TechStuff Camps Out

From the good old days of roughing it to the high tech campsite of the future, we look at the tech of camping.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with text stuff from stuff
works dot com. Say everyone, and welcome to tech stuff.
I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren, and today we have
a listener request via Facebook. This is from Tony. Yes.
He wrote in to say, would you please compare old

(00:24):
tiny camping gear, more upstate camping gear, and then some
of the leading edge ultra light stuff you know would
stay with us charge your titaniums for inflatable kayaks. So
some of those we are going to cover. In fact,
the first one we will definitely cover. The other two
will probably cover, and and maybe some other episode at
some point, maybe we'll do a full episode on titanium.
It should be interesting. But we we've got a whole

(00:47):
thing about camping to talk about before we get into
any of the gear. I'm gonna play the room a little.
I want to find out what our personal um opinion
is toward camping. Lauren. Are you are you someone who
would go camping? Uh? No, No, I mean basically not. Well,

(01:08):
it's okay. I've got some friends who are into camping.
My roommates are very much into camping, and it has
been suggested as an extracurricular activity. To me, and I'm
not entirely against it. Uh. If I had a certain
number of creature comforts, like I would want to actually
be within easy distance of a shower, if I was

(01:30):
going to be out there within a couple for for
more than a couple of days, toilet would not be
rowed upon. Really fond of bathrooms in general, I like them.
I see where you're coming from, bog Obama on this.
We are simpatico when it comes to this. I have
camped in the past. Um, I have gone camping before,
and I am also I think I've just reached a

(01:52):
point where where the the joy of it is outweighed
by the inconvenience and the uncomfortable factor. I don't do
so well if I sleep on the ground these days,
I don't move so well. I'm celebrating a birthday today
as we're recording this podcast. At the age i'm at,
I don't bounce back the way I used to. But hey,

(02:14):
happy birthday, thank you, thank you. No I know you're
not on Mike, but I'm gonna I'm gonna ask, are
you are Do you enjoy going campinging? Noel says he
has not been camping since cub Scouts. So yeah, we're, um,
we're experts on the subject. Obviously he has stayed in

(02:36):
a yurt. Uh, that's fantastic. I once helped put up
a yurt, which, by the way, is quite the effort. Uh.
I used to be part of the Society of Creative Anachronism,
the sc there's yurts of plenty. But yeah, and generally
don't really do well outside. I mean, yeah, we're we
are creatures that prefer the air conditioning, the shelter from

(02:58):
the sun. I'm kind of cave dwelling. I mean I'm
even a little bit translucent like some of those like
deep sea shrimp. Right. So yeah, so so, but we
can appreciate why people would want to go camping. Yes,
nature is beautiful and the idea of camping is something
that really appeals to me. It's just the reality. And also,
to be fair, we all are living in in Georgia,

(03:21):
which tends to get very hot and humid in the summer.
That's like your your prime camping season and it could
be really hard to deal with. Yeah. But but anyway,
that being said, we wanted to talk about camping, look
at some of the gear and talk about even just
the history of camping itself, because it's not that old
of recreational activity. When you talk about something that's really widespread.

(03:45):
I mean, there always have been adventurers and outdoorsmen and
outdoors women if you prefer, who have love to experience
nature in its most primitive forms. But you know, as
as a recreational activity that was widespread, it's pretty new.
Well sure, because people didn't really widely live in cities
until the Industrial Revolution circle than nineteen twenties here in

(04:09):
the United States, right, So, yeah, you've got all these
people who are already living out out in rural areas.
They that was kind of their every day experience already
see the stars. Yeah, but once you had people moving
on moss into the cities, you had a lot of
folks say, you know, I kind of miss being able
to commune with nature and to have that experience. And
then once the automobile came along, this became an ability

(04:30):
for people to travel great distances in a short amount
of time and made it possible for them to do
things like plan a trip for a weekend or a
week So that's when we started seeing camping come into fashion.
In fact, there were a couple of pretty famous folks
who were you know, they were responsible for a lot
of the technological development that we enjoy today, people like

(04:51):
Henry Ford and Thomas Edison who reportedly very much enjoyed
going camping. So you know, it does have it. It's
connects into technology. I know a lot of people when
they first hear this are going to say, what does
camping have to do with tech? Well, part of it
is that the industry exists because of technology, right, And
another bit of technology that has led to camping being

(05:14):
widespread is the highway system. That's true, once the interstates
were established, and that really is part of tech. It
took a lot of technology just to make that happen.
But once that was established, it meant that people could
get to really remote places, including places like national parks
where historic landmarks are or natural landmarks were. And then

(05:34):
you started having these parks established official campgrounds so people
could come out and enjoy that that park. So we
really saw it take off in the nineteen fifties was
like a camping moon where it went bonkers. And now
these days, around forty seven million people in the United
States go camping every year. The rest of us know better,

(05:56):
is what I put in my notes. Um, yeah, I said,
my ideal camping situation is a hotel room with room service.
That's my favorite kind of camp. My ideal camping situation
is not camping, because that's really annoying in first person
shooters ate strategy. All right, So we wanted to start
off by talking about tents. Um. You know, it's one

(06:19):
of those things that is a basic need in camping.
You need something to help keep the elements off of
you too, maybe protect you either from anything from rain
and storms to just the bugs in the area, that
kind of thing. And basically, you know, they haven't changed
a whole lot since we started having a whole industry.

