CampOFF
Our story
Not written from theory. It started with our own road trips, and we are now assembling the full system step by step — what we already use, and what we are testing now.
01
The problem
We ran into it while planning a road trip of several weeks. Booking accommodation would have meant deciding in advance which night we would be where — giving up the very thing we were doing it for. Without campsites, though, the question was: what happens to the cooling, the phones and the work?
02
What we actually wanted
We wrote down three things. Not having to look for somewhere to sleep every evening. Not having to throw food away. And, when work has to happen, not being stopped by having nowhere to charge a laptop.
Those three sentences defined the whole system. Anything that did not serve one of them, we did not buy.
03
Rooftop tent – the next step
The rooftop tent went into the plan because we would rather not shape every evening's route around accommodation or a campsite. If we find a good spot for the car, the bed comes with it.
Choosing one is not only about the tent, though. The car's roof load rating, the cross bars' capacity and the tent's mounting together decide what can be used safely.
Our own rooftop tent is still on its way. Once it arrives we will document everything from fitting it to using it on a real trip.
04
A rooftop tent starts with the cross bars
Before choosing a tent you have to solve the question of what it will safely mount to.
Not every cross bar suits every car: the roof rail design, the mounting method, the size and the load rating all matter. That is why CampOFF treats the cross bar as part of the rooftop tent system rather than as an accessory.
05
Cooling without ice packs
On a longer trip cooling is one of the first problems you have to keep solving. Ice packs run out; a compressor fridge can run both on the move and while parked.
That means an energy demand, which is why the fridge has to be sized together with the power station, the solar panel and the alternator charging.
Our own compressor fridge has not arrived yet. We will verify its real consumption by measuring it ourselves, and feed the result into the CampOFF calculator.
06
The middle of the energy system
The power station became the centre of the system because the cooling, the laptop, the phones, the lighting and everything else on the road have to run off the same thing.
Our first power stations have just arrived, so the next step is no longer a comparison on paper: we will measure them with real loads, with solar and with alternator charging.
Our goal is not the biggest possible system. We want to find the smallest arrangement that still serves a given use safely.
07
Charging even while parked
If we stay in one place for several days, battery capacity alone does not solve everything. What matters then is how much energy we can put back during the day.
That is why we do not choose the solar setup on its own: we size it to the power station's input limits and to the real daily shortfall.
Practical testing of our own panels is starting now. Beyond the rated watts we will also measure what they deliver in real weather and real travel conditions.
08
Charging on the move
On a road trip every hour driven is also an opportunity to charge. That is why DC-DC charging is part of the system.
The point is not to replace solar, but to reduce — on driving days — the energy that would otherwise have to come back from a panel or a socket later.
Practical testing of our own alternator charging is next. CampOFF does not calculate with the charger's rated power but with what the given power station and the car can actually accept.
09
Working from a laptop
This is how the trip also became a workplace. It changed the sizing logic: we do not plan for the fair-weather average but for surviving two overcast days while still working.
10
How it fits together
In the end there are not six separate products but one system, in which every element is there because of another. The fridge is why you need the storage, the storage is why you need to charge it back, charging it back is why you need solar and DC-DC — and the rooftop tent is what turns the whole thing into a multi-day trip.
CampOFF tries to save you that sequence.
CampOFF turns this way of thinking into a system, so you do not have to run the same laps. Where we already have our own experience, we write it up; where only the test is still ahead, we say that too.
Not sure how big a system you need?
Tell us what you are taking and how many days you spend off-grid. We will tell you how much storage and how much solar is enough — and when a smaller system already covers it.
⚡ Work out what system I need