We began the Summer of ’25 Tour on May 30, a couple of days earlier than planned. We found a coach repair shop that said it could fix programming issues with our Crestron system.
Crestron is an integrated automation system that controls multiple systems (such as air conditioning, heat, lights, shades, etc.) Many buses (and homes and businesses) use Crestron, including Tinkerbell. A complete update to Crestron in a bus costs about $70k. We will not be doing a complete update anytime soon 😉
We had been having temperature and generator control issues since our last trip. The generator repair guys said, “Generator is fine. Crestron is the issue.” So, we found a Crestron repair place in eastern Tennessee; they gave us a shining beacon of hope that our integration issues would finally be solved. Jay can fix a lot of things but programming a proprietary system is just a wee bit beyond his reach.
So, we left a few days early for our big, summer trip.
We loaded everyone into Tinkerbell and hit the dusty (yes, dusty since Tucson didn’t get much rain this winter) trail.
Thankfully, the trip out of Arizona and into Tennessee was relatively uneventful.
Our air conditioning was working. We were barreling full steam ahead!
We arrived at our destination, East Tennessee Luxury Coach (ETLC), just as they were closing the gates for the evening. They let us in, hooked us up to electric, and bid us farewell until the morning.
We spent a couple of days at the repair place. They said, “It’s not Crestron. It’s your generator.”
We were pretty sure the generator was okay since we have been having other issues with our Crestron. After digging a bit deeper, they said, “We can fix the Crestron. Buttttt, we need the updated source code.”
Tinkerbell had been updated with new coding a few years before we bought her. The updating was performed at a place in Texas. Unfortunately, without the coding, our Crestron could not be fixed. We reached out to the place that performed the update and are still waiting to have them get back to us.
With ETLC’s help, we were able to devise some work arounds until we can get some traction with the coding.
The world of Crestron coders in luxury buses is a small world. It seems there is a Crestron coder in Iowa. We will try our luck with that coder when we make our way through the Midwest in August.
And since we’re talking coding, let’s talk bugs… (sorry for the pun, all those years in Information technology warped my brain a little)
Before we left ETLC, we got a tour of some buses (all in for repairs) in the ETLC lot. We like touring buses almost as much as we like touring homes 😉
And that’s when we saw the bullet holes:
Coming up: Knoxville, TN, our first official stop on the Summer of ’25 Tour!
Tinkerbell's Travels 
Leave a comment