Heading away to a music festival this summer? From finding your way around to making sure you can stay in touch, we’ve put together a list of the essential tech you should look at before you pack up and head off.
Apps
Most festivals these days have their own apps, where you will find all the essentials: maps of the site, schedules for the various stages, the locations of the various emergency and medical services that you hope you will never have to use.
Don’t wait until you get on site to try to download the festival’s app. You might find your mobile data access is limited, either by your geographic location or because there are so many people trying to use their phones in a small space that the networks are overloaded. Either way, there’s a risk that you won’t be able to download it when you need it, so preparation is vital.
Tags
Keeping track of your gear while you are at a festival is crucial – even more so when you are on a large campsite or aren’t quite sure where you parked the car.
This is where Bluetooth tags come into their own. Regardless of whether you use Apple or Google devices, there are enough options out there to help you to keep tabs on all your gear. That could be a Tile card for your rucksack or an Apple Tag tucked somewhere out of sight in your tent to help you find your way back at night.
When choosing your Bluetooth tag, there a few things to consider. The first is what you want to use it for – attaching it to keys, tucking it into your wallet, stashing it inside a bag – will determine whether you go for a slim card or a small tag that you can attach to a keyring. Tile and Chipolo have a variety of tags suited to different tasks – the Tile Sticker, for example, is a small button-style tag that you can attach to your belongings, while the Chipolo Card Spot Wallet can fit in wallets and bags without leaving unsightly bumps.
The second is the extent of the network. If you lose something or go out of Bluetooth range – 10-240m currently, depending on the version of Bluetooth the tag uses, and how many obstacles are in your way – you will be depending on the number of people using the same system to get a location on your item.
Apple has the advantage of plenty of people using iPhones and its Find My system, so if you lose your rucksack or your keys, there is a good chance that someone has passed close by it, allowing you to get a location. Mark the item as lost, and wait for Find My to do its work.
Another festival survival tip is to mark on your smartphone’s map app exactly where you park your car when you arrive on site. This could save you a lot of lost time on the other side of the weekend, trying to track down your car at the end of the weekend. It can also work for tents; simply drop a pin at your location in your chosen map app and save it or share it with a friend, and you don’t have to spend any money on a new Bluetooth tag.
Keeping in touch
Although your smartphone can come in handy for the reasons previously mentioned – getting around the festival site, finding your way back to your tent at night, providing you with some post -show entertainment – it will also be power hungry. That’s not ideal when you are far from a fully-functioning plug, as most of us will be.
Now is the time when the feature phone comes into its own. If you are old enough to remember a time before smartphones, you will likely remember one of the chief attractions of the phones: you could get days out of a single charge, even if you had to make a call or two and send a few text messages.
While the rise of touchscreen phones has relegated the feature phone to a novelty item, or one that people use when they are trying to break the stranglehold smartphones have on their lives. But they could be an essential part of your festival toolkit.
Nokia has been revamping some of its old classics, including the 8210 and the 3310, which originally hit the market in 1999 and 2000 respectively. Now the devices come with 4G internet and cameras, but things are still fairly basic. Forget about downloading transport apps and photo fixers; these devices are purely for contact only – and maybe the odd game of Snake.
If you need something with big buttons and dedicated emergency contacts, the Doro range has several feature phones that will fit the bill while also treading lightly on the battery usage. Its 2404 flip phone goes up against the Nokia 2660 Flip in terms of style and substance, offering adjustable fonts, big buttons and a decent-sized display – for a feature phone. Advertisers can’t track your every move to offer you products you don’t need and you won’t lose hours of your life doomscrolling when you could be doing something much more beneficial to your mental health.
The added bonus? They are usually cheap enough. The Nokia 8210 is available for less than €70 sim-free, while the Doro flip phone is €50. If it does end up lost in a field in the midlands, at least it won’t cost more than €700 to replace.
Portable power
If you can’t be parted from your smartphone, there are ways to make sure that you keep your battery alive. A portable power pack can give you enough juice for a couple of charges, without adding too much to your already hefty on-site kit.
Choose your battery pack wisely. There is little point in bringing a pack that won’t last a full charge, so anything under 3000mAh should be discounted. Irish brand Juku, and Otter, have 10,000mAh battery packs that will give you a few charges and top up your smartphone over a weekend, but if you need serious power, the Anker power banks come in sizes of up to 24,000mAh for less than €200.
Cooking
If you are off for a camping weekend at a music festival, you’ll need to eat at some stage. A good camping stove is essential, but there are rules for most festivals when it comes to making your own food. You might have a designated area for cooking food; there may be a ban on certain types of camp stove.
The Biolite Campstove 2+ (€190) is a solid fuel stove that should pass most campsite rules, plus it is multifunctional. It has a fire chamber that you burn sticks in, so you can cook your food. That chamber charges a battery pack, which powers a fan to make the fire burn hotter. It can also charge your phone while it’s at it, so you can ditch the extra power packs.
Everything else
Ear plugs are advisable for a couple of reasons. Festivals are loud, and no one needs to damage their hearing. Secondly, sleeping at night, surrounded by people, can be difficult if you aren’t used to it. You can usually pick up some cheap foam earplugs cheaply enough, but Flare Audio’s range of ear plugs will cover everything from simply dulling the louder sounds to blocking out as much as possible so you can sleep in silence. They are priced at less than €60 for the Earshade Pro and the Sleep buds, and they come in a range of colours.
If you are taking gadgets on site, it might be worth investing in some waterproof pouches. While most devices are water-resistant these days, that rating comes with caveats. There are different ratings, so while one device may take a splash or two, immersing it in water may cause a problem. And even if your phone is capable of taking a dip in a puddle without dying a slow death, that rating is usually for fresh water rather than salt water or, say, a pint with added ingredients. At €10 from Elverys and Decathlon, it seems like a bargain.
