Minnie Winnie Wifi Prewire

[Flint]

First of all,thank you for welcoming me to this site. This is our first RV, a Minnie Winnie 2500FL travel trailer. I’m sure I’ll be asking a lot of questions but my first one is about the prewired WiFi. One end of the wire is behind the Kingconnect plate but where is the other end? There is a black round antenna on the roof. I assume that is the TV. Do you suppose the other end is inside? There is 4screws to remove the top. Thanks for any input,Flint

[CarpeDiem]

The round antenna is for local TV reception. The prewire for WiFi is a new feature and isn’t even on all 2020 models. Very little info about it. Best to contact Winnebago direct with your vin # and they can give you exact information.

[creativepart]

FOUND IT!

It turns out it's a King Connect built in thing and it comes on many brands. They sell the parts to complete it and they have the instructions for how to use it.

https://kingconnect.com/wifi-prewire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoKh9aSbJgI

[creativepart]

Looking at the videos (which are not very well done) it seems that you first have to purchase their Router for $99. Which isn't a terrible price.

Then, what they don't explain in the video, is when you are in a campground and they give you a wifi Name and password you then use the King router setup and click the router REPEAT icon. From there you pick the info the Campground gave you for a SSID and Password. That's really poorly explained in the video... as in not at all. They filmed the demo while at the King offices so all the examples of SSIDs they choose from are all "King" names. They don't mention that you'd be looking for your campground's SSID.

And, then all you're doing is using a King router you have to purchase separately to connect to your campground wifi and then rebroadcast it inside the RV.

That's great - BUT - it doesn't require ANY "pre-wiring" and you could easily purchase your own router and do this easier and better. I'd suggest the WiFi Ranger Spruce. It cost only $20 more and is much easier to use and live with. And the WiFi Ranger product lets you plug a phone or Mifi/Jetpack into the router via USB.

Like to the WiFi Ranger Spruce Router: https://wifiranger.com/shop/routers/indoor/spruce/

Now... for the PRE-WIRE part. They seem to have prewired the TV Antenna setup to also allow you to purchase a separate $99 WiFi antenna that you can mount outside on your roof and this is prewired to let you connect it to the Wifi Router they made you buy.

It's not a booster or anything. Just an external antenna that they have "pre-wired" into the TV Antenna wiring somehow - I'm not clear about that yet.

So, it's all a marketing ploy to get you to purchase their $100 router. It's nothing all that special or needing pre-wiring.

The Pre-Wire comes into play ONLY IF you pay the extra $99 for an rooftop external King Swift WiFi antenna.

Oh, and they sell an even more expensive Falcon Upgrade for $319.

Here's a video from the Internet Resource Center (www.rvmobileinternet.com) describing the equipment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqopSOyrqiI

[creativepart]

Sorry, one more comment.

I'm finding the King website for all these things pretty confusing.

Here's the like to the product page:

https://kingconnect.com/wi-fi/

Take a look. You can buy the KING WiFiMax™ for $99.99.
And you can buy the King Swift Antenna for $99.99
YET, if you buy the two of them together it costs $229.99

That means it's 199.98 to buy the two items separately but $29.99 MORE if you buy them bundled together??? What's up with that?

[Morich]

We are now in a world where careful shopping is becoming a lost art for many. Just go to Amazon and get it with "free" shipping is one of the bugs I had to point out to a granddaughter who is about to leave the house for college. It is simple and easy but I had to explain to her how much more she was being charged to pay for Prime membership as well as higher costs on many items, just because she was expecting to get "free" shipping! Current thinking seems to run a bit off track when they think paying a fee to get free is an actual fact!
The one advantage I might see on the prewire is that it does get the wire outside and up which does make it easy to do without the thought of how to run a wire.
Another small point on the video is that I have to wonder about it's real purpose, since it says it is NOT a "review, promotion, or endorsement"!
So what is it, if it is not one any of those? Just filling air?

