages and also local USB connection
• remotely disable/enable engine via text message
• location reporting at user specified intervals
• inputs for door sensors, fuel level, ignition switch and even microphone
• outputs for alarm sounder (can connect to vehicle horn or dedicated siren)
• Lasts 4 hours without external power using internal rechargeable Li-ion battery

Fitting the tracker

Depending on what features you want to use this can be really easy or a little tricky. Although, if you have the car’s electrical diagrams then it is no problem at all. I downloaded the LDV Convoy (my van) electrical service manual which shows every circuit in clear detail. I managed to locate the fuel pump relay (for the engine cut out) and tap into the door switches for the alarm.

Here’s how I’m gonna fit this:

1. find a hidden location for the tracker
2. connect to power +12 and ground
3. connect engine cut out relay in series with fuel pump power
4. connect door switches to the door sense input on the tracker

GPS tracker wiring (from user manual). This is all optional stuff but I decided to make use of the engine cut-out and door trigger

I terminated all the inputs/outputs to a row of terminal block for easy connection and adaptation in the future

Wiring the engine cut-out

I used the circuit diagrams of the van to find the fuel pump relay. I cut into the fuel pump power feed (contact side of relay). The tracker engine cut-out relay will go in series with this existing contact

I scribbled this to show exactly where I put the new relay. Note that the new relay is normally closed (NC) and will only cut the engine (open) when the coil is energised so should be ok in the case of relay coil or power failure

I used quick and scruffy terminal block connections

Wiring the door sense alarm

I decided to make use of the door trigger alarm on the tracker since the door contacts are already there – used to turn on the courtesy light.

These switches needed a good clean with a wire brush and WD-40 since operation was intermittent.

Blue wire shows the new connection from the door switch to the tracker input. Note that the negative door trigger input is used since the switch goes to ground. I think most door switches work like this

I soldered the new wire onto existing spade connector.

setting up and testing the tracker

The tracker uses the GSM GPRS mobile network for its reporting and control (two-way between you and the tracker) and requires a standard sim card with 2g functionality. The other thing to consider when choosing the sim card is the cost of text messages and the ability to remotely view how much credit is left. The Giffgaff prepay SIM (UK provider) proved to be the perfect choice for this tracker since it operates on 2G or 3G no problem and your account credit can be viewed online.

How to activate the tracker with a new SIM card:

1. register your new sim in a working phone and test it out with a text message
2. put sim card in tracker and send the message ‘begin123456’ (without quotes) where 123456 is the default password. Tracker will reply with ‘begin ok!’
3. authorise phone (up to 5 numbers allowed) by sending ‘admin+password+space+phonenumber’

Here are some of the (not all) tracker commands

Results!

This is after calling the tracker. It will automatically hang up after 4 rings and send you this message

This is the after sending the status command. The battery says 100% because is was connected to a charger. Door ON means that there is a door open. GSM is the quality of the mobile phone reception and oil is the fuel tank level (not connected)

Observations and quirks

1. I noticed when the to power the tracker is removed, the engine cut-out relay energises. Whether this is an intentional ‘fail safe’ aspect of the design I’m not sure but it may have the disadvantage of draining the battery quicker than normal. Saying that, the advantage would be that you would know if the tracker fuse has blown because the engine will not start – not my favourite fuse fail indication but it’ll do.
2. The other strange behaviour happens when the tracker unit is turned to the off position and no external power (simulating blown fuse) BUT with power remaining on the coil of the cut-out relay, something strange happens. The tracker LED remains lit and the relay will turn on and off at random intervals from 2-8 seconds. I’ve been trying to figure out why this is happening but I’ve not decided yet.
3. The other thing I noticed is the switch on the tracker unit itself does not function as a switch if the unit is connected to external power. i.e the vehicle battery.
4. Something to think about when fitting the cut-out relay option is what part of the circuit you will breaking. You will be relying on the normally closed relay contacts in normal operation (de-energised) which means that a sharp jolt may jump the contact (open circuit) for a split second – enough to break an electrical latch. So if you do fit this relay then I recommend fitting it somewhere in a circuit that does not form part of an electrical latch.

All in all, this GPS tracker is a great bit of kit for the money (don’t be fooled by how cheap it is) and will give peace of mind when leaving the van in unknown areas for any period of time. A good buy! China, you did well today.

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This post details how I got running water in my campervan conversion…

I did separate posts on the shower and hot water and also mounting the shurflo water pump so this post will cover the rest of the water related stuff:

• fresh water tank and filler inlet
• sink and drain
• grey waste tank
• water pump and accumulator (shown in image below)

[expand title=”Show list of materials”] This work was completed over quite a few weeks so apologies for the widely varied supplier list but hopefully it helps people who are trying to find out what all the little bits are [table id=7 /][/expand]

The water tank

The fresh tank was the first thing I put in the van and everything else was build around it, in a make it up as I go along kind of fashion. I used a common Fiamma 70 Litre fresh water tank (for on-board use) from… you guessed it, Amazon (the cheapest I found online was £58 here but most big caravan shops stock them – Magnum and O’leary).

