Kio tablets in action

Kiltamany Primary School is your typical forgotten school. A 20km dusty path from Archer’s Post leads to a small village between Kalama, Samburu and Westgate conservancies. Most women make beaded necklaces and most of the men herd goats. The children giggle coyly when you speak to them, but, like children everywhere, they are curious and eager to learn. As we sat around the campfire last night, it dawned on me how much energy we draw as a team from our “inner child.” I’m thrilled we are working with children this Expedition.

When we arrived at the village yesterday evening, the women sang and danced to welcome us. We took many pictures of their warm and carefully rehearsed welcome. At one point, a woman pulled out her phone and took a picture of us. In that beautiful moment all our hearts soared!

Until 3 years ago, the women of Kiltamany village would walk 13km everyday to fetch water. The new solar powered borehole water tower now means they have a few extra hours in their day. 6 months ago, they starting using tablets and learning how to read, write, add, subtract and now multiply. I watch in wonder as a 50-year old lady learns the concept of division. She weaves her thin fingers between the 12 strands of a beautiful beaded necklace to show me 3 bundles of 4 strands each.

Wmalimu Elijah and his class

The Kio Kit charged in the school last night. This morning, the headteacher, Mr Elijah Njogu rang the bell and the children from surrounding villages began to trickle in. “December holidays” do not apply to Kiltamany. We ran 3 classes back to back today. It’s crucial to our design process to understand how exhausting it is to be in a hot, dusty classroom with excitable children all day. Our appreciation of the work of teachers grows every time we go to schools. The children, like all children, take little time to start using the tablets. The headteacher lead them through lessons in counting, nutrition and force. After watching the catchy Ubongo songs, the students remembered key concepts that would otherwise take several lessons to reiterate.

The Kio Kit in a school room

Two children on the Kio

The BRCK Kio Kit

As always, we notice challenges and strive to learn valuable lessons. The classroom where the Kio Kit charged was dusty and the lights of the Kit attracted many bugs; we wonder how many dead bugs we will find in the Kits in a few months, what damage they may do. A shy girl peered at us through the classroom window as her goats grazed nearby; we have come a long way, but still have some work to do to ensure every child has the opportunity to go to school.

The community has not asked anything of us. They express again and again how much they value education and what they dream of for their future. As we sat around the fire tonight eating goat with the elders of this community, we heard a vision for a community that desires equal access to education for all of their children – boys and girls. This cultural shift towards a future that would see a small girl from Kiltamany one day sit as Chief Justice or even President of Kenya is a harbinger of the future that we as BRCK Education are honored to play even a small role in realizing for our country.

Loading up the Kio Kits for our education expedition to Samburu

The trip from Nairobi went well, as you can expect when you’re on the best roads in Kenya. There was only one small problem with a fuel line on the tired out old 1981 R80G/S when we got to Archer’s Post. I’m not bitter at all that my much nicer 2007 Suzuki DR650 is constantly overlooked by everyone as they drool over the old Beemer. We fixed the fuel line by finding a local motorcycle mechanic and raiding his parts bin.

Fixing a fuel line on the 1981 BMW

Shortly after, we shunted off of the main road into the dirt and made our way past Kalama town. Kiltamany Primary School lies about 15km past Kalama, and is the education facility for 170 children. We rolled into the school as the sun was setting, to the singing of the women in the community and the elders waiting for us for initial introductions.

An unexpected outcome of the evening was that we were going to be shown how the women are learning. Sylvester, the younger Samburu man who was responsible for this program, explained that he had built this program to teach the older women and mothers in the community how to read and do basic maths in order for them to understand the value of it. This encourages them to send their girls to school for the full first 8 years of primary school, and possibly beyond.

What was encouraging to see was just how hungry for learning the women in the community were. Sylvester asked us to be the teachers for the evening, so Nivi took over the classroom and worked through some mathematics with the ladies.

The Kio Kit was brought from the vehicle and the ladies watched a video on counting and number placement in Kiswahili. It’s by one of our partners, Ubongo Kids, out of Tanzania. This is one of the great values of the digital education kit, and our content agnostic approach, since we can partner with specialists on education content from anywhere and help get distribution of their content to the far edges of the country.

The Kio Kit about to be introduced to Samburu women

We ended the night with the Samburu elders showing us a luga (dry riverbed) and leaving us to camp for the night. Most places don’t have great connectivity, but we’re getting fairly strong 3g reception here and are able to do posts like this fairly easily.

