Category: Travel Gadgets

25 Camping Gadgets you really should have

The British camping season is now truly upon us, offering inexpensive holidays under canvas.

Here are 25 bits of kit that will make your life a lot easier, whether you’re cooking, foraging, hiking, or relaxing under the stars.

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1. Tent

It goes without saying that you’ll need a decent tent if you’re planning on sleeping in a field.

My personal favourites are Khyam tents. They come in a wide range of sizes and styles and are generally quick and easy to erect. You may pay a bit more but you can usually find them on special offer, and they’ll last a long time…

Andy Merrett Gadgets, Travel Gadgets

$250 kit lets you clone passport RFID chips just by driving past

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Chris Paget isn’t a hacker, but he’s got the means to clone the RFID chip in your passport. Think of it as him doing you a favour. Using $250 of off-the-shelf components, Chris built a machine to sniff and clone RFID tags. During a 20-minute drive in downtown San Francisco, he managed to copy two passports completely unbeknownst to their owners.

Paget claims he only built it to show that it’s possible:

“It’s one thing to say that something can be done, it’s another thing completely to actually do it. It’s mainly to defeat the argument that you can’t do it in the real world, that there’s no real-world attack here, that it’s all theoretical.”

For a video of the device in action, click over the jump.

Duncan Geere Computer Security, Travel Gadgets

The Novus Mini Coyote – happily exploiting a legal grey area to give drivers real-time speed camera updates

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The Novus Mini Coyote lets drivers radio in the location of hidden, newly-placed and mobile speed cameras, compiling a central database that will alert aggressive BMW drivers to when they need to slow down.

It isn’t illegal – but presumably soon will be. We can’t imagine THE LAW putting up with this sort of anti-social, rule-flouting behaviour for long. Here’s how Novus describes its all-seeing, all-warning anti-radar machine…

Gary Cutlack Gadgets, Satellite Navigation systems, Software, Transport, Travel Gadgets

Hands-free kit that clips over your rear-view mirror

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RXS:Redshift sounds like a racing game, but in actual fact it’s a company who make hands-free car kits, and they’ve made the rather genius “Bluetooth Rear-View Mirror Hands-Free Car Kit” pictured above, that does exactly what it says on the tin. It clips onto your rear-view mirror, and there’s absolutely no wiring required.

It has some quite nifty features, too. The mic and speaker are integrated into the plastic, and the caller ID gets displayed on the mirror so that you don’t have to take your eyes off the road to see who’s calling. It also comes with a bluetooth headset that you can use if you’re still on the phone when you leave the car.

Duncan Geere Mobile phones, Travel Gadgets

Optoma Pico portable projector – pack 60 inches in your pocket

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Here’s the Optoma Pico pocket projector, for all the “must beam something onto a wall” moments that occur so frequently on the go. No, I’m being mean, there’s a whole wealth of uses for something like this – especially because it can project an impressive 60″ picture from 2.6m away.

It’s the perfect thing for showing off your holiday photos round your parents’ house, or entertaining a nephew by letting him play his Wii on a 60″ screen, rather than the crappy little 17″ TV he’s stuck with. There’s umpteen thousand business uses, too…

Duncan Geere Travel Gadgets