Waterproof cases
Stocking up on festival tech can be a costly affair, especially after selling your house to buy your Glasto ticket. Sometimes the more affordable and sensible solution is to invest in a few waterproof cases.
Whether it's a splashproof iPhone skin or protective camera bag, there's always a cheap fix out there somewhere.
Overboard offers a range of simple cases to slip into, from iPads and iPhones to zoom lens cameras. Although they seem like sandwich bags on steroids, the cases all float if dropped in water and will successfully prevent your valuables, as well as any important papers, from getting soggy.
Obviously buying a stack of cases can also add up financially, so why not just keep most of it in one safe place? While there are plenty of other sized options available, the Waterproof Backpack Dry Tube is a 60 litre floatable bag that'll keep your gaggle of gear protected.
Price £30-£65 (rucksacks) £15-£35 (cases)
More Info Overboard
X-Mini Happy
After a long day of trenching from stage to stage and joining circles of bongo bashers, a tent can feel eerily quiet. The overpowering sound of morning bird calls can easily get on your nerves too, and the last thing you want to do is start winding up a crank-powered radio.
The X-Mini Happy may not survive a monsoon, but an all-in-one MP3/speaker combo is ideal for the campsite. I've taken the X-Mini to festivals in the past and the convenient size and booming sound makes it an ideal musical companion.
Although there's no display, the X-Mini Happy comes with a removable 2GB SD card for direct music playback, but can also be used a powerful speaker, maximising battery life.
If like me, all of your friends bought one after reading my MP3 player roundup, you can join forces connecting a group of X-Minis in a daisy chain. Boom biddy bye bye. ®
Ten... festival survival gadgets
COMMENTS
Hollyoaks scripwriters working for El Reg
Motorola TLKR T8
....I once brought a set to Glasto a few years back...
No, you TOOK a set.
I can't help it - it's an illness
El Tit
The best security at Glasto is to go as a group of about 15. Arrive late Wednesday. Find a nice patch towards the top corner of a field (but not so close you get the pissers) and set up your tents in a circle all linked together with cris-cross guy ropes and only one entrance. Set up a pole in the middle with a flashing L.E.D. Get a particularly motherly aunt to come along, who'll mostly stay with the tents, reading, knitting, chatting to similar women (or guys even).
Don't even think about moving off until late Monday afternoon.
Worked for us in 2000 and we had a fantastic stress-free time with no worries, no losses, and no getting lost.
Wouldn't an IR sensor see straight through the flimsy fabric of a tent?
The alarm would be set of by every hippy who stumbled past.
If you need a heated sleeping bag then you must have accidentally gone to bed at night. In which case, why not stay at home with your giant slipper and a nice cup of cocoa and listen to the highlights on Radio 2?
And anybody who takes their own speakers to a festival needs to be dragged out by their short hairs and strung up from the security fence as a warning to others.
With the possible exception of the waterproof bags (99p for a roll of twenty posh bin bags from your local supermarket), all of this stuff is about as festival-friendly as a mohair cardigan and stilleto heels.
No wonder Glastonbury has gone all U2 if this is an indication of the state of today's festival goer.
Festivals and gadgets! noooooooooooooo!
i would never take anything of any real value to a festival! looting is very common. Tent, beer, food, toiletries and some clean cloths. i would never take an iphone or ipad to a festival.... if you are playing on an ipad at a festival you are one boring person! :D
The only gadgets i would use off that list is the waterproof bags, the intruder alarm 2 keep peskie kids out of my beer tent! and that totally awesome tracking thing! i would attach the bug in the bottem of my crate of beer and if it gets rob'd track em down and get my beer back. WIN!
Beer because that all you really need at a festival!