Day 2 is going to be spent with the children from the school. Focusing on training up the teachers on digital tools like the Kio Kit and making sure that they’re comfortable, then doing some classroom exercises with the students.

This morning finds us on the road north of Nairobi, heading to Samburu country in northern Kenya. [Actually, it finds us delayed by 2 hours as we troubleshoot a bit of the new education software, but that’s besides the point!]

Each year we do an expedition, last year we did a trip to Uganda testing around education. The year before that we went up to the shores of Lake Turkana. Here’s a video from our trip last year to South Africa overland:

Kenya to South Africa / Nairobi to Johannesburg from BRCK on Vimeo.

Samburu Schools

This year we’re going up to Samburu county to do two installations of our BRCK Education school system called the Kio Kit. This kit comes with 40 seven-inch tablets that are all wirelessly charged and the BRCK device acts as the brains of the network, loading content supplied by a number of different partners. All the info on the Kio Kit is in this video below.

We Introduce the Kio Kit from BRCK on Vimeo.

The trip north takes us to a school near Archer’s Post, and then a couple days later to one near Korr. Both of them are well off the road, but have been electrified by the Kenya government’s school electrification program. So, while we’re going with some extra solar kits, we’re expecting to be able to use the school’s power system.

On this trip is Mark (UX), Jeff (Design), Nivi (Education), Janet (Ops), Rufus (Customer Service) as well as Philip, myself, Juliana and Peter. It’s a full roster and we’re looking forward to having an adventurous road trip.

We’ll be posting on this trip for the next few days, so you can follow along here on our blog, on our Twitter account @BRCKnet and on our Instagram account @BRCKnet.

There’s a press release (which always seem boring to me, but have added it to the bottom of the page) about Nivi Mukherjee, the founder of eLimu and long-time iHub member, joining the BRCK team offically. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her grow her company from nothing, getting out ahead of the curve to create a new way to learn, study and test for the big KCPE exam that every kid in Kenya takes in 8th grade. She’s fought and shown the scrappy leader that she is for 4 years, so when we started looking at BRCK Education more seriously six months ago, Nivi was the one I went to for help. While we know a lot about tech and hardware, she knows a lot about education, teachers and students. She also taught us new fancy words, such as “pedagogy“.

The past 4 months have seen us working closely together with the eLimu team on some great projects, and without her understanding of how the education system works we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Nivi is now the President of BRCK Education, a new business unit for us that focuses school-based solutions where the BRCK software and hardware can be used to make a real difference. We’ve seen this happening in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya as more schools get started with tablets and computers. Nivi’s job will be to fulfill on this in our own backyard here in Kenya, and also to take it to the rest of Africa and the world.

More news on this front soon…!

Press Release

BRCK appoints its Education President
Nairobi, 4 August 2015 – BRCK, a local hardware and services technology company based in Nairobi, has announced the appointment of Nivi Mukherjee as the head of its newly created division, BRCK Education.
Ms Mukherjee will be charged with driving BRCK’s efforts to provide hardware and software solutions to enable online and offline learning.

Commenting on the appointment, BRCK Board Member and Ushahidi Executive Director Juliana Rotich said:
“We are delighted to welcome onboard Ms Mukherjee who has a wealth of knowledge and expertise to take over the Education division. Through this division, we aim to creatively and effectively deliver 21st century technology that will revolutionize the education sector and eventually take digital literacy in Kenya and in the African continent to the next level.”

Ms Mukherjee joins BRCK from eLimu, one of the most talked about EdTech innovations in Africa where she spearheaded the digitization of KCPE curriculum content for Kenyan upper primary students and the development of a literacy application in English and Kiswahili.

The new president is expected to leverage the BRCK, a pioneering connectivity device that is designed to work in environments where electricity and internet connections are problematic. The BRCK is a WiFi access point with an 8-hour battery-life and the ability to store up to 2 terabytes of educational content.

“I am excited to join this great team that has demonstrated its ability to innovate effectively for Africa. I am privileged to be able to leverage this game-changing device, which will enable instantaneous access for up to 40 devices, to promote digital access in education. What remains now is to curate localized and culturally relevant digital content that will improve the learning experience and outcomes for millions of students on the continent,” Ms Mukherjee said.

She reinforced BRCK’s user-driven commitment towards developing sustainable and interactive tools adding that the organization is keen and ready to partner with teachers, parents, students, like-minded organisations and government institutions in order to bring far-reaching changes in the way education is delivered.

