Idea: Motorcycle Camping With All Your Electronic Gadgets

Idea: Motorcycle Camping With All Your Electronic Gadgets


When you go out camping, especially with your motorcycle, the issue is that you are away from civilization, ie, away from electricity. So when you are somewhere in some field, pitch your tent, you will not be able to use your smartphone, pad, pod and/or portable computer for very long. You just don't have a plugin point inside your tent to charge your gadget.

But not if Orange has its way; Orange is the French telecom giant, and they have design a concept tent that has as roof a solar panel. In fact, the photovoltaic fabric is partially woven into the tent and assembled in a shell-like cover. The shell can be oriented towards the sun to get the maximum exposure..





This allow the tent to store electricity during the day. There are little pouches inside the tent; drop your smartphone into one of the pouches and your phone gets charged via induction.

But what's more, the tent responds to SMS messages (remember that Orange is a telecom company) if you've lost your tent and are trying to geo-localize it. And if there's a Wifi signal around, it can boost that signal.

So, there you go ... next time you go camping, you can actually bring your gadgets with you. The only point remaining is how big the tent is when folded. Maybe you'll need a trailer...

Telecom giant Orange unveiled a concept solar tent in conjunction with the opening of this year's Glastonbury music festival in the U.K.

Inspired by the new flexible photovoltaics in development, the tent--if produced for consumers--would be covered in a semi-photovoltaic fabric woven with both coated solar threads and conventional threads to form a solar shell that could be adjusted to face optimum sun throughout the day.

The solar energy would then be channeled into four main power uses: heating, lighting, communications, and recharging.

The goal of Kaleidoscope, the design firm working in conjunction with Orange, was to create a tent that would help attendees of Glastonbury, the U.K.'s famous open-field music festival, which is sponsored in part by Orange, to keep their bearings and to keep in touch with friends while on site.

Most interesting is the idea of a wireless charging pouch. Instead of plugging in, people would drop their phone or other portable device into a pouch inside the tent. A coil in the pouch would carry an electric current that generates a magnetic field to produce a charge, which would then serve to power the device's battery.

In addition, some of the captured solar energy would be channeled toward radiant floor heating--something that would be much appreciated by anyone sleeping on the commonly damp British ground.

Artist's rendering of solar tent emitting glow at night.

(Credit: Orange)

And how many times have you been to a field festival only to spend an eternity trying to find your way back to your camp? The development team for the tent noticed that this wandering was a common problem at Glastonbury each year.

For that reason, the tent would be equipped with "Glo-cation" technology that would allow users to find their tents by sending an SMS message or using an automatic RFID tag similar to the ones used in London's Underground Oyster subway cards. The tent would then glow in response.

The tent would also serve to broadcast a Wi-Fi signal, though it's unclear whether it would have a Wi-Fi booster for a central area hub or act as an independent Wi-Fi router.

While this week England happens to be pretty bright and sunny, I'm not so sure a solar tent is the way to go in the land of perpetual, mild drizzling. But I could certainly see this being a favorite at Burning Man.