(06:41):
I mean, anything with a basic pole structure and some
kind of fabric to be stretched over that structure, and
maybe some lines that secure the poles to the ground
so that it gives it that stability, some kind of
spike to help secure it exactly. Yeah, so we know
these are basically it. Yeah, you're basic dome tense, you're
a frame. Walled tents. The walled tents, by the way,

(07:02):
look pretty much like a house, but intent to form
these are all you know, basics, and you have those
polls to give the rigidity and the lines to provide
the stability. But we have actually seen some development intent
technology over the past to really advance things. One of
them is just making them lighter. Yeah. Materials science is

(07:22):
a huge part of the technology that we're going to
be talking about today, right, And if you are someone
who likes to go camping, particularly someone who wants to
go hiking a good distance and then set up a camp,
having your gear not way too much is a huge issue.
I mean, you don't sure or being able to replace
the weight that you would have had to devote to
a tent with tasty snacks. Yes, because you know, some

(07:43):
of us are not so uh so proficient at gathering
food in the wild or are unwilling to eat their
weight in m r e s. I have yet to
find fruit roll ups growing just freely, so I have
to carry them with me. Uh these are important important
things in my mind. So yeah, this idea of developing
lighter material there's um uh kind of a trademarked material

(08:07):
right called cuber cuban sorry cuban fiber ceeu be eaten
nut cuban as in cuban peat Right. It's the brand
name of this type of non woven fabric, meaning that
the stuff is made from layers of plastic filaments that
are bonded together and then coded. It can be really

(08:28):
light and thin and strong, especially compared with traditional woven
fabrics or even lightweight plastic ones like say nylon or polys. Yeah. Yeah,
and then you can also find ultra light tents that
use carbon fiber for the polls that you put through it.
So anyone who listened to our carbon Fiber podcast, you know,
one of the things about carbon fiber reinforced material is

(08:49):
that it's really really light. So again you cut down
on that weight. You can find some of these two
person tents that weigh less than two pounds total with
the poles included. Yeah, I mean this is this is
pretty light when you think of this is where I'm
going to be sleeping tonight. Now. Granted, they also tend
to be rather expensive, the ones that are male this
material anyway, Like the ones I was looking at they

(09:12):
were between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars. That's a
lot of money for a two person tenth. I mean,
there's some serious camping hobbyists out there. Sure, Yeah, there's
some who who have the money to spend on their
hobby like that. There are other ultra lightweight tents that
are not nearly that expensive. Most of them are using
other types of material, or they might be slightly smaller,

(09:33):
like you might be able to fit two people in it,
but you better be really good friends because you're gonna
be shoulder to shoulder inside that tent, particularly if you're
built like I am. But at any rate, uh, it's
it's you know. That's one of the things we looked
at was just the idea of creating material science that
will allow you to carry more stuff. Now, that's not

(09:57):
the only kind of advanced tent we looked at. Yeah,
the next one on our list is inflatable tents. And
to me, this sounds like you're bringing a bouncy house
out into nature. If only that were the case. I
can just imagine a bear doing somersaults in the air,
being super happy. It's so cute, except for the part
where bears are jerks. Bears can be jerks, yes, um,

(10:19):
this is true, but to be fair, humans could be
pretty big jerks. But no that we don't eat our
prey from the feet first and then the meat stays fresh. No, no, uh,
we we find far more insidious ways. But at any rate, uh.
The inflatable tents in this case are not like big
domes that you just you know, you pull a cord

(10:41):
and then suddenly it goes and then you've got an iglue.
It's not like that. Instead, it's a a tent that
has a frame, a grid like structure that is made
up of inflated inflatable tubes. You use a pump, usually
a hand pump or foot pump to pump it up,
and then you've got the Once you've got the ram
pumped up, it holds up the rest of the tent.

(11:02):
So so those inflatable tubes take the take the role
of the poles that you would usually use in a
normal tent. Now, the one I was looking at specifically
was one called the Cave, which is designed by him Planet.
They have since come out with a newer version called
the Wedge uh, and these are pretty cool. They're supposedly

(11:23):
tested to withstand winds of up to seventy five miles
per hour, which is pretty gusty. I imagine they also
need to be secured to the ground or else they
go flying. I would think so it could be well,
the tent is safe, but it's also four miles away
from where we put it. Um, that would be the problem.
Super Neat the other one I liked a lot, whereas

(11:45):
one called the cocoon tree tent. To get a chance
to see this, Yeah, Yeah, there's there's a couple that
we're going to talk about here that are meant to
keep you up off of the ground while you're sleeping,
which I'm in favor of. If anyone has ever had
to sleep on the ground, even using like a foam
pad between you and the ground, not pleasant. Yeah, these

(12:05):
these things are sort of like an an advanced protective hammock. Yeah,
you can think of it as the cocoon tree. One
looks like a little globe a sphere, and it has
twelve points around the circumference of the sphere, like you know,
if you were to be able to divide it directly
in half right around that line. Uh, those twelve points
are where you can secure it to various anchor points,

(12:27):
usually trees. So six of those anchor points would give
it the suspension, as in it would actually hold it
above the ground. The other six are what allow it
to have some lateral stability, meaning it's not gonna flippy
floppy left or right, because obviously when you get in
and out, you don't want it to suddenly tilt and
then everything comes tumbling. Yeah. Yeah, So you want to
connect it both to the trees and to the ground below. Well,

(12:48):
it's mostly to the trees, but it's it's to the
trees in different points so that you just kind of
it's kind of like a spider web in that sense.
And you can also get in fact a net that
goes under it in case you are a little worried
about your secure abilities. Um, and you don't actually have
to have it suspended. I have seen other versions where
you could have a little tripod legs that would hold
it above the ground because you can't set it directly

(13:10):
on the ground or would start rolling and that could
be unfortant. Like if you are a restless sleeper and
you toss in turn a lot, you could end up
in another state. Yeah, that's a hamster ball situation. I mean,
it has it has its charms, but probably not great
for camping. But now this thing is really cool. If
you guys haven't seen it, look up cocoon tree tent.