Notes to Editors
About Nivi Mukherjee
Nivi is a social entrepreneur, technophile, community volunteer and 2014 East African Acumen Fellow. She is passionate about educational initiatives that foster development and fun. She has spoken as an expert on eLearning, the African tech scene and innovation at: TEDxStellenbosch, South By South West – Austin TX, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan Business Conference Africa Innovate as well as appearing on Al Jazeera, CNN, Euronews and being featured on BBC and The Economist. In her spare time, Nivi organizes cultural festivals, bakes, knits, runs half marathons, folds origami and plays Fusball.

About BRCK
BRCK is a connectivity device designed in Kenya to meet the demanding challenges of life and work in harsh environments where electricity is intermittent and the internet is spotty. BRCK works to alleviate these issues by delivering a redundant data connection combined with a reliable power source to ensure that nothing gets in the way of getting the information you need. BRCK can support up to 40 devices, has an 8-hour battery life when the power is out, and can jump from Ethernet, to WiFi, to 3G, to 4G seamlessly.

BRCK is the first company to pursue and deliver using entirely ground up design and engineering of consumer electronics in East Africa. The initial BRCK units started shipping in July of 2014 and by February of 2015, thousands of BRCKs had been sold in 54 countries around the world, in both developed and developing markets.

The company is a spin-off from the world acclaimed Ushahidi, a Kenyan technology company which builds open source software tools and which has received accolades for the impact that its creative and cutting-edge solutions are having around the world.

We’re receiving increased interest from Education focused organizations to use the BRCK to enable access to their content both online and offline.

One of the partners we’re working with is Studi Academy in Tanzania. Studi is passionate about changing how students in secondary schools in developing countries learn. They provide an online platform for students to engage with localized content adapted to local syllabus and language through educational animations & challenging quizzes, games to add fun and competitiveness and a structure that supports students to pass their critical exams.

Dar es Salaam city center

School “advertising” in Mbagala area, outside Dar es Salaam

One of the schools Studi is working with is St. Anthony’s school, a secondary school on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. They are using BRCKs to connect their computer labs to the internet, and more importantly to Studi’s content. The Head of Computer labs, is responsible for ensuring students can access Studi content easily.

We visited the school to see their experience first hand. Their BRCKs  have been working great though the mobile signal is intermittent. We ran some tests and  recommended that they get a unidirectional antenna as they have a cell-tower quite close to where the computer labs are located.

BRCKs connected to mobile internet from SIM cards

We also visited Acacia Secondary School, 30km from Dar es Salaam. Their school is 8km from the main road, sitting on a beautiful 55 acre piece of land. Before they receive BRCKs from Studi, it was important for us to run some tests to see what the best use case for their students  would be. For internet connectivity, we suggested that in addition to BRCKs, they should get an amplifier and an omnidirectional antenna. We also recommended that they cache content locally on the BRCK, as it has expandable storage capacity, giving the students a better experience than if they were trying to interact with the content online.

Acacia School buildings are 8km from this entrance

With many insights gained on how we can support our partners working in remote educational institutions, we continue to be excited about the potential to provide hardware and software tools to enable online and offline learning.

Are you running an educational institution or making education focused investments ? Talk to us – [email protected]

The Rhino Charge is an annual off-roading competition in Kenya where racers are required to visit a number of checkpoints while traveling the shortest possible distance across difficult, trackless terrain, where speed is not a necessity although you have to complete the race before 5:30pm. You can see some of our coverage from last year and how we helped the Rhino Charge HQ get internet here.

Due to the ruggedness and remoteness of the event, the BRCK team sponsors a car and we use this opportunity to go test our connectivity in the wild (plus, it’s just a fun thing to do). This year the event took us north past the equator, 100 miles past Isiolo and 40 miles into the semi-desert region of Kalepo (Namunyak Conservancy) in Samburu, Northern Kenya. The drive there is beautiful but the distance and heat can take a toll on the vehicles. For those who follow our blog, we are sorry to disappoint, there will be no vehicular breakdown drama on this trip. The Landrover performed like a champ partly due to the relentless efforts of Reg to make sure the car was properly serviced and ready for the task.

BRCK CTO Reg Orton at the Rhino Charge 2015

The drive into the conservancy is amazing. When we got there we found a very upbeat crowd with everyone looking forward to a great race. There were two ways to connect to the internet, the first and closest to the race headquarters was Liquid Telecom’s satellite backhaul connectivity. They had an impressive show of technology and branding however as is often the case with connectivity at events the system kept getting choked due to the volumes of people trying to get on at the same time. The second provider was a special Safaricom tower 200 meters away from the headquarters that had Edge (2g) connectivity. We drove there and it was very interesting to see how many locals and event staff were huddled under a tree next to the tower surfing the internet.

