my tent design solar panel lighting/charging kit design
For school I've been designing a solar panel lighting kit for campers (Counter-Strike people look away, you are in the wrong place). The kit enables people to attach a solar panel to their pack during the day time which will charge the battery but they can also attach the solar panel to their tent. The battery powers 5 white LED's and 2 red LED's. If you don't want the lights to be powered, you can flick a switch and the battery/solar panel will charge your mobile phone/gps/media device/other electronic device.
reason for change
As of the middle of July I moved on from the "X11 Tent" to the "X11 Solar Panel Kit" for a few reasons:
- Time - this tent was going to take a long time. I was hoping it wasn't going to take too long, but having realised I had a short amount of time to make a whole tent with next to no previous experience with sewing meant that drastic measures had to be taken. So drastic I had to cancel the tent, but I still got to make an original part of the design.. the solar panel.
- Skill - As mentioned before, I have very little sewing experience, let alone fabric experience. The only skills I have with fabrics is wearing them. Since Ripstop Nylon seems to be a reasonably difficult fabric to work with, it was going to be a very big challenge to make a whole tent in 1 month - a working, non-leaking tent.
photos
- This photo shows the door side of the tent prototype. The prototype is a full-scale model (1:1) and is made out of builders plastic 20µm thick.
- This photo shows the tent from the feet end of the tent. The tent pole will go along the middle spine of the tent from the feet to the head end. The tent will return to that form once guide ropes have been placed on the sides.
can i buy one?
When the project is complete I'll see how many people are interested in buying this kit then I'll go from there, but currently I have no intention of selling it. The solar panels are actually quite expensive, so I highly doubt I could sell the kit.