(13:31):
It looks really neat. Uh, it's not light. It weighs
sixty ms, which is about a hundred thirty two pounds,
so it's really heavy. But it's also supposed to be
really sturdy. It's supposedly can support up to two tons.
The frame can not the fabric obviously, that would be different.
So the frame itself is built so and it's made
out of aluminum, so it's you know, super sturdy stuff.

(13:52):
And this is really meant more to put into a location,
secure it in a location, and then kind of leave
it there for a while, like you can use it
over and over and over again over the course of
a few months before you take it down. All Right,
you probably wouldn't want to go to the trouble of
setting something this sturdy up for a weekend trip. Yeah,
it would be. It would be carrying a lot of weight,

(14:12):
and I'm sure it takes a long time to set up.
I mean, if you're if you're securing this well above
the ground so that you have kind of like this
canopy view around you, then that means you have to
climb that far up each anchor point before you could
even start using this. And so I imagine that this
is this is more of a long term kind of project.
The tent is three meters in diameter, which is just

(14:34):
under ten feet, and you can also, according to the website,
outfit it with cooling or heating elements for climate control
for extreme camping conditions. Uh, as you might imagine. This
is the sort of tent that people who have quite
a bit of money to spare would go into. This
is not something that's going to be cheap. But I

(14:55):
love the design of it just because it was really
kind of unusual and that's why it appealed to me.
And we'll try and share a link to the website
when this podcast goes live, so you guys can take
a look if you haven't looked at it already. But yeah,
pretty deep stuff. Then if you wanted to spend slightly
less money, have a little have a different way of
having kind of like a hammock style tent, there's another

(15:17):
company called Tent Styles Tree Tents, Tent Style that's cute anyway, there,
I don't think you're allowed to disapprove of other people's putts.
That's I just said. I didn't make it. Um, Yeah, no,
it's it's a slightly less complicated these they look to
me like they would anchor at three points, so the

(15:39):
base looks more or less sort of triangular. And and
it makes sense because they actually the company says that
if you buy one of their tents, they'll go up
and plant three trees. Yeah, so that would that would
to me, that would correspond to the three anchor points
that you would need. But same sort of thing. Use
use chords to anchor each point of the tent to
a different tree. You keep it nice and tents and

(16:01):
then you can get in and out the tent either
through a front door or there's actually a hatch like
panel that you can open up from the bottom, which
obviously you want to secure as much as possible before
we go to sleep. You might wake up during a
twelve foot fall to the ground or something. But um,
this one is particularly good for people who want to

(16:22):
do star gazing or are able to secure it at
some really picturesque spot because instead of it being like
a canvas or or opaque uh canopy, it's mesh so
it's meant for you to have a view of the outdoors.
Also means that don't be too picky about privacy issues well,
and and also probably that you want to go during

(16:44):
good weather. Yes, yeah, if it's raining, you're probably gonna
have a pretty miserable time of it. But it was
another one of those that I thought was pretty cool.
There are a couple of different models that they have available,
and they are less expensive than the Cocoon Tree um
camping tents and also easier to set up. You know,
I'm sure it takes two or three people to put
one of these up efficiently, but it's not as it's

(17:07):
not as heavy or bulky as the Cocoon Tree version.
But what if you what if you'd like me, Lauren,
What if you are someone who cannot survive for more
than you know, five or six hours at most on
a good day without checking one of my numerous mobile devices. Well,
this is getting much easier to do out in the wilds.

(17:27):
And one of those reasons is solar powered device chargers,
Like including your tent. Your tent can be solar powered. Yeah,
you can get a solar powered tent now. Grant the
tent itself is not necessarily doing anything with that solar power.
It may just have a battery pack that allows you
to charge your devices from the energy that's collected through
the solar panels. So yeah, there are tents out there

(17:49):
right now that you can go out and buy. They
have solar panels incorporated into them in some way. There
are others that are supposed to be hitting the market
literally any day now, Like there was one that I
saw that had to originally been scheduled to to come
out on the market spring two thousand and fourteen, but
as far as I can tell, it hasn't actually come
out yet. Then there are some some concepts they're not
actually products that you can buy. The Orange Solar tent

(18:12):
is the one that I saw pop up over and over.
It was a really cool looking design. I had very
swoopy kind of lines to it, so it looked like,
you know, this is the tune of the future. See
it has swoopy lines. And also the canopy it had
over the top of the tent, like it had a
fabric canopy, and then on top of that it had
these these panels that had the solar panels on these

(18:33):
like it made it look like it was some sort
of a fit or or arthur pod of some sort
of like a carapace, a shell in other words. So
it was really neat looking and it had you know,
lights that would light up at night and this, but
this was all artists rendering and it was essentially saying
this is what you could do if you were to

(18:54):
build this thing. And they even had like a panel
that was on the side of the tent the inside
of the town it where you could put a your
mobile devices to charge, and it even had a little
like touch screen interface of some sort, so really kind
of cool. But again it was all a concept per
type currently non existent. Yeah, the stuff that does exist

