In 2018 we visited EMF Camp for the first time, and left duly inspired to build something. Two years is plenty of time to plan and build something right? Well roll on almost four years later1 and nothing had be done…

sign at emf camp 2018

So a very quick and easy plan was devised to at least allow us to decorate our village. Due to time constraints things had to be kept simple, and whilst EMF Camp is one of the only festivals where power to the tent is almost a given being battery operated would allow for maximum flexibility. So a quick Aliexpress order later and the following was winging its way through the post.

As an aside these USB-PD boards are great, they do all the USB-PD communication and provide 12V2 from any compatible power bank. USB PD Chip

A little bit of soldering later, liberal quantities of hot glue and heat shrink for water proofing, and we had working strips.

Heatshrunk and hotsnotted connector

The Install

Finally lots of clothes pegs to attach the strips to the event shelter and three neon ropes were sorted and installed, and they came out quite well if I do say myself, even if they were very simple3.

These were powered of a mix of USB-PD compatible battery banks, and USB-PD mains adapters. The strips were tested on a desktop power supply before the USB-PD adapters were soldered and found to draw around 2A at 12V, this means we got plenty of hours of life out of my 20,000mAh battery packs.

EMF Camp 2022 - The rest of the Camp

Finally here are a few images from the rest of the festival to show some of the amazing stuff there. Check out the food included with the screening of Fyre Festival, and of course the late night showing of Hackers was once again a massive laugh. Hack the Planet!

  1. EMF 2020 was canceled due to Covid-19. ↩︎

  2. Options for all the voltages that USB-PD support are also available, as well as programmable options via jumpers, or buttons. I ordered 12V strings so ordered 12V decoy modules. ↩︎

  3. Thank you Ben for the photos. ↩︎