Every TrailCurrent rig needs a router. After running a few different options through the trailer, we settled on the GL.iNet Spitz Plus (GL-X2000) as the recommended router for the platform. Here's how it earned the slot.
It sips power
Headwaters averages 15W in the trailer. Everything that runs alongside it has to play by the same rules. The Spitz Plus draws a handful of watts at idle, which means the whole router-plus-gateway stack lives comfortably on the same 200W of solar and 100Ah of battery that Headwaters does. Nothing in the stack is allowed to be the one hungry thing that wakes up the inverter.
Two Ethernet ports, both usable as LAN
This is the detail that actually made the decision. A lot of travel routers give you one WAN and one LAN, hardcoded. The Spitz Plus lets you reconfigure both ports as LAN, which is exactly what we need: one port goes to Headwaters, the other goes to Peregrine. Two wired, deterministic links out of a single small box, no dumb switch hanging off the back, no port shuffling when you plug something else in.
Dual SIM slots for Farwatch
Farwatch is the cloud bridge — remote monitoring, OTA updates, alerts from the rig when you're not there. It needs a connection that isn't your house Wi-Fi. The Spitz Plus has two SIM slots, so you can run a primary carrier and drop in a backup for anywhere that primary doesn't reach. For rigs that spend real time off-grid, having two carriers in the same enclosure is the difference between "Farwatch works at this campsite" and "Farwatch works at every campsite we're likely to park at."
To be precise about what's doing what: the Spitz Plus handles the uplink. Headwaters still runs your local network, your dashboards, and your MQTT broker entirely offline. If cell drops out in a canyon, the trailer keeps working the same way it always does. The 4G is there so Farwatch can phone home when signal exists, not so the rig depends on it.
Wall mount and a barrel connector
Small details that matter when you're doing a real install. The Spitz Plus has mounting points on the back so it bolts cleanly to a wall or a cabinet side — no Velcro-and-prayer, no sliding around over a week on the highway. And power comes in through a standard barrel connector, which drops straight into the TrailCurrent wiring harness the same way everything else does. One clean 12V run, one barrel tip, done. No wall wart, no AC-to-DC brick hiding behind a panel.
Four antennas and SMA connectors
Four external antennas on SMA connectors — two cellular, two Wi-Fi — and that matters more than it might sound. Fireside and Overlook both want to work at the campsite, not just inside the rig. Sitting at a picnic table twenty feet from the trailer, checking tank levels on Overlook or glancing at a control screen on Fireside, is the whole point. SMA connectors mean you can swap in bigger antennas when you need to, route them to a better spot on the roof, or aim them at a distant cell tower without cracking the router open. It's the boring kind of flexibility that pays off every trip.
A thank-you to GL.iNet
We want to be straight about the history here. Before we ever talked to GL.iNet, we bought a Beryl AX with our own money. It was the first router we tried in the trailer, and we liked it enough that when the platform needed something bigger — dual SIM, dual LAN, external antennas — GL.iNet was the first name on the list. We reached out, explained what we were building, and asked if they'd be willing to send a Spitz Plus so we could evaluate it properly.
At that point we had zero videos published and zero subscribers. No audience, no numbers, no leverage. They sent the Spitz Plus anyway. That kind of belief in a project that hadn't proven anything yet is rare, and we're genuinely grateful for it. The fact that the router turned out to be the right answer for the platform is a happy coincidence — we would have said so either way, and we would have kept looking if it hadn't been.
If you're setting up a TrailCurrent rig, the Spitz Plus is where we'd point you. If you pick one up through our affiliate link, it helps keep the project funded. If you'd rather buy direct, that's fine too — the recommendation stands either way.