New Inventions for Hiking, Flights, and Other Travels. Part -2

Cap-Flashlight
A baseball cap combined with a headlamp. It seems like nothing special – you could just attach a flashlight on top of the cap. But this hybrid feels somehow more elegant. Two LED flashlights are sewn under the visor, with a small switch nearby.

There is also another version of the "light cap": a baseball cap with a solar panel. During the day, you wear it, charging the visor (which has a built-in panel), and at night, this visor glows. A fully charged cap can shine until morning in energy-saving mode or provide two to four hours of bright light. You can comfortably read in the dark and see up to 10 meters ahead. And this baseball cap is not afraid of rain; it can even be washed. Of course, this option is more expensive, around 3000 rubles.

Backpack with Battery
Why not connect a backpack to useful tasks – besides the fact that it rubs your shoulders? While you're on the go, a backpack with a built-in solar panel will collect every ray of sunlight and charge your gadgets powered by 5V. If clouds gather and then disperse,

there's no need to restart anything – the battery will turn on automatically. And if this backpack also has a built-in hydration system – a reservoir with an attached tube – you can quench your thirst on the go.

Camping Bed
It might seem unnecessary to have such luxury while camping. For years, we managed just fine on thin sleeping pads. However, some people woke up with back pain, in wet clothes, or in panic from critters crawling into their sleeping bags.

Meanwhile, a camping bed truly makes life easier, adding only two to three kilograms to your luggage. When folded, it has the dimensions of a small backpack. More expensive models even come with a canopy – turning it into a bed-tent.

Low-Cost Jacket
Surely at airport security, you have dreamed at least once of a wonder-jacket with pockets large enough to hold half your luggage. And what about low-cost airlines with their carry-on limits? A family of designers from Australia had similar thoughts when they flew with a small child and additional carry-on luggage that required extra payment.

After this trip, Andrew Benke and Claire Murphy came up with a jacket with numerous internal pockets. Not only for gadgets and documents but also for clothes, shoes, and a laptop – with a total weight of up to 15 kg. With a simple motion, the jacket could transform into a coat thanks to an attached hem. And from the outside, it looked decent. The designers just needed to raise funds to implement their project – unfortunately, they only gathered a third.

Meanwhile, their competitors from the USA – a pair of Indians – were luckier. Their jacket, the Travel Jacket, has even been recognized as the most funded clothing project in crowdfunding history and is already being sold online. It has 15 "functions": a neck pillow, eye mask, gloves, stylus, "technical" pockets, etc. It can hold a lot of items, but the Australian coat-suitcase was still more ambitious.

Solar Grill
The idea is simple and original: mirror plates collect sunlight and heat the "tube" with food to a state "like in an oven."

Of course, such cooking is not possible in any weather. Skeptics believe that you can't make shashlik this way even in the heat. But maybe they are just not ready to give up the ambiance – the smoke and magic over the coals? In any case, it needs to be tested.

New inventions for hiking, flights, and other travels. Part - 1