Tech in the Great Outdoors

back when I was much much younger. You see, I camped fairly frequently. As a teenager. I had joined the Society for Creative Anachronism or s c A, which is a nonprofit group that, at least in theory, is dedicated to learning about culture during the Middle Ages. In practice, it can often be more about dressing up in funny clothes, eating a lot of food, and hitting each other with

rattan sticks wrapped and duct tape. Anyway, I would often attend s c A events, which usually took place at campgrounds, and that meant camping. So I had all the camping basics. I had a tent, I had a sleeping bag, and um if I remember to pack it, I had a beat up egg crate, foam mattress topper to take a little bit of the staying of a sleeping on the ground. And that was pretty much the extent of my camping gear. Well. I loved the sea events, but it didn't care for

camping too much. It was too uncomfortable and inconvenient. Now, luckily, this was way back before we had stuff like smartphones or else. I really would have gone nuts if I had been cut off from that technology. My point is I lacked the right stuff to make camping right for me, and as I got older and less resilient, I lost interest in camping. I mean, these days, if I were to try and sleep on the ground without a prop per pad, I would probably be unable to move the

next day. But here's the thing. I didn't really lose interest in camping itself. I lost interest in putting myself through discomfort. And also since those days, which you know, to some of y'all might seem like to happen just after the Middle Ages, things have changed significantly. You know, We've got smartphones and other devices that more of us lean on year after year. In fact, I think some of y'all have probably experienced withdrawal symptoms whenever you're pulled

away from your smart devices. And that's not a comment on your character. Rather, it's a comment on how incredibly useful and yes, addictive, these devices have become. Well, something that I think is really cool is how various companies have responded to this by creating solutions that start to remove the things that would otherwise make people say, I

don't really want to go camping. There are so many examples of technologies that ideally encourage more people to go out and spend time in nature, and that time is valuable. I mean, it can help you shed stress and anxiety. It can encourage a sense of accomplishment. You know, everything from setting up your tent to lighting a fire or

a camp stove, or cooking a meal. All of these things can really make you feel better while you're exploring nature and walking around national parks that you otherwise would have just passed on by as you go from one city to or another. It's it's a significant thing. So today we're going to take a look at some of the technology designed to get you out from behind your computer, out of your house, and out into the real world.

And I thought I would start off with a hobby that I first became aware of more than a decade ago, and I'm talking about geo cashing. So geo cashing is an activity that grew out of the fact that in two thousand, the then US President Bill Clinton brought an end to a practice called selective availability. All right, but what the heck is that? Well before two thousand, GPS signals were considered to be crucial for national security in

the United States. As such, there was a requirement that any public GPS signals first had to be degraded before citizens would be able to access them. So, in other words, if you use a civilian GPS device, the information you got about your position was only sort of correct, and by sort of, I mean your positioning could be off by like a hundred meters, which is significant. You would not be able to use a GPS device for navigation.

If that were the case. You would get an instruction to make a right turn, and it would just turn out that that road that you're supposed to turn on is fifty behind you, or maybe it's a hundred meters ahead of you, or maybe you're not even on the road that the GPS device thinks you're on. So before two thousand GPS devices at least four civilians were interesting, but not practically useful in any way. It was a different matter for GPS devices that were used by say

the military, those signals were not degraded. And if you're wondering how did they degrade the signals, it all has to do with timing. You see, the signals that get to your device are coming from satellites, multiple satellites, and each of those satellites has a very precise clock on it.

When those satellites send out a signal that your device receives, it knows when that signal was sent by the satellite, and it can measure the amount of time that it took for the message to go from the satellite to the device, and by coordinating that with multiple satellites, you

can figure out where on the Earth you are. Well, the way selective availability worked, the satellites would fudge the time just a little bit, but just a tiny change in time was enough to make a significant change in the results on the GPS device, making you think you're somewhere where you're not, at least by a hundred meters or so. Well. Starting on May one, two thousand. All

that changed. President Clinton ended selective availability, and the constellation of GPS satellites would send accurate information instead of masking it, giving you a precise location when you used your device. Well, that capability encourage some GPS hobbyists to create a new activity. Now. The idea was you go to some location, frequently a remote location out in nature, somewhere, preferably one that you're

allowed to be in. Right, You're not supposed to trespass or anything like that on private property, So you would go someplace where you're allowed to be and you would take note of your precise location using a GPS device.

