Those of you that have been following our blog for a while know that a number of our partners work in the education technology sphere. Today, we went back to a school in Kawangware that we first visited in April with eLimu, a Kenyan edtech startup that introduced a tablet program to help primary school students prepare for their exams.

(Read the original post at: http://brck.com/2014/04/our-problem-is-internet-on-brcks-in-schools/#.VBbj3UtGzwI)

When asked how the tablets were working back in April, the school’s headmaster Peter told us, “The tablet program works very well, our problem is internet.” The school had a WiFi router/modem installed in the office, where a reasonably high-speed cable connection was available, but they were unable to get the signal in the classrooms. To use the tablets, students had to gather outside near the small office to get a strong enough connection. When the weather was bad or the sun was too bright, the tablets couldn’t be used.

Several days ago, Peter’s school got a BRCK. By running an Ethernet cable from their modem to the BRCK, they now have internet access in three classrooms. They can use the tablets when it is raining, when the sun is hot and bright, or even when the power goes out thanks to the BRCK’s battery and 3G failover. Today, the students were watching a video about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 1950s.

In Africa, it often seems that relatively small things derail big plans. Tablets can’t be used due to the sun’s glare, routers are rendered useless by voltage spikes and power outages. By addressing some of these small issues, we hope the BRCK can play a part in bringing bigger plans to fruition. We’ll bring you further updates from Peter’s school as they continue to try out new ways of learning from the worldwide web.

— — —

Want to get involved? BRCK and eLimu are looking to scale up by connecting 50 schools to the internet and providing them with tablets for learning. We also want to develop a caching system on the BRCK that could cut the cost of providing the same content to multiple tablets from ~$3 per student to less than $0.10.

We’re looking for someone who can help fund this project, so if that’s you, let us know!

Designing for BRCK

Designing for the BRCK involves more than most tech design processes coming from the African startup space, since we have to deal with hardware as well as software.

Many designers get the opportunity to work on software (UI) and print at some point in their lives but very few get to touch hardware. BRCK is a merger of both and that’s what makes it the ideal testing ground for a designer willing to go the extra mile.

Having been a designer for over 12 years, I have worked on graphic design projects, print work and web design (UI), but never got the opportunity to be part of a team that builds hardware.

The challenges  one faces are tougher because one has to think of the product from a holistic view and not just one angle eg : A UI designer’s focus is only on a users screen and not print.

The BRCK is made up of :

• Hardware (The physical BRCK),
• Software (Firmware / OS that sit on the hardware and the cloud used to manage the BRCK remotely via the internet)
• Print  (Packaging box and User guide material.)

All this has to merge seamlessly so as to ensure the end user gets a product that’s easy to use right out of the box.

User Learning Curve

All products have a learning curve when it comes to user interaction. Some products tend to have a steeper curve than others if :

• The product is new in the market or
• If the product is a reinvention of what already exists.

Some physical products that already exist and have a predefined way of user interaction, it’s much simpler building a new product on that mindset.

The BRCK falls into the reinvented bracket. WiFi routers were there before, but what our team behind BRCK is out to do is build a product that solves the problem of Internet connection in emerging markets using a solution that’s tailored for those environments.  This means unreliable power, power surges, and a failover from “normal” ethernet internet into wireless 3G.

By so doing we had to look at the typical pain points people face while trying to get online then design and build a product tailored to those needs. We had to do away with the typical stereotypes of what a router looked like and how they worked thus creating a product that would be:

• Mobile – For when you’re mobile
• Versatile – Made to work where others won’t
• Powered (Rechargeable battery) – Thinking through power as much as connectivity
• Extendable – A platform to build on with software or hardware
• Cloud Managed – Manage your BRCK from anywhere

The BRCK was a product that was designed and functioned totally differently from other WiFi routers so we had to communicate well in order to minimize the learning curve and frustration of having to set one up.

The Unboxing process

Let’s jump 12 months from when we started this process, almost all the work is done and the first batch of the BRCKs have be shipped. Our team has put a lot of attention in designing and building a product we believe will deliver great experience.  However, like all other products there are things you will learn once someone else (a customer) interacts with your product for the first time.

