Foldable Spring Loaded Tent for Wilderness Survival

Hello, I am a 6th grade student at Forest Middle School in Virginia. I play a lot of sports and love nature. Ever since I started middle school about 5 months ago I have started to do a lot of things that have to do with engineering and architecture so I am very excited to have built a spring loaded tent that is very quick and easy since you just have to click a button for it to set up, and when your done, just fold it together and click the plastic back together.(P.S., I made this all by myself)

1. Tinkercad
2. toothpicks(optional)
3. tape(optional)

For this step I went to tinkercad and used only 3 shapes to design the base of the tent. In the 1st picture, the different colors represent different shapes. In the 2nd, the green is a tarp which will be the rain cover and a bottom, and the white is the light weight fabrics that make the tent itself.

I decided that all of the poles would be on the corners to provide support and also they form the shape of pyramid for strength. In the picture all of the 8 orange sticks will be poles. Remember that this is just a start. The poles will not stick out of the top, and will be in the fabric.

Now that we have the start of where things will go, we need to know how it all will work. If the poles could not bend, then the tent could not fold up, so we have to make a way that the poles can bend but also get back together on their own. In the first picture, As you can see the pole is split in half and it has a stretchable string connecting the 2 halves. This mechanism makes it so that when you put them straight, they will slide together without you pushing them together. To put it back together, you just need to fold the bottom 4 corners up to the top then wrap the tarps around it. The video shows how. You can build a toothpick model if you would like. I just split the toothpicks in half and taped them back together so that they could bend.

Now that we have it all planned out let's work on details. We will add a door and take the poles that stick out of the top off. If all of the poles were what I designed them as, then we could just pull up the middle and they would snap in place. also we would need the fabrics and the 2 tarps. I think that this idea would be useful for camping for many reasons.

Now that we have everything and have put it all together, lets go over why this tent is better than your normal tent and how it is useful

1. There are lots of people who don't know how to set up a tent
2. It only requires one person to set it up and take it down
3. You can set it up in less than 5 minutes
4. you don't have to worry about losing pieces
5. folding is easier than taking it apart.
6. It is extremely lightweight

With all of these reasons this tent is easier, quicker, and nicer. Thank You for looking at my instructable!