You would write down the coordinates. Then you would take a container of some sort, preferably weather proof and resistant to damage, and you would put inside that contain a log book for others to sign, some writing implements so that people can sign it, maybe a couple of cheap little do dads as a type of reward, and you would seal all of that away and hide the container. Then you would go back home, hop on a database frequented by other GPS hobbyists and you would share the coordinates.

The other hobbyists can then use those coordinates and use their own devices to try and navigate to that precise location, search for the container, open it up, signed the log book,

and take a do dad. Now, the practice quickly evolved so that the hobbyists who are doing the hunting would bring along their own little do dads, and they would swap them out so they might have a token of their own that kind of was their signature, and they would leave that token in the stash and take something else from it and then go on their way after signing the logbook, and the log books grew longer and longer.

This hobby is still going on today, and frequently. One of the driving fact ars of this hobby is that the hobbyists like to find locations that are special in some way, and it may be that getting to those special places requires some determination and skill. Often that will be marked down on a database to how much strenuous activity might be required for you to reach the destination. Maybe the destination will have a spectacular view, like it

might overlook a waterfall or something. The hobby became part treasure hunt, part tech geek activity, and part exploration. As more folks joined in, more would go out and about finding great locations where they could hide the next dash. There are urban versions of this too, where people will hide them in like neighborhoods and such, but more frequently you hear about ones that are in parks and things of that nature. Now, let's be clear, folks could have

done this kind of activity without the tech. In fact, there is a very similar hobby called letter boxing, in which instead of leaving coordinates, the people who hide a stash will share clues and riddles that will lead people to wear a stash is hidden. It is in many ways similar to geo cashing, but doesn't require the coordinates bit, which frankly can make it even more challenging depending on how well the clues are formed and how clever you are and figuring them out. But the tech in geo

cashing really facilitated things. It's served as a reason to get outside and go exploring. It provided inspiration, and that's what I love about these kinds of technologies. The problem they are solving is not about necessarily making camping or hiking or even exploring a snap. It's removing the barriers that we put up for ourselves that stop us from getting out there in the first place. I think. Another technology that has inspired folks to get out more are

quad copters or drones. Many years ago, according to a quick search online, I remember seeing a quad copter drone for the first time. It was at c e S or the Consumer Electronics Show, and it was a device that's no longer on the market, so there's no point

in even naming it. But the idea was you could have this squad copter and pair your phone to the drone, and you would run a special app and your phone would become a remote control for the device, and you could even use the camera that was on the drone to feed a video straight to your phone. Well, at the time, I had no way of knowing that what I was seeing was going to become an entirely new consumer product line. Today, there are dozens of companies that

are into it. You can find lots of different brands of drones. There are plenty of drones that can shoot images and video at four K resolution or even higher. A lot of them have tons of cool features like obstacle detection and avoidance that make them easy year to pilot, and they can get absolutely breathtaking shots that you would

otherwise need a helicopter to manage. I've seen phenomenal footage from drone pilots and looked at pristine locations that are just so gorgeous that I can't help but feel I need to go visit those myself. Now. I'm sure for some of the folks who are using drones, they were already outdoorsy, right. A lot of them might even have been into hobbies, or maybe they even had a career in nature photography. But there's a slice of drone users who before they got their quad coptor, they weren't the

type to do much outdoor exploration. Now they have a device that pretty much requires that they do that, and I think that's cool too. It gives people a reason to get out there. Along the way, they might find that they really liked the lifestyle, and they progressively get more into it. We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, i'll talk about some more technology that's meant to get you out and about in the great outdoors.

You know, one technology that has really evolved incredibly rapidly over the last decade, maybe two decades, would be the camping trailer. So in the old days, a camping trailer was really just this terrible living space that you could use to sleep in while you were out on the road. It might feature some pretty cool technology in it. You might have climate control options, maybe a fridge, perhaps a

cooking surface of some sort. But these days there are camping trailers that have more smart devices in them than my house does. I had a conversation with the CEO of a particularly famous company known for its camping trailers, and I learned about how, as the head of a company that manufactures these things, trailers meant to appeal to people who like to go on outdoor adventures, that he

sees technology as being pivotal to the business model. He pointed out that people want certain conveniences, for instance, connectivity. You know, some people feel such a sense of anxiety when they have no cell phone service that they can enjoy themselves. They're too busy fretting over what they might be missing. Those people are far more likely to turn down the opportunity to spend time in nature, which is understandable. None of us want to invite more anxiety in our lives.