A mobile phone signal where there wasn’t one before

Back at the campsite, the connectivity was even slower and no sooner had we turned on the BRCK did someone shout, “there is a WiFi signal here and it is very strong!” After dinner and around the campfire, we started discussions around the previous year Rhino Charge event, to up the ante, I told everyone that they can use the BRCK to watch the highlights from 2014 race.

We had pre-loaded the BRCK with a number of videos, including last year’s Rhino Charge as well as some other offroad racing videos. Several people jumped on and were amazed at the speed and quality of our remote data offering. One person asked whether the Rhino charge was the toughest race and we were able to watch different videos with the conversation talking about the difference between rhino charge and Superkarpata a European offroad 3 day challenge through a dozen countries.

Race day came on Sunday. We were up bright and early to visit the checkpoints as we chased BRCK vehicle (the #18 Range Rover) to provide moral support. Several hours after the race started we made our way to the “gauntlet”, where they put 3 checkpoints close to each other for spectator enjoyment. As we waited for the next car, a bunch of guys asked us why BRCK was here and the connectivity was slow and I run back to our truck and came back with several BRCK devices and the complaining guys were soon glued to their phones streaming content from our WiFi connection. Big win for team BRCK.

We soon relocated to the last checkpoint to welcome our truck at the finish line. We had our BRCK out so that we could follow the GPS coordinates of #18 and our connection was much faster than the available options at the checkpoint.

We were soon getting twitter updates of the race progress, other cars on fire, evacuations and finishers. 67 meters to the end of the race, our #18 car which was out of brakes, broken engine mounts, lost wheel nuts, the starter caught on fire, frying the whole electrical system and that was the end of the race.

To add to the excitement, just as we were getting this news on our car, car #64 finished the race just as the whole bottom end lit up on fire… two bottles of fire extinguishers later, they officially punched in their completion ticket. Crazy times indeed!

It was so nice to see all the competitors leaving it all on the field. I however was aware of the lack of native Kenyan spectators at the event. We should be aware that statistics have proven that conservation of any kind in any continent cannot be achieved by a select segment of the population. I hope that the Rhino Charge does more to get local spectators back to the race next year. See you again in 2016.

The heritage of BRCK is that we were born out of Ushahidi, which builds platforms for changing the way information flows in crisis and disasters events globally. It shouldn’t be a surprise then that we think a lot about how BRCK hardware can help extend the ability of disaster response teams around the world.

BRCK+Pi – new design concept for production

1: A Rugged Microserver

With the recent development of the BRCK+Pi, which marries a RaspberryPi + hard drive + 8-hour battery, to the BRCK in a simple package (full specs below), it gave us a chance to think through what could happen beyond just connectivity in tough environments. After all, with this extra computing power it turns the device into a remote microserver, where you can cache content locally and do stuff even when in an offline mode.

In short, the BRCK+Pi allows not just the standard BRCK connectivity, but now also the ability for content and computing in a small, rugged form factor that can be used anywhere.

2: Software for Disaster Response Teams

This allows us to provide a stack of disaster-related software that could be loaded onto the device. The goal being to have a core software stack available on BRCK+Pi devices to humanitarian response organizations globally. The purpose being to help speed recovery after a crisis, making first responder’s lives more efficient and making technology work where it normally doesn’t.

While anyone who makes these tools can put some time into making their tool work on the microserver, I was thinking to list out the full grouping that came out of a discussion on the CrisisMappers network recently, and then prioritize them into foundational tools that could be made into a “package” to download onto your own BRCK+Pi and which would help the broadest set of disaster responders. I asked the following questions:
   

• What ideas do you have that would fit on BRCK+Pi?
• Which problems could this help with?
• Are there any software packages that you’d find valuable in the Crisis Stack?

3: What Goes in the Box?

