Orange's Solar Concept Tent has lots of revolutionary, imaginary features
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Jun 26th 2009 3:33AM
posted Jun 26th 2009 3:33AM
If the promise of Birkenstock-powered phone chargin' wasn't enough to get your ass to Glasto this year (never mind catching Björn Again perform ABBA's greatest hits on the Pyramid Stage), how about an up-close-and-personal peek at Orange's Solar Concept Tent? Designed with help from an American firm called Kaleidoscope, this guy is a refresh of the original Orange Solar Tent you might remember from 2003. Featuring photovoltaic fabric panels up top, an LCD display for keeping an eye on battery levels, a wireless charging pouch (like Palm's Touchstone but, you know, a pouch), a heating element embedded in the tent's groundsheet, the ability to light up if you should get lost while freaky dancing, and WiFi connectivity, this bad boy could conceivably get even the most nature-phobic Engadget editor out into the wild. That is, if it wasn't just a concept.
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Tent! Bez! Maracas!
Looks like a hit to me.
hey... what's my wife's phone doing there... ?
Cool design. But the risk of it being stolen when you are not sleeping inside is kinda high :)
not with those small action figures around it, heck it would even scare the bears
stupid idea it would get stolen in seconds
If you are afraid of getting it stolen, you are doing camping wrong. One of the points of camping, is getting into the nature, away from other people - which would render the risk of it getting stolen slim to none
away from people AND TECHNOLOGY.
you could just get a way from people by closing your door and having a watch dog at the door
very true. when too much technology gets mixed in with the great outdoors it starts to lose a little of that magic
whats the point in having this if you can't lord it over people..
still wanna see it short out the first time it pisses down... heating elements through ground sheet... for sho!
Well, I agree Wi-Fi is completely stupid. But thumbs up to solar recharge. Even the most adventurous of the campers today needs a way to perform emergency communications. I would rather say that the most adventurous need it even more, and would not travel without a GPS, for instance. That's my case for instance :-)
The chance that my small Powermonkey Explorer solar panel gets stolen are much more than the entire tent. (and in fact that has happened already!). And let alone the fact that the small solar charger takes an age just to recharge a small GPS and an old Nokia with no UMTS...
Cheers
How would it look like when it is compact?
give me a ring when it's available
if you can see a house in the background...it's not the wild.
This is about as wild as Britain gets...
I'm just thinking... camping... woods.. trees... no sunlight... so its just an expensive tent at that point...
UM. I could probably buy a kick-ass winnabego with what this thing prolly would cost.
This is the best imaginary tent I have ever laid eyes on!!!
Nuh-uh - The one I made between my two couches with sheets and pillows when I was 5 was way better. It even had laser beams, freaking laser beams - to keep the aliens away of course.
Pew pew.
Right...who's gonna carry all that load in their backpack? Looks more like something a homeless person with electronic gadgets might like.
Mums the word on how that will fit bundled up on your backpack >.< I Mean I dont think those solar panels will fair nicely on that 20 mile trek :)
Muchos Maracas!
There are a few places/trips where I could see this coming in handy. If you are bicycling around Australia, climbing a mountain in Alaska(Leave this at base camp, but while getting accustomed to the elevation it would be nice), or are working on building a hut on a remote tropical island and need a place to stay that can provide power for phones, laptops, and cameras.
Um... is that Ed Young dancing around the thing. And.. why?
So. You pack up your solar powered tent in its bag and trek off to your destination. As evening falls, you unpack it and set it up. There's a bit of a chill in the air. Where's my electric heated groundsheet! Oh, right. The sun is down, there's no battery storage (too heavy for camping gear) and anyway, it was packed in its bag all day.
Crap from beginning to end.
I'm just thinking... camping... woods.. trees... no sunlight... so its just an expensive tent at that point...
If i was out in the woods and saw that thing all lighted up..the first thing that would pop in my head would be "Aliens!!!" But no so after reading this on Engadget.
That tent looks about 2 man size, I have a tent about that size that folds up small enough to put at the bottom of a medium sized backpack.
Why do I get the feeling I'll need to strap it to roofrails on a car and spend about 5 hours setting it up?
The warming floor would be a big plus in tent camping.
or a fire hazard
I'm having trouble gauging the man-to-tent size scale.
Having owned an RV and having added a solar system to it, I can say that this is marketing gimmicky, nothing more. You won't see anything like this in RL for many, many years to come. Solar panel technology still hasn't evolved that much from initial designs triggered by the public's first round of eco-consciousness after the oil embargo of the 1970s (it also produced mind-staggering inflation just like the upward drive of oil by OPEC and the commodities markets this decade). And if you want to save that solar energy to use a night or on cloudy days, well, you need to store in something--batteries. Don't get me started on how bad battery technology is--solar panels aren't efficient but battery technology is the real Achilles heel in this technology. So, nice gimmicky story; this prototype is very, very unrealistic.
Yeah, but how much does it weigh? You can always tell the manufacturers that don't actually go hiking with their products, because there is zero mention of weight. It is either so heavy that no one in their right mind would buy it to put it in their backpack, or they simply never thought of listing it because they've never been hiking. My guess is this thing is more than 7 pounds. I'll take my 24 oz tent any day, thanks.
Dear Purists,
Just about 100% of my camping is done within sight of my car ... that's the way its done in a public campground. It would be nice -real nice- to have the thing light up when I was stumbling over things in the dark trying to find my way back from the outhouse / restroom. It would also be a plus to have it generate its own electricity. As bobw has observed, it's foolish to wait until dark to put this tent up and, having put a few of the non-electric sort of tents up in the dark, I'd have to agree. So DON'T wait until dark to put the darned thing up! (after all, then it only acts like the regular sort of tent that you waited until dark to erect.)
Cool! Will there be a dimming feature? How about a thermostat? Dishwasher? Laundry? Personally, I'd prefer front-loading.
Haha, this takes the "camping" experience out of camping. Get a lantern and call it a night.