People often talk about the innovation created by project like NASA. Well, here’s some serious innovation created by people who get high at concerts.
Telecom giant Orange unveiled a concept solar tent in conjunction with the opening of this year’s Glastonbury music festival in the U.K. Inspired by the new flexible photovoltaics in development, the tent-if produced for consumers-would be covered in a semi-photovoltaic fabric woven with both coated solar threads and conventional threads to form a solar shell that could be adjusted to face optimum sun throughout the day.
The solar energy would then be channeled into four main power uses: heating, lighting, communications, and recharging.
and…
And how many times have you been to a field festival only to spend an eternity trying to find your way back to your camp? The development team for the tent noticed that this wandering was a common problem at Glastonbury each year.
For that reason, the tent would be equipped with “Glo-cation” technology that would allow users to find their tents by sending an SMS message or using an automatic RFID tag similar to the ones used in London’s Underground Oyster subway cards. The tent would then glow in response.
The tent would also serve to broadcast a Wi-Fi signal, though it’s unclear whether it would have a Wi-Fi booster for a central area hub or act as an independent Wi-Fi router.
That is so cool!