First pass on this is about a set of basic tools that we can think of as a “core package”. We had an open call with members of the CrisisMappers community where we talked about the types of software needed and use cases for it. The initial tool list looks like this, though the repository is open on Github and can be changed, added to, or just plain branched in the future:

• OSM tiles (Light) – (Ex: Haiti Browser)
• OSM Sync – Make a mark on a map served off the BRCK+Pi and synchronize with OSM API occasionally
• SMSsync – Use the BRCK wireless modem to allow for text messaging, rewritten to be native on the BRCK Device
• LDLN – An inexpensive, distributed local data hub, with mobile apps to address damaged communication infrastructures after natural disasters
• Sahana Eden – A suite of tools designed specifically for organizations during disasters, including organization registry, project tracking, asset tracking and more.
• Cellular Coverage Mapping – Find a tool to report the signal strength measured if connected to cell network to contribute to existing project (see: http://www.ebola-cellular-map.resudox.net/)
• Etherpad Lite – The most basic and simple communications tool we know of
• Image sharing tool – Still to be determined, but could be BitTorent Sync for file management (protocol for local sync, not for normal torrenting activities)

Secondary applications to consider are:

ONA – http://ona.io/
Enketo – https://enketo.org/
FrontlineSMS -http://www.frontlinesms.com/
Ping – http://pingapp.io/
DragonForce – http://www.drakontas.com/
Ushahidi – http://ushahidi.com
WordPress – http://wordpress.org
Flickr or YouTube Sync
Wiki  – Gollum, Dokuwiki or Mediawiki
VPN service

4: Getting Stuff Done & How You Can Help

An idea, once outlined, is good but not enough. Now it’s time to build something. This week the BRCK and Ushahidi teams have been working on getting the basic libraries to run the “core package” onto the device. We’ve also setup a Github repo for Crisis Stack that is open for others to join. Beyond that, the team is getting Etherpad and Ushahidi 2.x working on the device.

Mikel Maron of Open Street Map was on the call and is helping to get the OSM tiles working.
Praneeth Bodduluri of Sahana also joined us and is helping to make Sahana Eden available.
I’m in contact with the LDLN team and we hope to have them also contributing to the core package.

We’re on the way to getting an alpha of Crisis Stack out by mid-February, we need the community in the disaster response space to help to make it happen.

If you’re a software engineer and would like to be involved, check out the repository and get involved with one of the projects that’s being put on the device.

If you’re a first responder, let us know what we is really needed on the device. We’ll need testers on this front as well, of course, but that won’t happen until we get some basic items working on it.

—————————————————–

BRCK+Pi specs

BRCK+Pi – initial working prototype

• IP51 water and dust ingress protection
• Dimensions: 132mm (5.18 inches) by 72mm (2.82 inches) by 45mm (1.77 inches)
• Native Raspberry Pi network connectivity when connected to BRCK
• Input voltage 5 – 18V, 0.1 – 3A charge current.
• Solar compatible charging
• Over voltage and reverse polarity protected inputs
• Dual USB connection to BRCK+Pi for Keyboard or Mouse (500mA)
• Mini-HDMI Video Out
• SDXC support (up to 2TB of SD storage), normally ships with 16GB
• BCM2835 SoC
• 4GB native storage (upgradeable to 500GB with extra cost)
• 512MB RAM
• 3.7V 8,000 mAH battery
• Can be preconfigured with Raspbian, but compatible with any Raspberry Pi distribution.
• Connects to the BRCK by stacking underneath, screws on for security


You can find the BRCK specs here.

Farms and Ranch WiFi

I took off this weekend to test some BRCKs out in some of the more rural parts of Kenya. In this case, I was invited by Michael Nicholson who runs the cattle part of the El Karama Ranch situated near Nanyuki at the foot of Mount Kenya. The ranch is approximately 17,000 acres, and it has both a safari lodge and a lot of wildlife on it, as well as a 700-head cattle ranch. It’s an impressively well-run operation, and I got to see much of it.

The tower and gate at El Karama Ranch

It turns out that the ranch is about 13 kilometers from the nearest mobile phone tower, and with a normal phone sitting out at their gate, you can get some spotty edge connectivity. Fortunately, Michael is a tech-oriented type of rancher, so he was already familiar with modems and routers, and had educated himself on the types of antennas and WiFi repeaters he’d need. There was a lookout tower at the gate that already had two of Poynting’s amazing long-range directional antennas (which we call “swords” as they look like a weapon from a fantasy game).

He had a working setup, but his biggest problem was the modem would randomly shut off. This isn’t a problem on the BRCK, because as soon as the modem loses connectivity, we tell it to search again and reset and reconnect. A simple solution would be for Michael to replace his current Safaricom modem with the BRCK (see below).

Switching out a Safaricom modem with a BRCK

Heading into the Bush

The next day I took off up further north, past Isiolo to the Samburu area around Archer’s Post. This is a dusty, dry and hot land fed by the Ewaso Nyiro River. The wildlife research teams at the Grevy Zebra Trust and the Ewaso Lions had asked if we could test out if they could get connectivity.

