My name is Brent Rose.

I am 35 years old,

and I live in a van down by the river,

except it's actually a really cool van

that I've added a ton of technology to.

Today, we're gonna be talking

about all the customizations I've done to this baby,

so it can be ready for my high-tech lifestyle.

So you know how we've been calling

this video series Out of Office?

Well, I was tired of sitting at the same desk everyday,

so I gave up my apartment and most of my stuff,

and I bought a big converted van,

which I'm now living in full-time

as drive around the country.

I've been at it for more than a month now.

When I first bought Ashley, the beast,

she was grossly under-powered.

She has outlets all over the inside,

which was great,

but I couldn't run anything off of them

unless she was plugged into shore power,

or unless the generator was running,

which is loud and not good for incognito camping.

So I brought her to AM Solar in Springfield, Oregon,

and they really hooked me up.

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about 320 watts of solar panels

that feed down at about 17 amps

straight into my brand new 200 amp-hour lithium battery.

This thing is beautiful.

Not only is it the same size

as my old 80 amp-hour lead acid battery,

but I can drain it all the way down to about 15%,

whereas the lead acid you risk damaging it

after you go past 50.

This gives me way more usable power.

I have all of that running

into a beast of a 3000 watt hybrid inverter.

Not only can it power all the little things in the van,

it can handle the big ticket items too,

including the air conditioner,

although only for about an hour or so

before I deplete the battery about 50%,

but still, that's sick.

With all that stuff together,

I can keep my fridge constantly cold,

and all my gadgets charged

without ever really needing to worry

about running out of power.

That, in itself, has allowed me to basically

go completely off the grid.

It's huge.

Let me tell you about some of the other stuff.

So, obviously, I sleep in here.

I've got a lot of gadgets in here,

so security is gonna be really important to me,

so I got the top-of-the-line system from Viper.

This included the 5806 and the GPS SmartStart system.

It's a two-way system,

so if my alarm goes off,

I'll now about it through my key chain,

or through my smart phones app,

even if I'm far away.

The system also has a microphones

which can detect the crash of glass,

but it's made for some humorous situations.

For example,

(sneezing)

(car alarm sounding)

Even with that Viper system,

I wanted to make sure my gadgets were especially safe,

so I completely dismantled this cabinet,

and I installed the Viking safe VS-38BL

with biometric fingerprint scanner.

It's big enough to fit in my laptop,

microphoness, recorders, hard drives, all that stuff,

and I've installed it in such a way

that taking it out would take a long time,

hopefully, while the alarm is blaring.

The fingerprint scanner is kind of just showing off,

but whatever.

It's a tech-ed out van, so I'm running with it.

I'm also using this little Bluetooth GPS dongle

called Automatic.

It basically installs right

into your vehicle's diagnostics board,

and it can tell you things about the vehicle's health.

It can even call the authorities

if you get into an accident.

It's just an extra layer of security.

But what about tunes?

Well, as you can see,

the stereo system is pretty out of date.

Oh, just kidding.

This is actually the top-of-the-line Pioneer AVIC-8100NEX.

It's got a capacitive touch screen.

It runs androids Auto and Apple CarPlay,

has it's own built-in navigation,

and even supports back-up cameras,

which has made my life much, much easier.

The guys who installed it has to slice open the dash,

and expand it from the single din slot

to a double din slot,

but they managed to make it match perfectly.

They also built this amazing little end cap thing

to make it just a little bit more subtle.

It's maybe my favorite modification.

So now, I had this sweet stereo head,

but it was all coming

through these two wimpy in-dash speakers,

so the guys installed two Phoenix Gold six by nines

right behind the front two chairs,

and a Kicker bass station right underneath the table.

I know have a very, very satisfying amount of bass.

(electronic bass music)

And then, my friend made a custom EQ

to match the van's resonant frequency.

It's by no means an audiophile-grade system,

but it sounds really, really nice.

What else?

When I first got the van,

It was filled with small incandescent bulbs,

which were a real power suck,

so I went through and replaced them all

with high-output, high-efficiency LEDs.

It gives me the same amount of light for

about 1/5th the amount of power consumption,

which makes a huge difference overnight,

but when I wanna set the mood,

I've got these.

This is the enevu CUBE.

It's a small, battery-powered cube.

It's got three white settings,

and then, it scrolls through every color

you can possibly imagine.

When you get to one you like,

you just hit the button again,

and you freeze it.

I use four of these things across the van,

and it really helps create a more relaxing atmosphere.

It's kind of like being in first-class

on a Virgin Atlantic flight,

or so I imagine.

But honestly,

some of my favorite alterations have been the little mods,

like the moment when I first realized

there was an inch and a half gap behind these two seats,

and a sold piece of wood up here.

I finally had a place to hang my suits,

or finding a place for these two coat hooks

where I probably wouldn't lose an eyeball.

I also found an out of the way place

to mount my garbage can with bungee cords.

I've been using this plastic sink liner

so my gray water tank doesn't fill up quite as quickly.

These may seem like small things,

but when you're living in a small space,

these little conveniences add up really quickly.

So that's most of the customizations I've made

to the beast here,

but there are more on the way.

If you've got ideas for some,

I wanna hear about it.

Let me know through Twitter or Instagram,

and don't forget to follow at connectedstates.com.

I hope to see you out there on the road,

and thank you for watching.