The water system started with a 70L Fiamma fresh tank. I decided to mount this in (probably) an unconventional way, standing on end.

The tank provides several points for the 20mm water outlet. I decided to go for a third of the way up. I could have done it right at the bottom but I got a little worried that the full tank would siphon off in the case of a leak.

I pulled away some of the cladding and added some strengthening lengths of wood to fix the 4 mounting bolts to.

This whole tank will be concealed under the sink/hob unit and the outlet elbow will go straight to the water pump via 12mm semi-rigid hose

The tank will be filled using the filler cap on the back of the kitchen unit and easily accessed via the side door. The hose is 40mm food grade ‘filler hose’ which fits the filler cap neck nicely but needs a good tie wrap or two for a good fit on the water tank inlet.

This is stood looking into the van with the side door open to expose the water filler. I prefer to have this inside the van instead of mounted on the outside of the van body 

The sink and drain

The sink/hob unit is from a donor caravan. Matt built a custom frame for it to sit on while I did the cupboard doors. I covered this in the making the kitchen cupboards post.

The hole was too small for the sink drain I had so I opened it up a bit with a cloth wrapped hacksaw blade.

Fits nice and flush. I even remembered to put a bead of silicone round the under side of the lip to ensure not leaks

I connected the red and blue 12mm semi rigid hose to the taps at this point. The tap is a normal domestic mixer tap which meant the hoses just needed a couple of jubilee clips to get a good seal.

I restricted the flow for hot water to minimum but its still more than enough!

The drain comes straight down from the sink and down through the floor

Straight through the floor where it will then combine with the shower waste via a Y-connector and through a waste trap before entering the grey waste tank

I sealed all around the pipe with sikaflex 512 and also made a mess

Grey waste tank

This tank will be used to collect drain water from the sink and shower. It’s not really essential but will be useful when parked up in cities or anywhere I’d like to remain a little inconspicuous. The tank will have to be custom made and will have an inlet (to fit 28.5mm waste pipe) and outlet consisting of a tap mounted directly on the underside of the tank for emptying. Most of the time though, I’ll probably just keep the drain tap open so the water runs through onto the floor and just close it when It is needed.

I decided 20L would be more than enough capacity to collect drain water since I’ll only be using small amounts of water at a time. I contacted Barratt tanks and emailed him over a sketch with my dimensions and rough location for inlet and outlet. He was the cheapest and most helpful person I found (I found him after a recommendation on the SMBCC forum)

Here is a sketch of my tank. I sent this to Shaun at Barratt tanks.

grey waste tank and connections

Y-connector goes straight into the trap and then into the tank via waste pipe

The pump

I’ll be using a 30psi Shurflo trail king 7. It seems like a great bit of kit – solid, heavy and sounds like it really knows what it’s doing. I did have some trouble with the noise at first but I solved it by hanging the pump rather than fixing it which I explain here – mounting the shurflo water pump. I fed the pump into an accumulator (Fiamma A20 from O’leary motorhomes) after some unsatisfactory bench (pulsating) tests with no accumulator. The difference is night and day and for £20 its an obvious choice to get the water running nicely.

The pump is central to the proper functioning of the water system so I made sure It was a decent one. It is designed to be serviceable and spare parts readily available

Since these pumps rely on pressure in the system to automatically turn off, they have a tendency to oscillate when the tap is not fully open. A ‘buffer’ is needed to dampen the system and to reduce and oscillatory behaviour – they call it an accumulator. In my opinion, these pumps should always be used with an accumulator and should also lengthen the life of the pumps micro-switch and diaphragm.

I decided to name this the ‘utility cupboard’. In here is the water heater, water accumulator, water pump, 12V terminals and fridge. 

Hopefully this give you an idea of how you get install a running water system into your campervan conversion. Please leave any questions or comments below…

Gas is going to be my main energy source for cooking and heating. I thought this would be the simple case of throwing in a couple of 6KG Calor gas bottle and connecting the hose. I was wrong. The world of gas fittings, adaptors, regulators, connectors is pretty confusing – the more I researched, the more worm cans I opened.

Calor gas cannot be exchanged around Europe so there is no point me shelling out £70 for Calor bottles only to find I may have to ditch them. Also, there are several different gas bottle types around Europe (like 4 or 5?) all with different connections.

Refillable LPG bottles

This appears to solve the above problems and seems to be the most universal gas storage solution I could find – a refillable LPG cylinder. Even when I narrowed it down to this, I still had trouble deciding what type of refillable cylinder to get. I narrowed my search down to what seems to be 4 of the most popular brands:

• Safefill is made from a lightweight composite material which gives it the advantage of being transparent enough to see the level of gas remaining. The Safefill bottle is specifically designed to be filled up directly, although some fuel stations will still not allow free standing bottles to be filled directly.
• Alugas costs a little more for a lightweight bottle so I guess if weight was a big concern then it may be worth the extra few quid.
• Gaslow and Gasit are pretty much the same product as far as I can tell, with the only difference being the name and colour.

