Pivo Pod Heat Shield 2.0

For most of the country, keeping a Pivo Pod dry is probably more of an issue than keeping it cool. If you live in the Southwestern part of the U.S., you know that dry heat with no shade is a common experience for six months out of the year. It's not the Pivo Pod that needs to be kept cool; it's the phone I attach to the Pivo Pod. My arena has some great shaded parts, but they're not in a good location for Sean Cunningham, owner and trainer at STC Dressage, who gives me lessons through Pivo's Meet feature. Sean likes to be parked at A/C, but the shady spot is at V, the worst place to sit if you're looking for straightness and accuracy.

This is the first or second iteration of the shade box.

Over the past couple of years, I've tried a several different things to shade my phone during an hour long Pivo Meet. One of the first things I had to do was get a newer phone. Pivo Meet takes up a lot of processing power, and my iPhone 7 Plus was just not up to the challenge, so i bought an iPhone 12 Pro. The next thing I did was use an umbrella which wasn't very effective. I later created a shade box - see above, which definitely helped. When the shade box wasn't quite enough, I also bought a cell phone cooling device (seen below) which helped tons.

It plugs into a solar charger which I mount to the fence with a jumbo twist tie.

I then went an extra step. I wrapped the shade box in a mylar thermal blanket that did keep my phone even cooler. During the fall, I had intermittent connectivity issues with Sean Cunningham that made lessons really frustrating. With so much rain this winter, I didn't get many lessons, but when we started up again in the early spring, the connectivity issues seemed to have resolved themselves. And then suddenly, the issue reappeared. Both Sean and I checked our data usage, our device settings, and anything else that we could think of. Still the poor connection showed up about every other week.

Shade box in action.

As I was setting up for a lesson a few weeks ago, I realized my box had seen better days. It was sagging and required some shoring up. I used it one last time and then trashed it when I found a new box. As I was gathering the materials to redo my box, including a new mylar blanket, it occurred to me that the mylar thermal blanket might have been causing a Faraday Cage effect. Sci-fi movie lovers probably know what a Faraday Cage is, but if you're not familiar with the idea, a Faraday Cage is a protective enclosure that prevents certain types of electromagnetic radiation from passing through it. 

Materials for new heat shield.

I ran the idea by the ranch owner who is among other things, a highly educated geologist. After discussing the idea, we both came to the conclusion that the mylar could indeed be blocking a cell phone's low-powered electromagnetic waves (radio waves). While the heat shield box wasn't a true Faraday Cage, it served the same purpose which was to block electromagnetic waves. I tore the mylar blanket off my new box and gave it a try. My next lesson went smoothly with no glitchiness in the connection. 

Despite being less than two years old, my iPhone 12 Pro's battery was not charging to full capacity, and if I used it a lot during the day, it ran out of juice quickly. With a European vacation just a week or two away, I opted to trade it in for an iPhone 14 Pro Max. When Sean joined me on Pivo Meet this past Saturday, he was quite happy with both the clarity and connection. With the shade box and the cooling device in place, the lesson went smoothly without a single loss of audio or video.

So, if you build a heat shield, skip the mylar blanket!