TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Camps Out

listen in. 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, 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, right like, I would want to actually be within easy distance of a shower, if I was going to be out there within a couple for for more than a couple of days, toilet would not be round 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 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, 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 camping? 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 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 scar 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 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. Oh 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, 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, 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 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 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 days. You can 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 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 Henry Ford and Thomas Edison

who reportedly very much enjoyed going camping. So, you know, it does have its connection to 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 widespread is the aiway 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 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, and you know, the nineteen fifties was like a camping boon 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. Is what I put in my notes. Um yeah, I said, my ideal camping situation as 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, it's a legitimate strategy, all right. So we wanted to start off by talking about tents um. You know, it's one 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. 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 yeah, you're basic dome tents. You're a frames walled tents. The walled tents, by the way, look pretty much like a house.

But intent to form these are all you know, basics, and you have those poles to give the rigidity and the lines to provide the stability. But we have actually seen some development intent techno oology over the past to really advance things. One of them is just making them lighter. Yeah.

Materials science is 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 being able to replace the weight that you would have

had to devote to a tent with tasty snacks. Yes, yes, because you know some 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 some uh kind of a trademarked material right called cuber Cuban sorry, Cuban fiber.

See you be eaten, not Cuban as in cuban peat of that guy. 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 coated. It can be really light and thin and strong, especially compared with traditional woven fabrics. 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 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 were between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars. That's a lot of money for a two person tent. Yeah, 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, 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

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, this is true, but they to be fair, humans can

be pretty big jerks. But no, that we don't eat our prey from the feet first, that the meat stays fresh, No, no, uh, we we find far more insidious ways. But any at any rate, Uh, the inflatable tents in this case are not like big domes that you just you know, you pull a cord 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 frame pumped up, it holds up the rest of the tent. 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 Time Planet. They have since come out with a newer version called the Wedge uh, and these are pretty cool. They're supposedly 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 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 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, 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, 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 securing 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 on the ground or would start rolling, and that could be important, Like if you are a restless sleeper and you pass 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. 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. And this has 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 that sturdy up

for a weekend trip. Yeah, it would be. It would be carrying a lot of weight, and I'm sure it takes a long time to set. 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 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 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 company called tent Stiles Tree Tents, Tent Stile. It'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 base looks more or less sort of triangular and u and it makes sense because they actually the company says that if you buy one of their tents, they'll go out 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 tense, and then you can get in and out of 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 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 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 not as heavy or bulky as the Cocoon Tree version. We have more to say about camping out, I'm guessing,

but first let's take a quick break. What if you're 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. And one of those reasons is solar powered device chargers. Yeah, 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 right now that you can go out and buy 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 originally been scheduled to to come out on the market sp two thousand fourteen, but as far as I can tell, it hasn't actually come out yet. Then there are some up some concepts, they're not actually products that you can buy. The Orange Solar tent 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 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 build this thing. And they even had like a panel that was on the side of the tent the inside of the tent where you could put a or 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 pro type currently non existent. Yeah, the stuff that does exist 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 your other gear to provide solar Yeah, because you're not like things like if you have and we'll talk about it 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 you pitch it, so that makes it, you know, attractive. How 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, 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 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 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 sure, 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 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 are rated for specific temperatures, that's true, 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, 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 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 mind it's a generalization, women get colder faster than men do, like at a at a higher temperature.

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 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 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. That 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. 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 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 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

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 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, 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 material signs, with what the shell is made of and what the filling is made of. Traditionally it was down of various kinds duck in, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 have the higher number for it to be lighter, and you know these can 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 it 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, 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. I actually used to have a backpack the head of solar panel in it. It was not a camping backpack. Back 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 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

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, ultimately, when you get down to it, if you're really roughing it, you essentially need a place to sleep, 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 gonna 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 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, but the one that gets repeated multiple times throughout the internet is the bio light uh camp stove, And the biolight

camp stove is cool. It think of it as a camp stove where you can you put twigs in it and then you light a fire and you use those to eggs 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 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

can explode. You 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 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're 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

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

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 warm up pretty well, but once they're done, 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 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, that's that's quite warm. That's significantly above it. Right, So it's happy hanging out as a liquid at room temperature.

But this pouch that contains it also contains this little disc like 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, 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 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. 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 interesting when the rest of it gets that's really cool. Wow, I never Now I've fallen into the whole handwarm or cool problem. We need to take another quick break, but we will be

right back. So, speaking of water, water filters obviously very important if you're going to be counting someplace you want to you want to clean source of water, both for drinking and for cooking with and 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 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 that ultra violet light should pretty much kill off anything that happens to be

in the 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 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, 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 of 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 before 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 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 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 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 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 do make stuff like this. I used to see them at c s 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, camping fuel cells, Yeah, actual fuel else. There's one called the Power Trek and it's it's light enough for you to carry like you can either clip it on the outside of your backpack 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, 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 hydrogen ions the oxygen and then the electrons coming in all conform water. So that's your basic fuel cell and power treck 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. 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. It would not be a very

good camping accessory otherwise. No, on the slightly less ridiculously high tech level, cane think 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 drip down on you poke a hole into the bag of some sort. Yeah, but if you want to go a 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 on 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 there's another uh 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, it's like a pressure ride 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 rent out something like soap or shampoo out of your hair very effectively if you don't 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 luction 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 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 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 where you are, and there are ways to stay safe when you're solo camping. Yeah, by it involves a lot of planning and a lot of know how and a lot of telling people where you're going right 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 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, 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 out earlier, the ones 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 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 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 a compact form factor, relatively compact. So I've seen some that get a little bit on the

ridiculous side. Okay, yeah, there there's somewhere, like you know, I think I've seen like the the Ultimate Swiss Army knife, which has every single attachment, 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 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 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 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. Yea, Yeah, when you get above eighty five decibels, that's about the that's the level of safe so one, it's meant to be that loud, 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. 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, 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 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 are pretty cool too. Any the person who loves spy gadgets is gonna 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

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 chord probably yes, thank you, uh that that you can use in in any number of survival situations. 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 batteries, 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 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 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 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.

I mean, it's just gonna have 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, 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 camping is so 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. And that wraps up that classic episode of tech stuff, you know. Speaking of camping, it's interesting Once a couple of years ago, I was talking about the possibility of starting a show, kind of a mini series to talk about camping and and outdoorsy kind of activities for someone like me, someone who who

is not particularly interested or skilled in it. Someone I mean, I enjoyed camping back when I did it, I just don't do it anymore, and someone who has become accustomed let us say to the modern comforts beyond what is reasonable,

one might argue. And I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to do a series where actually try to do some camping and some outdoorsy type stuff and I rely heavily on tech that's made for that purpose, and to see if that actually makes the experience, you know, something I enjoy, or if the tech actually gets in the way of it. I never never actually got to the point where I launched it, but it's an idea that continues to come back to me. So maybe I will revisit it, because

I think that could be a really interesting series. First of all, it's gonna be hilarious because I'm hopeless when it comes to out doorsy stuff. But also I just think, like to put this tech to the test, find out does it really help you or is it completely unnecessary or does it just make something that is difficult for me impossible. That's really what I want to know, So

maybe I'll look into that. If that sounds interesting to you, let me know over on Twitter the handle for the show Tech Stuff h s W. You can also let me know if there are any topics you would like me to cover in the future, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Yea. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.