For that reason, he said, his company made sure to boost connectivity features in their products, so new models of camping trailers would include things like amplified antenna to pick up cells service and signal boosters which could take a week signal and make it strong enough for campers to

make it useful. And he also talked about how more and more features in the company's campers are smart technologies, controllable from an app even if you aren't there, so you can do things like check on levels of the battery in the camper, or how much water is in the camper, things that you would need to know before you would actually go out on a trip. You could just check it from your phone. Now, obviously his goal is to sell as many camping trailers as he possibly can.

That's the business. But his point was unless you listen to what customers want and you remove those things that would otherwise convince people not to go camping, you're going to fail as a business. So for folks who want the camper experience, there are all sorts of new gadgets and gizmos a plenty incorporated into those designs. Today, there are a lot of camper companies out there now. I don't want to single out one at the expense of all the rest, because lots of companies are doing innovative

things with their camper technology. So I'm just gonna talk in general about some of the tech that we're starting to see in prototypes and in at least some cases campers you can actually go out and purchase. We're seeing a lot of work with very lightweight materials and three D printed components which are meant to maximize efficient use of space while also reducing weight. Reducing that weight makes

it easier to tow the camper behind your vehicle. Uh. In fact, there's a prototype camper that has its own drive train that ends up using its own power supply to help propel the camper behind the towing vehicle so that it's less of a load for the towing vehicle. That's pretty incredible. Uh. One prototype system even has an option where you detach the camper when you get to your campsite and you use a connected smartphone as a remote control. You can actually maneuver the camper into the

position you want at your campsite using your phone. You don't have it connected to your vehicle anymore at all. That's cool as heck, and it takes the worry out of how to back a camper into the right spot.

Several of these campers incorporate solar panels to provide electricity to charge on board batteries, which in turn can power all sorts of stuff like a water pump, a heater which gives you a sink with hot and cold water, or powering a cooking surface, or an entertainment system, refrigerator, air conditioner, lights, even ultra high definition televisions, and some of these models, it's kind of like having a hotel

room that's portable. Now, a big trade off you have with campers is that they can run to be really really expensive. Plus some outdoorsy folks might feel like it's kind of like cheating. I mean, sure, no one wants to be miserably uncomfortable when they're out and about, but you might want to at least feel like you're roughing it. And sleeping in a luxurious camper surrounded by four K

television screens probably doesn't at that bill. However, we're seeing a lot of technology that's aimed at outdoor enthusiasts that doesn't quite go to the extremes of top of the line campers. For instance, there are self inflating sleeping pads that will get you up off the ground, which is something that's absolutely critical when you're in colder months or when the weather turns nasty. Now, this technology actually dates back to the nineteen seventies and it's pretty interesting stuff.

So the pads have foam in them. The foam, if you were to look really closely at it, you would see are made up of what are called open cells. The cells that create the foam are have open walls in them, which allows air to flow into that space. Now, if you pack that stuff into fabric that does not allow air to pass through it, and then you include a valve that will allow air to pass but only in one direction depending on how the valve is set,

you have yourself an ideal structure for camping. You turn the valve so that air can pass into the pad but not out, and air will rush in and the pad will expand. That expansion is the foam stretching out, and as it does, it starts to create a vacuum and air moves into fill it. Because we all know that nature abhorrors a vacuum right well, when it's trying to pack up. Turning the valves that the air can only move out means you can start to compress the

pad and squeeze the air from it. The valve prevents air from coming back in, so you get the pad as compressed as you can so that you can pack it back up again, which is pretty genius. Now there are also inflatable air sleeping pads out there, meaning these are pads that you have to pump air into or maybe blow it up yourself, which to me sounds like a terrible activity after you've just hiked your camping spot.