(19:15):
a lot more modest, right, We're talking about solar panels
that can, after several hours of being exposed to a
good amount of sunlight, can charge a simple battery pack
which then could charge your electronics. So if you're going
to be setting up your tent in a sunny area,
this is going to be pretty useful. It's provide you
the maximum amount of surface coverage probably of any of

(19:36):
your other gear to provide solar Yeah, because you're not
like things like if you have and we'll talk about
in some other you know, gadgets that fall into the
same kind of category. But if you have other gear
that's maybe portable that has solar panels incorporated into them.
You may or may not be leaving it out all
the time, right you may you may need it for
something else, whereas your tent kind of stays there once

(19:58):
you pitch it. Sure, so that makes it, you know, attractive. However,
it also means that you have to have that tent
in that sunny area. If you have it in a
shady area, you're not going to get as much sunlight. Um.
And if you do have it in a sunny area,
if you live someplace like we do, you have to
be prepared for that tent to be rather toasty when
you're ready to climb in at the end of the day,

(20:20):
which could be perfectly nice in colder colder, Yeah, I
think you could. One thing I would I mean, if
I were designing one of these solar powered tents, one
of the things I would design is a very simple
low power fan that could actually vent hot air out
of the tent while the solar panel is active, so

(20:41):
some of the electricity can go to charging a battery pack,
some of it goes to running this little fan. It's
kind of like I'm sure you've seen them for cars,
where you can have these little solar panel things where
it runs the little fan to blow. In fact, I
think we talked about a car that does this, so
possibly on forward thinking, it might be we do so
many shows now, but yes, we have definitely talked about

(21:03):
a car that has a similar concept to At any rate,
let's talk a little bit more about other devices that
campers use in order to regulate body temperature, okay, or
I mean, you know, temperature in general, but mostly body temperature.
So I'm assuming we're moving away from tents and into
the realm of the sleeping bag. Yes, yeah, So I

(21:25):
have um mixed emotions when I think back to sleeping
bags because I just think of the ones that I
had as a kid that were probably a little uh
they were probably rated for a temperature lower than what
Georgia has ever seen in the history of ever um.
Or maybe it's just because I would always go camping
and like the spring and summer. Oh, the sleeping bags

(21:46):
are rated for specific temperatures, and they use they use
a standard. An interesting center because here's the thing. Temperature
when it comes to what's comfortable for a person is
subjective by definition, right, sure, So what's comfortable for Lauren
may not be comfortable for me, and vice versa. So
what kind of standard do they use. It's called the

(22:08):
European norm apparently, and essentially what this is based off
of is kind of a surveyed average of temperatures and saying,
all right, technically, if you want to get super general
and keep in minds in generalization, women get colder faster
than men do, like at a at a higher temperature.

(22:31):
So you can have the same temperature and a man
and woman are both in that temperature, and the woman
is going to feel colder, particularly at night when it's
time to go to sleep, uh, than a man would.
So the way they do their standards is they get
a sleeping bag and they essentially tested by saying, all right,
what temperature, what's the lowest temperature we can get at

(22:52):
where a woman is going to feel comfortable sleeping in
that temperature And they end up calling that the comfort level.
So then they say, all right, well, what's the lowest
temperature we can we can say that where a man
will be comfortable inside this uh sleeping bag, and that
one is called the lower limit rating. So you usually

(23:14):
see both ratings on a sleeping bag. So one, the
comfort level is all right, well, if it's you know,
thirty five degrees is the comfort level. Then it could
get down to thirty five degrees and your average woman
is going to be fine sleeping in the sleeping bag.
At the lower level is nineteen degrees, then it says
your average man is still going to be fine all
the way down to nineteen a woman maybe feeling very
uncomfortable or at least a little chilly between those two temperatures.

(23:38):
But then you also have was called the extreme rating,
and the extreme rating that's the temperature below which you
are in serious danger, even if you are inside the
sleeping bag. Really, it's based upon the lowest temperature a
woman can endure while inside that sleeping bag before saying
I'm getting a hotel room call me when this trip

(23:59):
is over, or getting hypothermia. That would also be another case. Yes,
So yeah, it's interesting that even though it's a quote
unquote standard, it's still obviously based on subjectivity. There's not
like this hard and fast rule of saying, at this
temperature you're going to be absolutely comfortable. It's more like
it's more what they call guidelines if you want to

(24:21):
be all Barbosa about it, but uh, that is, if
you ever see that a sleeping bag is rated for
one of these temperatures. That's usually what it means. Most
of them are going by this standard. Some of them
may be going by their own kind of you know,
testing facility and surveys, but it's still basically the same
thing saying, how what temperature do people still feel comfortable

(24:42):
while in this sleeping bag. Um. And so you also
find sleeping bags that are meant for different types of
of environments. Like there's some that are the higher temperature ones,
which is usually thirty five degrees fahrenheit or or higher,
and that would be for things like people who want
to go camping in the spring and summer months. Then

(25:03):
you might have the multi purpose sleeping bags that are
good for between maybe like ten degrees fahrenheit thirty five
degrees fahrenheit, and that's meant to be you know, a
little more versatile so that you can camp throughout the year.
And then you have the cold weather sleeping bags, which
are usually something between like minus ten degrees fahrenheit to
ten degrees fahrenheit UM, and that's meant for it. You know,

(25:26):
if you happen to be camping like in Minnesota in
the winter. You know, if you're crazy. Um, some of
you may be camping in Minnesota in the winter. I
don't really think you're crazy. I would be crazy to
do it. But anyway, those are your basic rules more
or less, so if you're ever looking for them, that's
what you want to look for. And all of these
temperature ratings have to do with the well again, with