Having interacted with the product for months over, we had our design thoughts set out based on our understanding on how users would interact with what we had built. That said we weren’t too naive to think we wouldn’t  have to make some minor changes based on the feedback we got after running a few internal UX (User Experience) sessions.

What we got to learn was that we shouldn’t assume some steps are obvious. Some of our design thoughts did contrast with what we saw. BRCK is a merger of hardware and software, with the process of how to setup being explained on a single A4 sheet of paper (The Quick Start Guide – the document in the packaging that explains the steps you take to setup your BRCK for the first time ).  The BRCK did work great but our communication on how to get the BRCK working on the “quick start guide” had to be thought through again.

This forced us to go back to the drawing board and solve some communication pain points that hindered users in getting their BRCKs up and running in minimal time.  Our focus now was to give more detail on the quick start guide at the same time to try make sure we do not clutter the page with extra information.

What we Learnt and changed

After opening the packaging most people grabbed the BRCK, picked the quick start guide and quickly browsed through it without reading the content. It was only after they couldn’t figure out what to do that they jumped on to the quick start guide.

Some of the core lessons we got to learn from the users were:

• They weren’t sure which side of the MICRO-USB CABLE went where.
• When the BRCK was charging most thought it was ON.
• How long does it take to view a WiFi connection.

After getting this feedback our goal became to try minimize the setup process time. From when a user unboxed their BRCK to when they were fulling registered at an average of 20 minutes to 10 minutes.

What did we have to do so as to achieve this? We had to reduce the steps and better explain each in better detail. This doesn’t mean we had to add text.  They say an image is worth a thousand works. We set out to use imagery to better explain the steps one would take to setup their BRCK.

We replaced certain graphics and added some in order to achieve this. Below are examples of some of the changes we made.

Old and New visual of the first setup steps

The Status light was confusing to users when they first plugged in their BRCK.
So we added a graphic to explain this better

We then set out to remove the setting of the WiFi from the registration process so as to reduce the steps.

Finally our greatest challenge was how do we communicate what the status light colour codes meant. The top light of the BRCK is the main physical communication point between the hardware and the user. This is done using different colors spinning and pulsing. The Quick start guide was printed in grey scale and we needed a way of conveying this information to our user without using text.  We then came up with the colour code charts.

This are business sized cards that visually illustrate what each colour is and does.

Below are the full versions of both.

BEFORE

View More : Download

AFTER

View More : Download

Welcome to a new series of videos called BRCK: How To’s!

We’re kicking things off with a step-by-step walkthrough of the first thing you’ll want to do when you get your BRCK: register it. Learn everything from what the lights mean to how to handle some commonly encountered issues. Enjoy, and see below for a description of the registration process!

BRCK How To: Registration from BRCK on Vimeo.

Registration process:

To setup your BRCK for the first time, plug it in and turn it on. The lights will tell you what it is doing.

The center light tells you your power status:

• Red < 10%.
• Yellow < 40%.
• Green < 95%.
• Blue < 100%.
• Pulsing indicates that your BRCK is charging.

The outer lights indicate your connection status:

• Spinning means the BRCK is searching for a connection.
• Solid outer lights mean your BRCK has established a connection. The outer ring will pulse at a rate that indicates your connection speed.
• Orange is for the BRCK’s internal startup process.
• Purple is for Ethernet connections.
• Green is for WiFi bridging.
• Blue is for 3G.

Visit my.brck.com/help for a helpful guide to the color scheme.

To register your BRCK, it needs to be connected to the Internet. After you turn it on, do one of the following:

• Plug in an Ethernet cable from another modem or router.
• Insert a data enabled SIM card.
• Or use the local dashboard to configure a WiFi bridge (more on this below).

Go to your WiFi list and look for your BRCK. It will appear as “BRCK_somelongstringofnumbers”.

Connect to it, open your browser and go to my.brck.com.

