Vanagon WiFi – Wireless Internet in your Vanagon

Mar 16, 2009 | Category: @Our Hacks, Electrical, Interior

We’ve been carrying our EVDO data card with us so we can get online in the van, but that didn’t seem like a Vanagon Hack, so we decided to get a more permanent WiFi solution in the Vanagon. As you can see in the video, we wired the outlet to the stereo for on/off capabilities.

More pictures after the jump…

We first purchased a small CTR-350 WiFi Router from Cradlepoint, and a USB mount on eBay. We bought 2 different mounts and took them apart to give us the port we needed.

We highly recommend the Cradlepoint router if you have an EVDO card because it’s so easy to use. You plug in the card and go…literally.

Once we had the router working we decided to mount it in the glove box. We ran a USB extension cord up into the dash board, and created a permanent USB mount in the dash. It was a challenge, but we got it done and now we have Vanagon WiFi. Check it out…

First we measured and drill the hole where we wanted it to go…

Drilling the hole

Drilling the hole 2

Then we grinded out the metal under the dash. We put a mirror through the stereo slot so we could see. In this picture you can see us cutting away extra metal with a Pliers.

Removing extra metal and foam

The final result is a permanent USB mount in the dash for our Sprint card. You can’t see it in this picture, but it lights up yellow when it is on. Now we have WiFi in the Vanagon.