Three DTU students have developed the lamp ‘Glød’ (glow) that now lights up the approximately 80 camps at Roskilde Festival. The lamp is flashing in all the colours of the rainbow and in line with the beat of the music.
When it gets dark in the camping areas at Roskilde Festival, light sources are few and far between. You can use a mobile phone or a lamp to find your things in your tent, and that’s about it. However, there is a lot of power sources in the form of car batteries, telephones, and powerbanks. So for engineering students, the solution is right at hand.
“We believe that one of the main problems at the camping site is a lack of light sources. And this can affect the parties; especially if you return from a good concert and end up in a dark camp—that will kill off any party right away,” says Victor Domanyi Bertelsen, a Design and Innovation student.
Together with his fellow students Christoffer and Mads, he has developed the Glød lantern which uses Arduino boards (a mini-computer) and a number of LED light bulbs to light up the camp. The bulbs and the electronics are placed in the lids of left-over insulin containers, donated by Novo Nordisk. It is powered by a battery for charging mobile phones, but since the LED light bulbs use very little energy, they can run for hours on one charge. But it doesn’t stop here,” explains Christoffer Thomsen:
"It was important that they had to assemble it themselves, as we think it will make them more motivated to take it home with them after the festival."
Mads Dalum Hesseldahl, Design and Innovation student
“We’re engineering students, so it was not enough that it just glowed. It had to be able to do more. We incorporated a microphone and spent a lot of time developing software that controls the small LED light bulbs, so it can respond to the sounds of the camp.”
The lantern is made with a view to festival-goers being able to assemble it on site in connection with two workshops at the festival. The first was held Monday in the camping site, where the festival-goers had the chance to collect a total of 80 Glød lanterns which they were allowed to take home for use in their camps.
“We wanted to make it easy for festival-goers to assemble the lantern, so we’ve soldered the electronics and installed foil in advance to make it look as neat as possible. But it was important that they had to assemble it themselves, as we think it will make them more motivated to take it home with them after the festival. We wanted to make it more valuable than a festival chair which is just left behind when the festival ends,” explains Mads Dalum Dalum Hesseldahl.
“The first workshop exceeded all expectations. There was a long queue throughout the event, so at the end we had to tell people that we wouldn’t be able to do more.”