If you have an Ethernet or SIM connection, you will be taken to the registration page and can skip the next step.

If you do NOT have an Ethernet or SIM connection, you will be redirected to the local dashboard where you can configure a WiFi bridge:

• Click “View” under WiFi.
• Select your network.
• Enter your password.
• Click join.
• Wait patiently while your BRCK configures these changes (this can take several minutes).

Once you are directed to the registration page, click “Sign up”.

• Enter your name, email, and choose a password.
• Click “Create account”.
• Once your BRCK has finished applying these changes, click “Go to your dashboard”.

You will be taken to the cloud dashboard for your BRCK, where you can see statistics regarding your power status, data usage, and devices connected to your BRCK.

Click on “Preferences” in the left pane to change your connection configuration.

• To change the name of the WiFi network your BRCK broadcasts, click in the box under “WiFi Name”.
• Enter a new name, set a password, and click “Save”.
• You may see an error message at this point. This happens because once you’ve changed the name of your BRCK’s WiFi network, your computer will lose connection to it and the cloud dashboard.

To reconnect to your BRCK’s new WiFi network:

• Open your WiFi list.
• Your BRCK’s new WiFi name should appear shortly.
• Connect to it, et voila!

Congratulations, your BRCK is now registered! You can access the Internet, the cloud dashboard, and configure your BRCK from anywhere in the world.

You’ve heard the expression about missing the forest for the trees.  It happens to the best of us.  It even happens to tiny little hardware startups in Kenya.  We have been so focused on the details of getting our product to market that we weren’t able to put the BRCK – new in the box – into the hands of real users and get their feedback on registering and configuring the BRCK.  In all fairness, we only received our first shipment of production BRICKs in Nairobi on Friday – we have been doing all of our development and testing with about 12 overworked, under-appreciated, pre-production units.  I’m not trying to make an excuse for us missing one of our core competencies.  Just praying for a little understanding as we work through the user experience (UX) of interacting with a BRCK.

The initial user reports started trickling in over the last week and half as we have been ramping up our shipping volumes.  Initially the feedback was very positive with comments on the packaging, the quality of the BRCK, even the colors of the charging cable.  However, there were also those occasional but niggling little comments on some frustrations with getting the BRCK setup.  We did get some pretty brutal feedback from our internal family at Ushahidi – who received the initial BRCKs from the production line – but we did somewhat discount their experiences based upon small fixes and patches that we had subsequently pushed into the production process.

We then started receiving some more concerning reports from real customers as our support systems started getting put into service.  Questions about what the lights meant, whether the BRCK was powered on, how to properly insert SIMs/chargers, etc.  Some of the questions were understandable.  Others, however, seemed peculiar given how easy the BRCK is to setup – or so we thought.  You see, most of us have set the BRCK up hundreds of times – personally I’m inching towards 1,000 setups.  We start it up, watch the sequence of lights, allow the BRCK to navigate us to the registration page, enter our information, and wait patiently for the new settings to be applied and the Internet to begin streaming through our browsers.  We test with Ethernet cables, SIM cards, and even WiFi-bridging to our office routers.  Sure we run into issues, but these issues get logged in our bug tracking system, assigned to a resource, fixed, deployed, and retested.  We are professionals; we know how to make robust technology – or so we thought.

We quickly noticed that some of the early adopters had bad experiences setting up their BRCKs, and with a foreboding ounce of humility that we decided we needed to throw a few more factory-fresh BRCKs in front of some of the great tech folks that hang around in Nairobi and record their experiences and observations with unboxing and setting up a BRCK.  We started by heading down one floor to the amazing ladies who run Akirachix.

Judy from Akirachix setting up a BRCK

They’re super smart, super tech-savvy, and passionate about technology from Kenya – especially BRCK.  It was just a little embarrassing when they struggled with even getting the BRCK powered on.  We then brought in one of our key local business partners, Upande, who have been chomping at the bit to get their hands on BRCKs to begin integrating a bunch of sensors and gadgets.  We sat their principal down in our conference room with a running video camera, brought in the entire BRCK team to watch him, and then furiously started scribbling on notepads.  It wasn’t pretty.