(25:49):
material signs, with what the shell is made of and
what the filling is made of. Traditionally it was down
of various kinds, duck and goose duck and goose feathers,
and these days a lot of it is plastics. Yeah,
you get a lot of synthetics, and you get a
lot of um water resistant or water repellent down, so

(26:10):
regular down not necessarily water repellent. And that's well. It's
it's really warm, but it absorbs water like holy woe,
which means that if you're in a cold situation and
your down sleeping bag gets wet, it can become very
dangerous very quickly, because it might actually be sapping heat
away from your body, like you would be worse off

(26:33):
in it than you would be outside of it. And
some synthetics are the same way. That's why the water
repellent down material has been developed and UH and all
of these are called PHIL in the industry. So if
you ever see a PHIL power rating on a sleeping bag,
what that's telling you is essentially how effective the installation

(26:55):
is at capturing heat. And the way they determine this,
it's kind of cool. It's called loft, I believe. But
the way they determine is they say how much space
would one ounce of this installation take? So if we
if we get an ounce of it and we just
let it because it's normal volume, how many cubic inches

(27:15):
does that take up? And the more space it takes up,
the more efficient UH insulator it is. And the lighter
your your sleeping bag is gonna because it doesn't need
as much material to fill it out, all right, So
the higher the number is, the better off you are.
So you might see film power numbers and right well,

(27:36):
and the lighter and the lighter the sleeping bag will be.
So a film power number of six hundred is gonna
be uh that that sleeping bag is gonna be heavier
than one that's rated at seven, which is gonna be
heavier than seven fifty or a hander. Assuming that you're
talking about two sleeping bags that have the same type
of film material in them, because obviously different materials are
going to weigh different amounts. But yeah, you want to

(27:59):
have the higher umber for it to be lighter. And
you know, these can be rated for different temperature ranges
as well. But that's your general rule about sleeping bags.
So most of the time when you're hearing about high
tech sleeping bags, they're usually talking about whatever the insulation
material is and whatever the exterior material is, and whether
or not it's water repellent. How good it is that

(28:19):
retaining heat. I mean, the whole secret here is that
you want to separate the heat from the inside of
the sleeping bag from the outer environment. You don't want
that heat to be leached away. So that's what most
of the designs of sleeping bags are all meant to prevent.
It's really basic tech, but it's also really important tech. Alright,

(28:40):
what about backpacks, you know, those things that you carry
all your other stuff in. You want them to be
a lightweight. I guess, um it could be cool if
they maybe had some solar panels on them, because those
if you're hiking in the sun. Yeah. I actually used
to have a backpack the head of solar panel in it.

(29:01):
It was not a camping backpack. The one downside to
having a solar panel in your backpack is that it
does take up space because that solar panel, I mean,
obviously it needs to be connected to something or else
that electricity is not doing any good. Usually that's a
battery pack, which is one bulky and too heavy her.
So there is a bit of a you know, that's

(29:21):
something you gotta you gotta weigh, literally, you need to
weigh the importance of that element and whether or not,
you know, it's really key for you to bring it along. Sure,
but you know, backpacks are yet again one of those
material science related things that improvements in the fabric and
the structure that these guys has let them get lighter

(29:43):
over the years. Right again, really important when you're hiking.
So now we're going to talk about the stuff what
you put into said backpack, Like we wanted to take
a look at some of the incredible gadgets that you
could carry with you. And because i mean, you know
old simately, when you get down to it, if you're
really roughing it, you essentially need a place to sleep,

(30:05):
a thing to sleep in to keep you warm at night,
and maybe some stuff to help you make a fire. Uh.
For our friends who want to know how to make
a fire, we have a treat for you, but that's
going to be another podcast. So one of the things
we wanted to look at was or what are some
of the cool gadgets that are available today that can
make camping a lot more comfortable? Yeah, maybe more convenient

(30:28):
for those of us who just can't let go of
our electronic society. And I am mainly talking about myself here,
And the first one I wanted to talk about is
one that is so cool that I'm tempted to buy one,
even though I don't think I will ever willingly go
camping ever again. And it's a camp stove, specifically the
one I was looking at, and there are different ones,

(30:49):
but the one that gets repeated multiple times throughout the
internet is the bio light uh camp stove, And the
bio light camp stove is cool. It think of it
as a camp stove where you can you twigs in it,
and then you light a fire and you use those
twigs to help heat the stove and then you can
cook things on top of the stove. You can get
one that has a grill surface and actually grill on

(31:11):
the very top of it, So it sounds like a
pretty basic portable grill, except that it also happens to
have a fan powered generator attached to it, so that
the heat from the fire will turn the fan, which
will then generate electricity, allowing you to charge electronics on
your through your stove. I mean not on your stove.
You wouldn't melt that. That's a terrible idea that you

(31:34):
can connect a USB cord to this stoves power outlet
and actually charge your your electronics while you cook. And
it takes about four and a half minutes from what
I read to boil a pot of water, and you
get about maybe twenty minutes at charging in a typical

(31:55):
cooking scenario. So it's not like you get it's not
like you're gonna reach out your entire you know, phone,
but it will extend your battery going a little longer.
And you know, if you use if you're supplementing that
with other means to keep your stuff, uh supplied with
a charge and every little bit helps, right. Um. I
wanted to talk for a minute about handwarmers, which are
really more chemical tech than straight gadgetry tech, but I

