After doing the vanlife thing for a few years and rewiring the auxiliary battery system in my rig a couple of times I decided to scratch an itch and created a PCB with Wago connectors to greatly simplify the process and eliminate as many crimped ring connections as possible. Nearly everything for a small 12V auxiliary system plugs directly in on the PCB: DC-DC charger, start battery, aux battery and all accessories.
Now that I've scratched the itch I've found that there's a bit of a market for a product like this so I have started a side business to start selling them:
Feedback so far has been enormously positive. They're not a great fit if you have a ton of equipment or high-current devices but for smaller setups in vans, 4wd vehicles, off-road trailers, etc it really simplifies the installation process.
There's a near limitless number of things of this nature to be designed and built, running the gammut from little gizmos to electrical distribution boards like you've designed. I've had ideas for an in-vehicle weather station (internal/external temperature and humidity), a music system hand-off switch, and a variety of other little things that somebody building their own overland rig might want.
Speaking as part of your likely market, I'm really not surprised that there is a market. The mainstream RV market seems to be most focused on the kind of person who wants to run their generator every day so they can watch satellite HBO on their big screen TV in a KOA campground every night. The interior design is locked into what a person retiring right now wanted their very first kitchen to look like. So things like off-the-lot solar, or effective laptop connections, or modern interior design is not really a thing.
My main hesitation on starting down your road myself is that I already have a job building things like this, just not on projects of my own choosing.
Oh for sure, at least in the USA though FCC review gets pretty sticky so I'm actively avoiding selling anything for the moment that would require RF testing, etc. Unfortunately anything with a microcontroller or radio isn't going to be on my website for sale any time soon. I have to imagine most of the people in this space that are skipping testing/certification are just banking the FCC won't come after them. I support the FCC testing requirements, especially as a ham. But I wish the process wasn't quite so... expensive to be compliant. Especially when I'd rather put my money into product safety and reliability testing given the use-cases.
I've been through the process a couple of times with things that are supposed to radiate, and it was a frustrating and expensive process that I'm glad my employer paid for.
Its super annoying, and sets you up for an extra couple thousand dollar NRE per product, mandatory minimum cost to be 100% compliant. That cost is the other side of why I'm hesitant. I've got access to tens of thousands of dollars of test equipment at my employer; I don't really have those resources in my basement.
Its a shame that there doesn't appear to be much real testing to see if a device is operating on bluetooth/wifi responsibly, because it is possible to be completely compliant with relevant FCC standards, but then have such a shoddy bluetooth implementation that its still disruptive to everything around.
This is very cool. As someone interested in overlanding, is there somewhere you could point to where I could learn more? Specifically on the tech side of it. Thanks!
Now that I've scratched the itch I've found that there's a bit of a market for a product like this so I have started a side business to start selling them:
https://www.tesotaoverland.com/product/apds
Feedback so far has been enormously positive. They're not a great fit if you have a ton of equipment or high-current devices but for smaller setups in vans, 4wd vehicles, off-road trailers, etc it really simplifies the installation process.