I went for an 11kg Gaslow cylinder with direct fill adaptor – I like the colour yellow.

You can get these directly from Gaslow but Hamilton gas products are still the cheapest around. However they had sold out when I called so the next cheapest I could find was Outdoor bits who are still 10% cheaper than directly from Gaslow themselves

Gas manifold and pipes

I fixed the gas manifold down to a solid surface and ran the hose to the appliances. I used standard 8mm orange hose for all the pipe work (with jubilee clips at every termination) instead of 8mm copper mainly for ease of use and maintenance.

If there was absolutely no chance of this getting knocked then it would be best placed on the floor. Instead I mounted safely out of the way under the hob/sink unit where it can easily be accessed but will not be disturbed or damaged

I was a little wary about these compression fittings but after a few tests I was convinced they are decent. I put some silicone sealant around the olive as well to act as a lubricant and also seal any possible remaining gaps

Originally I was just going to use T pieces to distribute the gas but this way (manifold) is much better and safer since single appliances can easily be isolated when not used

Not more holes in the floor! I had to fit a drop vent in the cupboard where the bottle and the manifold is.

The idea is that any escaped gas will hang at the bottom and hopefully drop through the vent but how well this actually works I don’t know. It is recommended to have a drop vent at every connection

Fitting the Gaslow bottle

I don’t really have a proper gas locker like in a caravan but I do have free cupboard which I’ll make some modifications to. The gas bottle can be taken in and out from the outside of the van via the sliding door, although most of the time it will be filled in situ without needing to take it out.

Here’s how the direct fill adaptor fits onto the Gaslow bottle. It must be tightened with a spanner as i found out when I tried to fill it!

On goes a 37mbar regulator with a female 21.8LH thread. This came with the bottle

I made a cut out in a piece of ply wood for the bottle to fit into

I fitted the bottle holder as I would a strong shelf. A ratchet and nylon webbing will be used to keep the bottle securely in place

Space was tight; I had to cut this ratchet handle down so it cleared the edge of the cladded wall.

It seems to be nice and secure.

Filling up

I used LPG map to find a near by garage that sells LPG (they call it autogas in the UK). My plan was to take the empty bottle along to the pump and try to quickly and discreetly fill it before anyone could tell me I wasn’t allowed. That plan didn’t work – I hadn’t tightened the fill adaptor plus Its not really like a petrol pump. Gas went everywhere. Just when I thought I was about to get shouted at by a guy walking up to me, he kindly helped me and put some PTFE tape on the adaptor threads of the bottle then proceeded to show me how to fill it safely.

I filled it with 17.5 litres and cost about £13. That is half the price of Calor gas!

Testing

Leaking gas was one thing I was a little worried about at first but I am pretty confident now that a gas leak will quickly become obvious from either the smell or noise. Even the smallest amount of gas in a ventilated area really does stink!

Heres what I did to test for leaks:

1. turned off all gas appliances
2. switched on gas supply at bottle and then turned it off – pressure is now in the lines and should stay there unless there is a leak
3. after 10 minutes or so I removed hose from regulator and heard the trapped gas escape which told me that there was no leaks!

The hand warmer works!

Filling up in Europe – LPG adaptors

These LPG adaptors just screw onto the existing bayonet direct fill adaptor shown above. These are quite expensive if bought directly from the bottle supplier (Gaslow). I found the set of 3 for £21.50 here from autogas 2000 ltd.

Here it is, Hammock in a van… UPDATE: You can see the completed van here

I’ve since upgraded to a bigger hammock for a bed, which is perfect for sleeping in – see the last picture at the bottom of this page. Buy your hammock here(U.S) OR here for U.K

How to install a hammock in your van or campervan

I told Matt my plan for mounting the hammock and he suggested using ‘toggles’ which I’d never heard of before. We went to buy two heavy duty eye bolts and D shackles and matt did the rest with his star wars drill and good brain. It is super solid – fixed to the strongest parts of the van.

fixing hardware the same on each end but the front one has a spacer bolt to keep the shackle close to the fixing plate and hopefully prevent excessive leverage pulling the plate away from the wall since this will be mounted on the side wall

Toggle bolts were used for the back fixing since the back of the steel cannot be accessed to get a nut behind. This is a neat solution and also help distribute the load better. I wish I’d heard of these things a while ago!

I used karabiners to allow for quick hammock access

The total length is 3.2m between fixing points. I used a nylon sling folded a few times to get the right length

A hammock upgrade – for a bed

That other hammock was too small. This is not only somewhere to chill but it will also be another bed for mates.

I upgraded to much bigger hammock for several people which is way more stable and easy to sleep in:

measuring 210cm across!

So there you have it. Hammock in a van! have you done this? I wonder I could put another in here?

Buy hammock here(U.S) OR buy hammock here for U.K