(32:19):
think that they're really cool. So you've got both single
use and rechargeable or multi use handwarmers. And the single
use ones are just these little pouches that contain iron, powder, water,
and salt, which together will react with oxygen when the
packet is exposed to air. It's an exothermic reaction, which
means that it creates heat and kind of as a

(32:40):
byproduct in this case rust iron oxide, right. And they
usually also contain an absorbent or absorbent material to to
hold onto the water until it's needed for the reaction,
and also activated carbon to help disperse the heat. So
those are the single use ones once you know, once
they they warm up pretty well, but once they're done,

(33:01):
they're done forever. You gotta toss it. You can't recharge
that in any way. You cannot know. The multiese ones
though they're really cool. Wait wait, if you have a handwarmer,
how can it be cool, Lauren? That sounds like it
doesn't work at all. So they're these sealed pouches of
supersaturated saline solutions, usually sodium acetate and water is the

(33:23):
solution that they're made of. And this stuff is really stable.
It's really happy to exist as a liquid way below
it's freezing point and or its crystallization point, because it
does that thing um that crystallization or freezing point happens
to be a hundred and thirty degrees fahrenheit or fifty
four degrees celsius, which you know is way above room temperature. Yes,

(33:44):
that's that's quite warm. That's significantly about it. Right, So
it's happy hanging out as a liquid at room temperature.
But this pouch that contains it also contains this little
disclike gidget that secrets away a couple of crystals of
sodium acetate from the rest of the liquid. And when
you manipulate that disk by kind of popping it, the
crystals hit the liquid and seed this really quick crystallization process. Now,

(34:08):
since a solid a k a. The crystal, the frozen
version of this stuff is a lower energy state than
a liquid, that energy of it going from a liquid
to a solid very quickly has to go somewhere and
it's released as heat. Right Because as we know, you
can't create or destroy energy, but you can convert it
from one form to another, right, and then you can

(34:29):
recharge this kind of pack by boiling it in water
for for maybe ten minutes. You have to melt all
of the crystals and a couple of seed crystals will
stay in the disk, and then you can so you
can just keep using it until there are no more
seed crystals left in that disk, and then you might
have to get a new one. You can you can
use it until you basically break the bag. Got it.

(34:49):
You will never run out of seed crystals because the
way that the disk is formed, it will it will
just kind of hide a couple when the rest of
it gets That's really cool. Wow, I never now I've
fallen into the whole handwarmer cool problem. So, speaking of water,
water filters obviously very important if you're going to be
comping someplace you want to you want to clean source
of water, both for drinking and for cooking with, and

(35:12):
so water filters and purifiers, I mean, there are a
ton of them out there. Some of them are very simple.
They might use you know, essentially carbon to like a
charcoal type filter for you to filter water through. Yeah,
you might just fill it up and it takes like
a minute for it to filter through and then you
get filtered water on the other end. Some of them
are more active than that. They don't just have a

(35:33):
passive system that water flows through. For instance, I've seen
a few that end up using a UV purification lights,
so ultra violet light, and that's because ultra violet radiation
can kill microbial, nasty stuff. And the one I saw specifically,
you would turn the lamp on and then agitate the water,
meaning you shake it for about a minute, and then

(35:55):
that ultra violet light should pretty much kill off anything
that happens to being water. You first would filter the
water before you would pour it into the bottle, because
you know, you want to get rid of anything macro first,
like you know, maybe I don't want to put a
fish in here or something crawdaddy until I grew up
in the South, uh. And then you use the UV

(36:15):
to get rid of all the little microbial stuff that's
pretty neat. And in fact, that's one of those that
I looked at a lot of websites that had lists
of gadgets that you would want to take with you
on camping trips, like the high tech stuff, and that
was one of the ones that popped up over and
over again, presumably uh, written by people who actually go
camping as opposed to myself. Well, clean water is really good.

(36:38):
You know. Another kind of low tech way of doing
it is you can always boil your water for a
good long time. Might not necessarily taste great, but at
least you've killed off anything that would potentially do you harm.
So but yeah, that's always also a very important thing
to keep in mind. If you don't have one of
these filter things handy, you still want to take precaution obviously,

(36:59):
but or just dunking your head in the nearest water
source and drinking deep uh or deeply, I should say.
Then we have solar powered charging stations in general. There
are a lot that are, you know, handheld. There's some
that you end up fanning out, and I've seen one
that looks like a like a large cell phone and
then it ends up having this sort of three panel

(37:20):
pedal thing where you just fold the little bits out yep,
and then you just put it on some some surface
that is exposed to sunlight and you let it charge.
Most of them have battery packs, so you're not charging
directly from solar panel to your device you or or
you could, but you also can charge the onboard battery
to save it for later. There's also the good old

(37:41):
classic hand crank yep, man, I've got one of those, actually, yep,
I have one of those. It's kind of an emergency
radio slash genera. And most of those you give it
a good cranking for like thirty seconds to a minute,
and then you may know it's pretty vigorous. I mean,
you have to do a lot of kinetic work. It's
it's converting kinetic energy into electrical energy, and you've gotta

(38:04):
do a lot of work in order for you to
get even a little bit of electricity out. But it
might be enough electricity for you to do something like
syndequate text message, which could be the difference between life
and death depending upon your situation. So there are a
lot of different companies that make these. Um Swiss Army
Uh company that is famous for the Swiss Army knives
also makes stuff like this or partners with people who

(38:26):
do make stuff like this. I used to see them
at ces every year. I'd see these different cool emergency
kits that include a hand crank charging station along with
usually the hand crank charging station is also something like
a lantern and a radio, and I don't know a
tour guide. I mean they got kind of crazy eventually,
but and spraining eat stuff. Then I also saw fuel cells. Wait,

