Meet The BioLite BaseLantern

The BioLite BaseLantern is the world’s first flatpack lantern that combines breakthrough edge-lighting with Bluetooth connectivity to bring you a portable lighting solution that doubles as your own miniature smartgrid. No bigger than the sandwich you pack in your lunch, the BaseLantern can light large group settings, charge phones and other devices, and offer powerful real-time analytics so you get the most from your off-grid energy.

1. Illuminate large areas with a lantern that fits in the palm of your hand; extend light around your site with the integration of BioLite string lighting. ￼

2. The rechargeable internal battery doubles as a portable powerbank to charge phones, tablets, and other devices.

3. Unlock the functionality of a mini smart grid from your phone with features like Proximity Activation, Full Color Control, and Real Time Energy Analytics.

BaseLantern is ready for any off-grid situation:

Edge Lighting: Big light in a small package When you went camping twenty years ago, chances are you brought along a big bulky sleeping bag with you – but then compression sacks came along and took the air out, shrinking your bag into a fraction of its original size.





That’s exactly what we’re doing with the BaseLantern – we’re taking the air out. Using the same principles found in fiber-optic cables, we've skinned our lantern's rechargeable batteries in a thin, durable, bright sheet of light.



By using edge-lighting rather than traditional diffusing lenses, we're able to remove wasted space and deliver a lantern that's four times smaller than the competition.





Here's a quick video where Mike and Anton explain how it works:





You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with

sound 00:00 00:00





The result is a super compact lantern that can throw 500 lumens of light in a footprint no bigger than, well, a sandwich:







Shareable Energy: The Power to Do More The BaseLantern features a 7800 mAh rechargeable li-on battery that provides a burn time of up to 54 hours or power out to your other electronic gear via 2 USB charging ports. The BaseLantern also features two custom ports to power BioLite SiteLights for extended lighting. SiteLights provide 10 ft of reach and 150 lumens per light And with two USB ports, no waiting in line to charge up your phone if you’re with friends. Charging Cycles By Device You can recharge your BaseLantern off-grid anytime from power generating gear like the BioLite SolarPanel5+ or BioLite BaseCamp Stove (you can pick those up in our reward levels). Unlocking the Smartgrid: Light & Power Controlled from Your Pocket BaseLantern Bluetooth LE Mobile App Your phone is one of the best remote controls out there, so we built a custom Low Energy Bluetooth app that connects with your BaseLantern and transforms it into your own miniature smartgrid: The app’s dark background is easy on the eyes in low-light conditions and is designed to be super intuitive – so if a friend picks up your phone, there’s no learning curve, they can use it right away. Brightness & Warmth Control Adding Lantern Effects The BaseLantern app also provides real-time analytics and feedback on the battery life so you can calibrate energy usage to sustain the length of your trip – no guessing on how much juice is left. Energy Analytics Proximity Activation automatically turns the BaseLantern on or off based on your relative location. Your own personal beacon, it's perfect for finding your way home in the dark. Activating Proximity Mode Full Features Tech Specs Rewards Energy On A Mission When you back the BaseLantern, you’re backing a better world. At BioLite we’re on a mission to bring safe, affordable energy access to families living in energy poverty. To date, we have distributed over 15,000 HomeStoves across India, Kenya and Uganda, providing clean cooking and charging. Through our unique business model (we call it Parallel Innovation), we incubate core technologies that get turned into products for both our outdoor recreational audience and our households in emerging markets. Revenue from our outdoor gear – like the BaseLantern – gets re-invested into the long-term development of our solutions to the big challenges we face where the grid doesn’t exist. Reliable lighting in emerging markets can transform a life: it’s a child able to read her homework; it’s an entrepreneur keeping her shop open after dark; it’s a family empowered to leave dirty, expensive kerosene behind and bring bright, safe light into their home.

When you support the BaseLantern today, you’re supporting the research, development, and distribution of BioLite lighting to those who need it most. The Team Behind BaseLantern Process Sketches Early Research A lantern with no wasted space (left). Creating the legs mechanism (right) Designing the lens texture - 40,000 cones across the lens surface Prototypes Why we’re asking for your help

This ain’t our first rodeo… but it is our first Bluetooth connected product and we’re looking to our community to make it the best it can be. We can learn a lot from you.

Funding from this campaign will help us invest in the costs associated with developing our Bluetooth hardware and building both an iOS and Android mobile app – and we’re hoping we might be able to hit some stretch goals along the way that unlock even more cool features.

And equally important to funding is feedback: we want the connected functionality of the BaseLantern to be useful to you in real life and in real situations and that means getting honest insights on the system and opportunities to improve the application. Your questions, your concerns, we take them all back to the design and engineering team which helps us inform the last stage of production and development before things are fully baked.

Production Schedule