Who’s bright idea was this?
Just saw these used on Top Chef last week, didn’t think they were this cheap to get.
Has anyone used one of these? It seems a little small to collect much sunlight - looks around 10" x 24", or around .16 sq meter.
Peak solar irradiance is around 1000W/sq m, so that means this thing is collecting 160W of solar power (assuming 100% efficiency of mirror and black coating on the glass tube), or a bit more than an old Easy Bake oven with a 100W bulb.
Seems like it’d take forever to heat food to cooking temperatures.
It does work, I also saw it used on top chef, and it worked surprisingly well. If I was a camper, I would pick this up.
Yea add water and watch it explode like on the show, so $200 down the drain
I have one of these from the original Kickstarter. It’s pretty fun! We put the probe of a digital thermometer in and it was no problem reaching 200°F in a light rain.
However, the “temperature adjustment” they mention is a bit of a ruse, your temperature depends on how much sun you can accumulate. You can control that by angling the reflector, but to get to that 500°F value, you are going to be needing to be aiming it directly at the sun (and adjusting every 15 minutes) around noon on a very clear day.
Your major limitation for cooking is size of the tray that goes inside the tube. You are going to be wanting to cook hot dogs, strips of steak and cubed vegetables. You can’t heat liquids, the tube will shatter. Your solar coffee is right out.
There’s a Facebook group where GoSun owners post pictures of their successes and experiments: GoSun Community Kitchen | Facebook (it’s a public group, you’ll need to login to Facebook to see it, but you should be able to view the posts without joining)
Use it to light tinder and move on from there…
I’ve had one for a year and a half, it heats really quickly. Indirect sunlight 15 to 20 minutes will get the inside of the tube up to 500° or so. Is one of the best ovens on the market in my opinion, especially if you camp or hike.
I’m guessing that the Easy Bake oven took longer because its 100 watts were not focused into a center line. There’s an opposite process to solar cookers – broadly spread energy is focused inward on the food. With the Easy Bake design, the concentrated energy (from the filament of the bulb) is dispersed outward, becoming considerably less dense by the time it hits the food.
Sorry, I just drank a pot of coffee and had to burn off the caffeine. I feel better now.