(38:50):
camping fuel cells. Yeah, actual fuel cells. There's one called
the power Trik and it's it's light enough for you
to carry like you can either clip it on the
outside of your back pack or actually carry it inside
your backpack. And it uses little hydrogen pucks. Now a
fuel cell. Brian herd Is talk about them before, but
in case you're not familiar, fuel cells use hydrogen and oxygen,

(39:12):
and uh, you know those those two elements like to
combine into this stuff we call water. But let's say
you've got a chamber filled with hydrogen and oxygen. You've
separated them with a membrane, and the membrane only allows
hydrogen through. If it's an ion, meaning that it's shed
its electron, then you can channel those electrons to do
work before they recombine on the other side, where the

(39:34):
hydrogen ions, the oxygen and then the electrons coming in
all conform water. So that's your basic fuel cell and
power check is that's basically what it is. The little
hydrogen pucks contain hydrogen gas, which combined with oxygen, you
get some electricity and a little bit of water vapor
as the byproducts, and you can charge your electronics using that.

(39:55):
So yeah, if you want to be super high tech,
carry a fuel cell with you. Um and fortunately the
hydrogen oxygen fuel cells can operate at temperatures that are
comfortable to us. A lot of fuel cells, when you
get into the industrial level, have to be heated up
to temperatures that are you know, not conducive to living
for humans. So fortunately this is not one of those.

(40:16):
It would not be a very good camping accessory otherwise. No,
on the slightly less ridiculously high tech level, keeping showers,
I mean, because anyone can construct a shower in a
camp by putting some water in a bag and hanging
it from a tree and kind of letting it dripped
down on you poke a hole into the bag of
some sort. Yeah, but if you want to go a

(40:38):
little bit more high tech than that. The other a
couple of different options. I saw one where it was
one that could fold up into a very small case
so that you can actually you know, carry it in
one hand. But then of course when you fill it up,
you'd hang it from like a tree or something. Let's
sit in the sun. The sun heats up the water
and then you've got a nice warm shower so you're
not you're not freezing while you take your shower. But

(40:58):
there's another some other ones I saw where it actually
includes inflatable bladders that are inside the bag that holds
all the water. So you fill it up with water,
you leave it on the sun, you let it get
nice and warm, and then you go and use like
a foot pump or a hand pump to pump up
the bladders, the inflatable bladders that are inside this this
back to you push the water out at you slightly more. Yeah,

(41:22):
it's like a pressure rise shower. Yeah, so it ends
up being a little bit more of a shower experience
and not just using gravity to pull the water down.
Because I mean, these days are behind me, but back
when I used to wash my hair, obviously, um, you
wouldn't be able to rinse out something like soap or
shampoo out of your hair very effectively if you don't

(41:43):
have any water pressure. Anyone who's had to deal with
that and knows what I'm talking about, So that was
the way of getting around that. It's actually a pretty
low tech but creative solution to that problem. Um. Also
very important is to have some sort of GPS receiver,
whether that is your phone or its own receiver. There
are a lot of receivers out there that are very

(42:05):
good at just barely sipping power so you can carry
it on a longer trip, and really simple ones that
you know aren't you're not doing a whole lot with,
but can at least just give a ping and tell
someone where you are right and keep you informed of
where you are as well, so that way you know,
you might notice if you're heading toward an area whether
there isn't an easy source of water or something along

(42:26):
those lines. Very important. Two way radio is also really important. Usually, uh,
you know, I always recommend if people are going to
go camping or hiking to do it with a friend,
you know, and also to let people know when you're
going to do it. Yeah, this is I did an
episode on geo Cashing years ago and that was one
of those basic rules is let people know when you're
going to go out and do something. Certainly someone knows

(42:48):
where you are, and there are ways to stay safe
when you're solo camping. Yeah, but it involves a lot
of planning and a lot of know how and a
lot of telling people where you're going to write, just
in case that, you know, something unexpected happens, like maybe
some bad weather makes it very difficult for you to
make your way back to your vehicle or something on
those lines. Anyway to a radio is very useful. There

(43:09):
are a lot of really advanced ones out there on
the market now. I mean back in the day, uh
you would have limited range and limited battery life, but
now we've got some that are very battery conscious and
can operate up to thirty five miles apart if you
have a good clear line of sight. Obviously, if you
are in a deeply wooded area and you're both in
separate valleys, that's probably not going to be as as effective,

(43:32):
but thirty five miles is pretty significant, and a lot
of them will also allow you to tune into other
radio stations, not just a communications channel, but perhaps something
like a weather report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration or NOAH. A lot of those, in fact, the
hand cranks that I was talking about earlier, the ones

(43:53):
that are often radios and lanterns, a lot of those
also have that kind of capability, so that you can
check FM a M radio and and no, uh, very
important when you're out there by yourself or even you know,
with a couple of other people, just to let you
know if a storm's coming. Digital binoculars. These are awesome.
I think, of course, we're all familiar with what they

(44:13):
can do from the documentary Star Wars and New Hope.
When sand people are coming toward you and they're walking
in a single file, you know, to hide their numbers,
it's important for you to be able to spot them
from a long way away. Also, these things often have
video recorders in them, so you can look at you know,
interesting wildlife and actually record what you're seeing. And some

(44:34):
of them have um multiple cameras, like two cameras like
you're you know, essentially it's mimicking your eyes, which means
that the images they record are three dimensional. You can
play it back in three D. Then you've got survival tools.
Multi tools very useful because they pack a lot of
utility into a very compact form factor, relatively compact. So

