Outdoors

Pin Lights stake your tent and light up your campsite

The Pin Light gives you a safer campsite
The Pin Light gives you a safer campsite

Pin Lights are an innovative camping concept from a group of designers. The lights are essentially large pins that take the place of tent stakes. Not only do they keep your tent stable in the wind, but they light up your campsite ... so that wee-hour pee doesn't have to be a life-risking affair.

The Pin Light was imagined by a team of designers - Kim Jung Su, Kim Dong Hwan, Yoon Ji Soo and Yoon Jae Sun. The concept is simple but quite practical.

Similar to yard lighting, Pin Lights are designed to be stuck into the ground. They presumably have a sharper, sturdier stem than the average yard light, because their job is not only to light up a small area but also to stake the tent out. The advantage is that instead of tripping on a stake or guy line in the dark, both will be clearly visible thanks to the self-illuminating stakes. They serve the same function as the TentLED, but appear better implemented because they identify both the guy line and stake.

The top of the lamp is diagonal, so that you can hammer it into the ground without smashing the light itself (though I'm sure it'd be easy to slip). The stakes use solar panels and LED lights to keep things green, and each lamp features an on/off switch and a groove in back to hold the guy line steady. The stakes are fashioned after leaves to "encourage campers to feel united with nature" - save for the whole artificial light blowing up your campsite all night thing.

As someone who's tripped on his tent lines and stakes pretty much every time he's camped, I have to say that this could be a very useful design. Camping can be dark, cramped (like when the only flat ground is between two gangly bushes) and disorienting. Having the general area around your tent illuminated would definitely help to make getting to and from the tent in the dark easier and safer.

The design could stand to be tweaked a little, though. As much as the Pin Lights could help you see the guy lines, they're so large and bulky, that you're likely to trip on them. From the picture, it also looks like they're excessively bright, meaning you're going to keep yourself and your campground neighbors up all night.

The large size also makes Pin Lights pretty impractical for actually staking a tent out. Perhaps if all the camping you do is on soft grass like in the picture, but if you have to start dealing with hard, rocky terrain, good luck pounding something that thick into the ground.

A tiny LED or two on a regular, lightweight aluminum stake would be more functional. The system could then work as effectively as any stake, and offer enough light for its purpose without lighting you up like a police officer at a midnight traffic stop. Because there are so many of them, a remote control system might be better for turning them on and off.

Source: Red Dot

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7 comments
Steven Howie
Bought something very similar from the pound shop 2 years ago (minus the solar re-charging capability).
Alien
It would be a good idea if these could be charged by piezo-electricity from the hammering-in instead of solar power. A fair amount of energy is expended on the staking process and this could put some of it to good use.
I agree also that they need to be slimmer and hence both safer and less obtrusive, so perhaps a piezoelectric system could offer these benefits?
Mr Stiffy
Hmmm most tent stakes that come with tents are little more than coat hanger wire anyway... all of 150mm long and like pathetic.... Not much good in soft ground or windless conditions in the first place.
I have gone with the 10mm thick steel stakes about 250mm long, because they go in almost any soil and they hold the tent up in almost any conditions.
But these.... They look like they are pathetic soft turf tent pegs that you push in by hand, into the SOFT, wet, deep, luciously green and grassy, dirt.
I still think the big steel pegs are the go - no matter what - and perhaps a little string level style of light that clips onto the rope and it has a weak red teeny little LED and some micro circuity and a wee solar cell....
I mean the idea is to do little else other than to illiminate it's self and the peg right...
The whole issue of illuminated pegs is OK in a new and crowded camping area.... like for people on bicycles doing a tour, or a heap of drinking teenagers, but generally Hmmmmmm - it's a bit useless - and the plastic ones - even more so.
Slowburn
I found a that a 6inch square of 1/4 plywood with a couple of 16 penny nails through it works well in almost any soil condition if you put a rock or sandbag on it. I would also prefer to flag it with a good reflector rather than a light.
Matt Rings
Or just use regular tent pegs for the tent itself, and two of these lighted pegs just driven into the ground next to the two regular ones by the entrance. More, if one is prone to trip over the side pegs....
Sang N.
Why do people who comment, always have to say negative things? Here's a gd invention, why not say its a good idea? Or at least biuy one and test its operation, then comment about it. Atleast that would be an informed review. Don't you just go about slagging off others!!! What is it that you've made, or done yourselves? I'm sick of reading negative comments off perfectly good items.
Nige Jones
Where can one purchase these from? I fancy giving a go to two or three... UK based.