[creativepart]

Originally Posted by Morich

Another small point on the video is that I have to wonder about it's real purpose, since it says it is NOT a "review, promotion, or endorsement"!
So what is it, if it is not one any of those? Just filling air?

Doesn't see confusing to me in the least.

• Reviews, where they test and live with the gear for a time and provide results
  
• Promotion, where they would be paid by a company to talk about the product
  
• Endorsement, where someone would think because it's being discussed by the YouTube channel that it's a tacit endorsement of the product.

Those are all different things - all the video is is informational about it being a new product offering and a description of what you get and what you you do with it.

[Flint]

Thank you for your response. I talked to Holly at Winnebago. The other end of the wire is connected to the antenna on the roof. I did buy a router booster from King . So far so good

[tay]

Originally Posted by Flint

Thank you for your response. I talked to Holly at Winnebago. The other end of the wire is connected to the antenna on the roof. I did buy a router booster from King . So far so good

We just bought a 2021 Hike, and same pre-wired for internet. I initially bought a 4G connected winegard, only to realize it required the 360 attachment which the Hike doesnt have. So I have been asking the same questions you have. What does the booster do? Is this for existing Wifi at camps? In the meantime i bought a 5G verizon devic with 50gb which should allow us to stream Netflix and work from the Trailer...


Any feedback appreciated

[Flint]

The Kingconnect website was helpful. The router booster I got enhances the campground WiFi. It is also supposed to make your connection secure. It all depends on how much you want to spend.

[tay]

Originally Posted by Flint

The Kingconnect website was helpful. The router booster I got enhances the campground WiFi. It is also supposed to make your connection secure. It all depends on how much you want to spend.

Gotcha, thanks. So if the camp WiFi is weak (for working purposes) or non existent, then we've moved past this conversation and onto a new one re/cellular connectivity..?

[creativepart]

Originally Posted by Flint

The Kingconnect website was helpful. The router booster I got enhances the campground WiFi. It is also supposed to make your connection secure. It all depends on how much you want to spend.

Does it? I think it's just a router with some external antennas.

These antenna's may be better than the antenna in your phone or Mifi but they don't really "boost" anything.

What that King Router is doing is called - WiFi As WAN.

At home when you connect a router to your internet modem you are using an Ethernet wire to connect to a Wide Area Network or WAN. The then "router" routes this to all your other devices. So, multiple things - phones, computers, TVs, etc can all connect at the same time to the WAN.

The King Router works exactly the same way only it doesn't have an Ethernet cable to connect it to the WAN (wide area network again). It uses WiFi to connect to the WAN. Hence the term: WiFi As WAN.

The campground WiFi is the WAN and your router is picking that up and, again, routing it to all of your devices inside your RV. So, now you don't need to connect your phone, your tablet, your computer, your TV to the campground WiFi you just connect it to your router.

This is an important function and is not to be minimized - but there is no "boosting" going on there.

Even if you add one of the two King external antennas you are not boosting you are just doing a better job of reaching the WiFi signals that are available by using a larger or taller antenna.

This is true of all RV WiFi routers - they don't boost they just route the campground's wifi signal to your devices AND those with outside antennas do a better job, usually, of picking up the existing signals.

One more thing... none of this will help you if the campground's internet is bad, overused, under distributed or any other way limited. Campgrunds wid bad internet access will still be bad internet in your RV,

The King WiFi system is not a bad deal. $99 for a WiFi as WAN RV router is pretty good. Just don't think of it as a "booster."

If you use your Phone or a MiFI/Jetpack as your Internet then that device becomes the WAN and you connect the King router to the WAN provided by those devices to route to all of your phones, tablets, computers and such inside the RV.

PS. Your RV Router, no matter the brand, King or Wifi Ranger, etc, helps with security because all of your connected devices go through this one router which is set up with your SSID and your Password.

[BigEAlumni]

Originally Posted by Flint

Thank you for your response. I talked to Holly at Winnebago. The other end of the wire is connected to the antenna on the roof. I did buy a router booster from King . So far so good

Would you mind posting a pic of the antenna on your rig?