(44:55):
I've seen some that get a little bit on the
ridiculous side. Okay, yeah, there's some where, like you know,
I think I've seen like the the Ultimate Swiss Army Knife,
which has every singlement, it's every single attachment that Swiss
Army Knife Company has ever done, and it just looks ridiculous.
You know, you need like two people to hold it up.
It's like a baseball bat essentially. Yeah. But but your

(45:16):
typical multi tool has things that would become really handy
when you're out there in the woods, like perhaps a
fire starter and you know, something like a flint and steel,
which we'll talk about in our our Pyro episode. Yes,
we we have not talked in this entire episode about
fire starting technology because that that has its whole own episode.
We're doing that immediately after we record this one. We're

(45:37):
kind of looking forward to it. I've seen some that
have things like a way of alerting people if you're
in distress, usually a whistle. One of the ones I
looked at was able to produce a tone of a
hundred decibels, which is pretty loud. Yeah, when you get
above eighty five decibels, that's about the that's the level
of safe, So one hundred it's men to be that loud,

(46:00):
so that if you are truly in distress, you are
alerting people that this is a problem. And they need
to try and find you, and obviously that is gonna
be much louder than you crying out for help, right, absolutely,
although although I do have to say so you could
say that that particular gadget has bells and whistles. Nice, yes,
you could say that, or at least as the whistle part.

(46:21):
So yeah. I've also seen them that have compass knives.
I wrote multiple knives because I know how to spell. Uh.
Signal mirror that's a very low tech but very useful
led lights. They might have wire or cord or other
kind of things that allow you to secure stuff to
other stuff, which comes in handy and survival scenarios, and uh,

(46:46):
you know other things too, you like some of them
have things like fish hooks that kind of stuff. It
all depends upon the individual tool, but uh, and I've
seen these worked into things like um, hiking poles, where
use a pole to to help you maintain your balance
and keep you going even when you're hiking in rough terrain.
Sometimes those have survival tools built into the handles, which

(47:06):
are pretty cool too. Any the person who loves spy
gadgets is going to love that kind of camping tech
because it's all about conserving that space and weight, which
often means that it looks like it must be made
for spies because everything's folded away in these little secret compartments.
That's always neat. But there's something low tech. Yeah, sometimes

(47:27):
really low tech is best. There are those survival bracelets
you guys might have seen, which are woven of incredibly
strong uh not yarn tech, yarn wire wire something to
that sent chord probably yes, thank you, uh that that
you can use in in any number of survival situations.

(47:49):
And also, hey, analog maps, maps that are on paper
or perhaps some kind of plastic. The great thing about these,
you guys, is that they don't run out of bad right,
nor nor do they have some sort of system crash
where you have to You never get a blue screen.
You don't have to reset your map. Yeah. Yeah, things
may have changed since the map was made, but probably

(48:10):
not so significantly that you can't you know, can't make
use of the map. If you're looking at a map
of like this is Pangaea, probably not going to be helpful. Yeah,
be careful which map you pack. Also, I mean, if
you pack a map of end Or its probably not
gonna not gonna be helpful, but I just wanted to
put that out there. You know, sometimes you might want
to bring one of those. In fact, in general, I

(48:32):
would always recommend bringing one of those along, definitely. Yeah.
So there's there's some cool stuff out there that you
can you can take with you if you're a camping
enthusiast and you want to be able to maybe trick
out your your camp site a little bit more with
some high tech stuff, maybe something like that that that
camp stove I talked about earlier. Uh, those things can

(48:53):
be you know, they can make your experience a little
more comfortable. Uh for people who say, well, that's not
real camping, obviously you can go as as as rough
and ready as you want someone like me. Um, not
gonna happen, but if it did happen, it's gonna be
as comfortable. I mean, I'm gonna have an inflatable pad
to sleep on. I'm gonna have probably an air conditioned tent.

(49:18):
I mean, it's just gonna happen to be I think
that if it's getting you out there, then it's kind
of beautiful. Yeah. So, uh, you know, until Google Earth
has every square inch of the planet completely maps, so
that way I can just virtually go there. Obviously, once
in a while I'm going to have to drag my
carcass out into nature and see what's going on. Seriously though,

(49:38):
I mean I joked about this on Facebook while I
was doing the research, but it really is true. As
I was looking at these gadgets, it made me want
to get a few of them and actually go camping.
The only thing that keeps me from doing that is
knowing that once I'm in that situation, I'll be questioning
my sanity. But but it makes me want to do it.
And again, it's because the idea of amping is so

(50:01):
it's nice, it sounds peaceful, yeah, and then you get
to you get to appreciate landscapes that we who live
in cities don't see that frequently. The opportunity to observe wildlife,
that feeling of of being able to just get away
from everything then obviously has its place. And I would
be lying if I said that it was not at

(50:22):
all attractive to me. Certainly it is. I just uh,
I know my limitations, is all, all right. So, if
any of you guys out there are really into camping,
and maybe there's some kind of tech that you were
really hoping we would cover like something that you think
is either indispensable or just awesome. Let us know, because again,
we're not the camping experts right. Also, if any of

(50:43):
these have piqued your interest and you would like us
to go and do perhaps a full episode on them,
let us know that too. Yeah, and guess what. You
can use our email address tech stuff at how stuff
works dot com. It should be working now. Uh. And
also make sure you drop us a line on Facebook,
Twitter or Tumbler. All three of those have the handled

(51:03):
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