Mark from Upande setting up his BRCK

Things that are completely obvious to us were completely unobvious to the user.  The user guide – while well designed – failed to communicate a handful of really key pieces of information that provide context to a user setting up their BRCK.  The amazing lights – which get lots of oohs and aahs – mean absolutely nothing without a clear explanation.  We quickly huddled the team, watched the tapes, reviewed the play-by-play notes, and grumbled as we saw the small but significant omissions in our user experience.  Nothing fatal.  Honestly, nothing that significant.  But, for us and our users, a perceptible distraction from the quality of the hard work that we have put into BRCK over the last 18 months.

Emmanuel and Jeff reworking the setup process

Undeterred in our mission – or our pursuit of excellence – we devised some immediate changes to the registration process that should dramatically simplify the setup experience.  We also designed and had printed a color chart to explain the lights on the BRCK – we are including these in the box going forward and posting them in the mail to everyone who already has BRCKs.

Because the UX is so important we have placed the production and shipping on a brief pause while we sort through these handful of changes.  I know we won’t get everything resolved to your, or our, demanding standards but hopefully we can move the needle in the right direction.

Although these changes will have the biggest impact on customers who haven’t yet received their BRCKs, we did want to outline a few of the critical aspects of setting up a BRCK that have proven to be hurdles in the process for clients who already have their BRCKs:

1)   The Spinning Lights – in short, the outer LEDs are the connectivity indicator and the inner LED is the battery indicator.  The battery light will be on (and flashing) while charging but this does not mean the BRCK is powered on.  Here is a link to our forum post on the meaning of the various colors (http://forums.brck.com/t/a-guide-to-the-light/108/2).

2)   USB Charging Connection – the charging connection for the BRCK is under the same flap as the SIM slot – the farthest slot on the right.  What is tricky is that the cable must be oriented with the USB logo facing down.  This is opposite of many devices and can cause some confusion. The other end of the cable can be plugged into any USB charging source (e.g. laptop, wall charger, another BRCK).

3)   Local vs Cloud Dashboard – there are actually two dashboards that are part of the BRCK.  For most activities, the Cloud Dashboard is the go-to location but it does require connectivity to the Internet to access. You can access the Cloud Dashboard at http://my.brck.com.  The Local Dashboard is provided solely to assist with getting a connection.  You can access the Local Dashboard at http://local.brck.com (also at http://192.168.69.1).  When navigating to the Local Dashboard you may see a spinning BRCK logo that indicates the BRCK is transitioning to a mode where the Local Dashboard can be accessed.  Please be patient, it can sometimes take awhile for the BRCK to make this transition.

BRCK Cloud Dashboard

BRCK Local Dashboard

4) Source of Internet – in order for the BRCK to get registered you will need a working source of Internet.  The easiest way to achieve this is to connect an ethernet cable from your home router.  Another easy way is to insert a pin-unlocked 3G SIM with a data bundle.  If neither of these options are available, the BRCK will reroute you to the Local Dashboard where you can connect via WiFi-bridging or configure a locked SIM.

We’re continuing on user testing today and we have instituted some immediate changes to the registration and setup process that make the process clearer and more intuitive.  For those who have already received BRCKs, free free to get in touch with us at [email protected] and we’re happy to help you with any setup issues along the way.  We are also going to put out an unboxing and setup video this week.  We hope that seeing someone setup a BRCK will be a useful guide for getting your own BRCK registered and configured.

Finally, we know that many of you are eagerly awaiting receipt of your BRCKs.  We are finally make strides at getting our daily production volumes up and we expect to have the backlog cleared within the next 2 – 3 weeks.  We do apologize that this UX issue is going to delay shipping for a couple of days but we believe that it will be worth it if you are able to more fully enjoy your BRCK unboxing and setup experience.

