Call A Cell Phone, Find A Tent

relay Finding your tent at a music festival is a tricky endeavor – not only are there miles and miles of tents exactly like yours, you most likely have a few beers or other substances in you that affect your sense of space and/or time.  [James] came up with a great solution to finding your tent by illuminating it with Christmas lights and a cell phone.

The basic idea of [James]’ build is having Christmas light flicker whenever he calls a phone. One feature in nearly every phone that can be exploited to accomplish this task is the backlight turning on when a call is received. Add a phototransistor, a little bit of circuitry, and some Christmas lights, and you have a fully functioning tent finder.

[James]’ circuit is a simple relay driving the Christmas lights, triggered by a phone right on top of the phototransistor. It’s a simple circuit that can be built on a piece of veroboard, and with a few pieces of plastic forming the enclosure, provides a reasonably bulletproof device that will survive the rigors of a music festival. As a bonus, there’s no need to modify the phone to trigger a remote circuit. Video of the device in action below.

36 thoughts on “Call A Cell Phone, Find A Tent

        1. Just guessing, but I think that he is saying that the original phrase could be interpreted in two different ways:
          Circuit visibly lights up tent
          or
          Circuit lights tent on fire

          Just guessing… :D

  1. Pfft. People have been using GPS to find their camps at BurningMan for nearly a decade now, and that’s only because strobes held aloft by helium weather balloons don’t cut it any more.

  2. “google now” already has a feature to find where you parked. using the gps i assume, you could make a similar app to find your tent and/or track your route from tent to other places. or use a gps.

  3. I Agree, you realize that these people are publishing plans for a mobile phone triggered detonator.

    The standard nokia comes direct from the manufacture already equipped with timer, Emergency override, manual detonation, GPS location etc.

  4. Can we start some kind of petition for Hackaday to stop covering hacks that make something more difficult than it was before? If you have a smartphone, you have a GPS receiver. If you don’t, you can pick up an old handheld GPS unit for ten dollars on ebay, which is a hell of a lot cheaper and less hassle than getting an old phone, getting service for it, and building this contraption, to say nothing of the likelihood of you not getting any kind of cell reception/service at the festival location.

    Yes, you COULD set up a kinect mounted to a set of peepholes in your front door so only someone who knows the secret dance can get in, but you shouldn’t, because it’s fucking stupid.

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