And of course there are various pumps out there too, from hand pumps and foot pumps to battery powered electric pumps. The point is there are a lot of solutions for campers when it comes to finding the right surface to sleep on, and as someone who can tell you from experience, you definitely want to make that at least a little comfortable so that you can move around the next day. By the way, if you do want to shop for that kind of gear, you should pay attention to the

temperature ratings on the products. This also will go for sleeping bags, but the rating systems are different and they can get very confusing. The air mattress style pads will keep you more comfortable as you know as far as it being softer than the self inflating foam pads do, but the air mattress style pads don't have good insulation

against the cold. Many sleep pad manufacturers will indicate what their pads are rated for, which is designated with a value that has an R in front of it, and the higher that value is, the better insulated that pad is. For those who plan on camping in late fall, maybe even into winter, and our value of three point five or greater is a good idea. Of anything below that, you are probably going to be too cold at night and you might just want to call it quits rather

than enjoy your experience again. Picking the right stuff so that the experience is fun and something that you eagerly seek to do again. That's the goal. We're not looking at making a technology nervana out in the wilderness, but rather an experience that enhances our time outside so that we seek it out again and again. As for sleeping bags, they come in a variety of shapes and materials and

temperature ratings. Those ratings are usually designated I s OH that stands for International Standards Organization, So a bag that has an I s O rating on it is one that the manufacturers submitted to the I s O to test the bag out. This actually costs money to the manufacturers, which means that not every sleeping bag is going to have an I s O rating on it. When we come back, I want to talk about the testing process the I s O uses because it's actually pretty nifty

and uses some interesting technology. But first another break. So the I s OH, in order to test the sleeping bag, gets a test dummy and they cover it in heat sensors. They also put the dummy in a base layer of clothing you can think of like light pajamas, So there are bottoms, there's a top, there's a hat, and socks. The dummy is then shoved into the sleeping bag that's being tested. Actually, more likely it's folded into it and

zipped up, because that makes more sense. But I just like the visual of someone having to shove the test dummy into a sleeping bag. And on top of that, the bag with the dummy in it is placed on top of a winter rated sleeping pad. Now, if you remember, before the break, I talked about how sleeping pads have an R number associated with them to tell you how well insulated they are against, say the cold In the case of this test, it's a sleeping pad with a

rating of R five. That is a significant insulated pad. So that's that's one really meant for cold cold weather. Now, the pad plus the base level of clothing is standardized, so they use it on all the different sleeping bags out there. Obviously, it would not be fair to switch out any of that stuff between tests because that could lead to incorrect conclusions about the correct temperature rating of

the bagging question. Now, the test takes place in a room that can be cooled down to around zero degrees fahrenheit. The I s SO lowers the temperature and then monitors the sensors that are on the dummy to determine the lowest temperature at which a human would still likely to be comfortable while sleeping in the bag. The I s

O actually produces two ratings per sleeping bag. The first, which is the higher temperature of the two, is for people who sleep quote unquote cold, and for those people they would probably be comfortable at that temperature, but no lower. So these are people who prefer a warmer sleeping environment. If it is cooler than that, then they feel chilly. The second number, which is a lower temperature that's sometimes referred to as a transition number, is the temperature where

people who sleep warmer will feel comfortable. So this would be the lowest temperature for those who like it a little chilly in when they're sleeping, Like I like a nice cave temperature when I'm going to sleep, so I sleep warmer. Frequently you will hear folks refer to the first number, the higher temperature, as the women's temperature, and the second as the men's temperature, because there's a tendency for men to prefer colder temperatures than women. I stress

it's a tendency, it's not a universal rule. And there are sleeping bags that are marketed just to men and some that are marketed just to women. And due to that tendency to sleep warmer cold, you can have two sleeping bags, one for a man and one for a woman, each rated for a comfort level of let's say ten degrees fahrenheit, meaning that if it's ten degrees fahrenheit or warmer, you should be fine. Well, the men's bag is probably

gonna be lighter, and that's because of that tendency. It takes less insulation to keep your typical man comfortable when the environmental temperature is ten degrees than it would to keep a typical woman comfortable. So again, like the temperature is just about the environment, it's not about the bag itself, and that's how you factor in which bag is going to be right for you. It also depends on what

time of year you plan on going camping. Now, if you want to have something that's better for more extreme weather, you have to look beyond I s O ratings. The I s O only rate bags that are meant to be used in temperatures that are zero fahrenheit or warmer. Extreme bags, which can go below zero degrees fahrenheit frequently, will have three temperature ratings on them. The first represents the temperature a person could expect to sleep in relative comfort.