This weekend Reg, Philip and I took off for the Nguruman Escarpment, which is about a four hour drive outside of Nairobi. Our goal was to field test a BRCK with some friends of ours, Philip and Katy Leakey, who live in a tented camp at the top of the Ngurman escarpment, which is on the edge of the network.

Nairobi to Nguruman route, with elevation. Some areas at 31% grades.

The town of Ngurumani sits at the base of the escarpment, and you rise 3,000 feet on a rough dirt road in order to get to their camp. The Leakeys use solar and generator power, and the only way they can get internet is using either spotty 3g dongles, or very expensive (and slow) VSAT services. It’s not ideal, and for a couple who run some amazing businesses with global reach, that grow wealth in their Masai community, it’s a real problem to not be connected to the internet consistently.

The Journey

Early Sunday morning, we set out. I had done this drive in a car before, but wanted to see if I could do it on the motorcycle too, so both Philip and I rode out on bikes while Reg followed in the Land Rover. It’s an incredibly scenic trip, as you go through the dry, Masai country, over the sodium flats of Lake Magadi with their pink and white ponds, and into the back country. The views from the escarpment are majestic, and the air is clean and crisp, unlike Nairobi.

Coming down a steep and rocky hill overlooking Lake Magadi

Reg in the Land Rover at Lake Magadi

Philip crossing a stream

The good news was that we did the ride with no meaningful problems.

The bad news was that I was unprepared for just how difficult the climb up to the top of the escarpment is. In a car it’s tough, but 4 wheels give you some balance, as well as much needed traction when you get to the really steep grades that have a lot of sand beneath you. As if courting disaster, I also had forgotten to change my tires on my motorcycle to knobbies until too late, so was stuck going up in city tires. Not a good idea. There’s a part of the road that gets to 31 percent grade, with S-curves and if you slow down, you’re in trouble.

I ended up stalling out on this one particularly steep portion, and was exhausted trying to keep it upright, and push the bike forward as it dug itself deeper into the sand and gravel. Finally, Reg caught up with me and was able to help push as I got it going again, and we were able to get to the top without any more issues. The way back down was just a controlled slide, as the brakes helped, but you couldn’t actually stop yourself from progressing downwards. One particular S-curve remains engraved in my memory, since that’s where a cobra dropped from a bush next to me. Fortunately it was small, and wanted to get away from me as much as I did from it, so we parted amicably.

The Field Test

We carried with us an assortment of large and small antennas, and we were particularly keen to try out the new ones from Poynting Antenna in South Africa. We also brought the normal BRCK, Sandstorm case and our Wilson antenna amp (booster). Beyond that, we carried our standard medical kit, tools, SIM cards and water.

Using a Yagi from Poynting Antenna

The main antenna we used was the large, 1 meter-long, cast aluminium Yagi antenna by Poynting. It’s big, tough and not easy to pack around with you, but it gets the best gain. We were easily able to reach out and grab the signals from the mobile phone towers about 4-5 kilometers away, and we got 90% or 54dBi.

It turns out that you can get three mobile phone connections from the Leakey’s. Safaricom has a decent signal, but the tower that serves the people in that community has no internet connection, to that was a dud. Orange also has a tower, and supposedly the internet data connection does work on it, but it wasn’t a strong signal and we didn’t have any luck with it. Airtel, on the other hand, had a good signal and had a data connection.

Philip and Reg getting the BRCK working at the Leakey’s camp

Lessons Learned

While we had strong signal, we had two issues that we needed to solve, and only an hour to do it before we had to head back down the hill to make it back to Nairobi before dark.

First, we mainly use Orange and Safaricom internally, and didn’t have an Airtel SIM card with us. Fortunately Katy had one, so we were able to use it. This was an oversight on our part, and we’ll stock a couple of these Airtel SIMs in the future.

Second, the Airtel SIM had no credit on it. Since all of us carry phones that hold micro- or nano-SIMs, we had no way of topping it up either. An easy solution is that we’ll carry a simple phone with us that we can do this with in the future, but we also want to explore how we can enable this same top-up activity using the local (non-cloud) dashboard of the BRCK.

Third, that not all towers work, some give bad information. Just because you get a signal does not mean that you are connected to the internet, even if it says “Edge” or “3G” on your phone.

All-in-all, it was a good excursion, a chance to eat our own dogfood outside the comfort of Nairobi and the iHub. It was a reminder to be more prepared (in both the journey and the field test), and also a great opportunity to see some less well-traveled parts of Kenya.

The BRCKs view of the valley

At one end of the BRCK you’ll find a flap with an antenna post hiding underneath it. This is connected to the wireless modem inside of the BRCK and allows you to extend the range of your Edge/3G/4G considerably.

Many times we find that the signal from a mobile tower is a bit weak. Sometimes this is due to distance, other times its due to having too much interference in the way – such as buildings or walls. Either way if there’s a signal out there, you’d like to reach out and touch it.

Omnidirectional vs Unidirectional Antennas

Omnidirectional vs Unidirectional antennas

An unidirectional antenna is useful for fixed installations, where you know where the nearest (or best) tower is. The omnidirectional antenna is better suited for times where you don’t know where the tower is, or you are moving around a lot. There’s a good video on YouTube describing the difference as well.

Omnidirectional
We’ll sometimes plug a omnidirectional antenna into the BRCK. This is when we know the tower isn’t that far away and we’re getting some bars. It boosts it a good bit. You can imagine putting small antenna up on the top of the window, up a tree, running it out the building, etc. It’s easy and fast to do, and you don’t have to do a bunch of measuring or compass-pointing to make it work.

An omnidirectional antenna plugged into the BRCK

Unidirectional
A unidirectional antenna can give you considerably more distance, or range, on your mobile signal. You have to know exactly where the mobile tower is that you’re pointing at, but if you do and can shoot the unidirectional antenna straight at it, then you can reach a lot further – sometimes many kilometers.

Reg using our unidirectional antenna

Amping it
The final piece of the “extending your wireless” range puzzle is an antenna amplifier. This works with both types of antennas, as it sits between the BRCK and the antenna. These great devices help your BRCK pull a signal from even farther away. We’ve been using them in Kenya for the past 6-months, and they were extremely helpful when in difficult areas, like in northern Kenya where the signals were weak and far away.

Reg + Unidirectional antenna + amplifier (the little blue rectangle)

We also are pleased to announce that we have formed a partnership with Wilson Electronics. We’ve tested out their unidirectional and omnidirectional antennas, as well as their wireless antenna amps extensively in Kenya and have found them to be durable (and we did beat them up a lot), and highly functional. When we open the BRCK store online in the next couple weeks, you’ll be able to purchase them at discounted rates.

(Note: Reg does like climbing things)

A unique feature of the BRCK is that it can be modded and extended with other hardware through it’s GPIO port (on the bottom of the device). Simply put, this allows you to connect any type of sensor, machine or device to the BRCK. We’ve built this to be as open and usable as possible, so it’s built to be Arduino compatible and we’re publishing all of the information on it.

The BRCK GPIO expansion port

What you do with this is limited to your imagination and ability. Some ideas we’ve had include:

• Sensing (temperature, sound, motion, pressure, light, C02 etc.)
• Geo-logging/GPS
• Waterflow sensors
• Fingerprint scanner
• Weather or soil data
• Extra hard-drive space
• Extra ports
• Extra battery
• Satellite plug-in

I’m sure you’ll come up with more.

Keep in mind that because of the BRCK Cloud, you can also remotely monitor and manage these implementations and gather the data from them back to your own database for analysis, dashboard or other visualizations.

BRCK GPIO pinout diagram

Description

The BRCK 50-pin GPIO expansion is based on the Arduino compatible programmable ATmega32U4 8-bit AVR microprocessor. The microprocessor has a 16MHz crystal oscillator, 32KB of flash memory, 2.5KB of SRAM and 1KB of EEPROM.