The second number, which is often called the limit number, is the lowest temperature someone could be expected to sleep in the bag at all, and the third number the lowest of the three. The extreme level is a temperature where it would probably be way too cold for you to get any sleep, but the bag would likely keep you warm enough so that you could survive the night. Now, obviously that third scenario is something that represents an emergency situation,

then we've got tents. You might think tents end up being pretty basic, low tech things, but there are exceptions, and of course tents come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and materials. Some tents are essentially just a thin barrier between you and everything outside the tent. That can be really useful if you needed to be super lightweight and you're going to be hiking to your campsite. Others are

more rain resistant. Some are rainproof, although you can probably put rainproof in air quotes because it's very possible even for the most resilient rainproof tense to become flooded if you set up the tent poorly in the wrong location, like you start, you have the entry of the tent facing uphill and it starts pouring down rain. That's not

going to be great. But tents can go well beyond this. Uh. There are tents that have led light straps sewn into the seams and you just plug a couple of double A batteries in and you got yourself indoor lighting woven directly into the tent, which is really convenient and because L E D s are so power efficient, those battery should last a good long time. There are tents that use inflatable elements so that you don't have to struggle with poles and ropes to get the tent set up,

which is pretty cool. I've seen some of these, I've never slept in one. I've always been curious about them, but yeah, that's that really appeals to me, because, um, I'm one of those people who becomes like Goofy in the Disney cartoons when I try and set up a tent. I'm more likely to end up tying myself to a

tree accidentally. Now and then we see some interesting tent concepts that incorporate things like solar panels and other elements in them that, to be honest, a lot of those seem to remain concepts and never quite migrate over into consumer products. As for other camping gear, with the tech side, you've got stuff like led lanterns that have solar panels so that you can recharge them during the daytime, which is pretty useful when you're out in the middle of

nowhere and there's no way be a light. There are portable showers, which essentially consists of a bag that you fill up with water and you leave it in the sun to heat up. You hang it from a height, and some of them are very simple, just gravity fed systems, so you open up a little valve and the water comes out due to gravity. Others incorporate foot pedals that uh connect an air hose from the foot pedal to the bag, so you can actually pump some air into

the bag, increasing the internal pressure of the bag. So when you open up that valve, that pressure starts to push the water out with more force and you get a better shower going. I've seen camp stoves that not only provide a way for you to get warmth and cook food, but also charge your portable devices. The stoves connect to electronics that harvest thermal energy and convert it into electricity, at least that's what they say they do.

You also can charge them typically like you can use it as its own portable battery pack, and I think that's probably the most efficient way to charge the battery on those camp stoves. But still a really interesting concept to me, and there's so much more we can chat about. There are special filtration systems. They are designed to filter

water from streams so it's safe to drink. A lot of these fit right into a water bottle so that you can fill the bottle up, attached the filter to the top of the bottle and drink from the other side of the filter. Others are gravity fed, so you attached two bottles together and the filter is between the two. So you fill one bottle up with say water from a river, you attached the filter to it. You attached an empty bottle on the other side, and you use

it almost like an hour glass. The water filters through and then it's safe to drink. There are lots of different variations of this. There are even ones that are shaped like a straw and you can just drink straight from a stream if you wanted to. They are really cool and innovative, and most important, they make it safe for you to drink water. For more heavy duty water filtration systems, you can get a hand pump model that lets you filter a lot of water all at once.

It's pretty useful if you're camping with a big group of people. Honestly, you could spend hours looking at camping technology, and I know because I have. I've even had an idea for a special series of podcast episodes about the subject we'll have to see if that ever goes beyond the prototype phase. Personally, I go back to that philosophy that says the best camping tech is the type that

gets you out in nature in the first place. There's stuff that is gimmicky and flashy, sure, but the pieces that are important to me are the ones that inspire you to get up and leave your house and head off to the campground or the park and go exploring the flash ear stuff. Often I think of that as being more trouble than what it's worth sometimes because you have to remember, especially if you're not just going to be camping close to wherever you park your car, you've

got to carry the stuff too. So it's always good to use a little bit of judgment before you go hog wild and buy every single tech out there for your camping experience and then discover your are incapable of moving once you've loaded it all into your backpack. And I hope some of y'all out there will take this as inspiration to have your own outdoor adventures, whether it's jumping into the geo cashing hobby or spending a weekend out of the campground enjoying nature and good company, and

maybe a little tech along the way. That's it for this episode of tech Stuff. If you would like to comment on this episode or send any suggestions my way, feel free to use the talk back feature on the I Heart Radio app. A few people have been doing that and I love it. Thank you so much. We're gonna have some episodes coming up based upon your suggestions, so keep an ear out for that, or if you prefer, you can reach out via Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff H s W and I'll talk

to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.