The expansion pins include 19 general purpose input/output (PWM outputs, analog and digital pins), a USB port and hardware serial ports which support I2C UART and SPI communication modes. In addition, there is a power input port (4-18V) and two 5V power outputs (one via USB) with maximum supply current of 500mA.

The desired hardware expansion can be connected to the relevant expansion pins and an Arduino sketch for the application can be uploaded directly through the BRCK cloud.

AVAILABLE FEATURES

• Arduino-compatible Programmable 8-bit AVR Expansion Controller
• 32 KB flash memory, 2.5KB SRAM, 1KB EEPROM
• Programming of flash, EEPROM, fuses and lock bits through JTAG interface
• Standardized 50-pin connector with open-hardware pin-out
• 19 General Purpose I/O pins (A/D pins, PWM outputs, etc.)
• Two 5V 500mA power outputs
• Real Time Clock
• 4-18V power input port
• 16MHz clock speed
• USB-host port
• I2C, UART and SPI communication modes supported

The GPIO port is a 50-position female Samtec connector, ERF8 which mates with a 50-position male Samtec connector ERM8. Figure 1 is a pin-out diagram of the female connector that terminates the BRCK GPIO Expansion.

Figure 1: GPIO pinout diagram

Table 1: GPIO-ATmega32U4 pin mapping

Figure 2: ATmega32U4 Microcontroller pinout diagram

For detailed information about the microprocessor, see the ATmega32U4 Datasheet

We also make BRCK GPIO Expansion Boards which are compatible with Arduino Shields. The boards have header pin and screw terminal connectors for all the I/O and power input/output pins in addition to a USB (power and data) connector.

Table 2: GPIO Absolute Maximum Ratings

Figure 3: BRCK Block Diagram

We’ll have a more extensive datasheet available in the coming weeks, where we’ll also start testing out some different modifications to the BRCK using our own GPIO expansion board (more on that soon).

There are 3 primary channels for you to connect to the internet via your BRCK device that come in the box (others, such as satellite, can be added by you later):

1. Ethernet – Plug in an internet connected ethernet cable
2. WiFi Bridge – Connect your BRCK over another WiFi network
3. Wireless (SIM card) – Insert a local data enabled SIM card or use the inbuilt BRCK Net SIM card

Not a lot of people think about WiFi Bridging, know what it is, or why it’s a valuable tool in your connection arsenal. After all, you might say, “if there’s already a WiFi network to get on, why do I need to connect to that via my BRCK?” That’s a good question, the answer is if that network is your office or home network you probably don’t need to use it.

Why you need it:

[Image via SecureDataRecovery.com]

1. Secure tunneling via an onboard VPN
Let’s say that you’re traveling and using hotel, airport or coffee shop WiFi. How secure is that network? This is where the little tool in your BRCK comes in very handy. You see, we encrypt all comms between your BRCK and the BRCK Cloud (how you manage your device) and we also provide an add-on VPN service for you to be even more secure. You can already connect your computer to a VPN, but with the BRCK doing it, you can have up to 20 devices using that VPN at the same time, instead of them each having to have their own VPN connection. It’s seamless and it’s simple.

2. Hiding your connection
In a similar situation as above, when you’re on a public WiFi network, it’s useful if you’re a bit harder to find. When you connect your phone or computer to a WiFi network, it generally becomes a node on the same network. When the BRCK connects, it creates a subnet, which means that others with devices on the same network can’t easily find and use it.

3. Efficiency on your own network
Since there are 3 ways you can directly connect to the internet via your BRCK, if you setup your BRCK in your home or office as your primary WiFi access point, it can prioritize how it connects to the internet. For instance, it can have ethernet, WiFi and a 3g SIM card going all at once, and if one network goes down, it will seamlessly switch to the next priority (as seen below).\

Choose what order you’d like your BRCK to connect to the internet. Turn a channel on or off.

How does it work?

It’s fairly simple. The same way you find a WiFi signal on your computer or phone, is done via the BRCK, on this screen:

How you connect your BRCK to the internet

To WiFi Bridge, just select “WiFi Bridge” and choose the network you want to connect to.