This elephant isn’t friendly, he took off after us for a bit

Grevy Zebra – endangered

It turns out that to get to their camps you have to drive through the Samburu National Wildlife Reserve, which is amazing and has plenty of animals of all sorts. We saw everything from crocs and elephant to Grevy zebra and oryx. As fun as that was, it took us 1.5 hours to get through the park and many kilometers beyond to get to their camps. These teams are in real bush country with no towers anywhere around them.

Me, standing at that ONE tree where you can get network signal

However, like almost anywhere you go in Kenya, there’s always some random tree that you can stand under and get connectivity (that’s me at said tree, above). They knew where these were, so we started to visit the locations to see what might work. Of the 5 areas we tested, one had a strong signal but was a couple kilometers from the camp. Another had a weak and usable signal near camp, and one had a possible signal in the middle of the Ewaso Lions camp. Very positive, and doable!

In the testing kit, I take a couple directional antennas as well as a small omnidirectional antenna to walk around with. On top of this, I have a way to mount an amplifier (booster) in the car to increase the signal gain on the antennas. It’s a great bit of testing kit, and it proved out incredibly well.

My suggestion to them is that they’ll need to raise a small pole on the top of their hill. Add a Poynting antenna, Voltaic solar panels for power, a BRCK and an amplifier. If they do this, we’ll likely test out our BRCK Extender at this location as well, which increases the WiFi range from about a 10m radius to approximately 900m. Since both the Extender and the amplifier need external power, there will need to be a small battery which is charged via solar. This whole concoction will run just over $1000 and should be fairly hands-free once setup.

BRCK and Poynting antenna

Andrew helping with antenna holding

Using an Android app with the BRCK to test signal in the vehicle

Summary

It turns out that BRCKs end up being a great solution for some of these rural and off-grid type places. While we can’t drive everywhere to do testing for everyone, we do try to get out and see what’s going on and see if we can help. It gives us a better understanding of our customers knowledge, and also a better feel for their pain points.

With all the hubbub about the team’s epic three week dash to South Africa and back, some may have forgotten that only a month and a half ago, the other half of the team were cruising Lake Victoria and the Nile in Uganda. The video edit is done, though, so we’re bringing it back!

We started off with a plan to work with Johnny Long of Hackers for Charity to connect schools around Jinja to the internet and learn from local educators how we can build technology that meets their needs:

http://brck.com/2014/11/brck-expedition-2014-exploring-edtech-on-the-water/#.VJP-mACU

We wound up visiting the Living Hope Secondary School on Lingira Island in Lake Victoria:

http://brck.com/2014/11/brcked-expedition-connecting-lingira-secondary-school/#.VJP–ACU

http://brck.com/2014/11/brcked-expedition-part-two/#.VJP-8ACU

On the boat ride back, we broke out our OpenROV underwater exploration robot:

http://brck.com/2014/11/going-deep-with-openrov/#.VJP_JACU

Finally, we took a raft trip down the White Nile to play with antennas and sensors, to see how the Internet of Things could help conservation efforts in threatened ecosystems:

http://brck.com/2014/11/how-the-internet-of-things-can-help-save-our-rivers/#.VJP_TACU

You can see all that and more (read: zany BRCK team adventures) in the video above. It’s been a heck of a year for us here in Nairobi, and we can’t wait to see what 2015 brings! (Did someone say they need a weather station on Mt. Kenya…?)

It has been 18 days since we left Nairobi for South Africa, then returned to Kenya. In that time, we passed through 8 countries, 18 border posts, covered 9,000 kilometers and saw some of Africa’s amazing beauty and realized just how vast of a continent we live and work on.

Sunrise riding is beautiful

A BRCK Expedition is meant to be challenging, as well as provide a testing environment for the device, and of course to have fun as well – this was all of those things.

Philip fixes his broken throttle cable roadside, early morning in Tanzania

Our path to SA and back to KE

Through the BRCK, and partners like Inmarsat (with their iSavi device), we were able to stay connected on the road to the internet. We learned about the hassles of SIM buying, registering, activating, buying airtime and converting that to internet data in each country. On the motorcycles we stayed in conversation using Sena headsets, which meant we could warn each other of dangers, as well as have conversations on future products and features (of which there are many). Around campfires in the night we discussed our current challenges and ways we could make things better.

Inmarsat iSavi, BRCK, computer and solar panels

The team back home, as well as our families, tracked our progress and helped us remotely out of some problems. Whether that was trying to get the information on the gap needed on a 1983 BMW R65 spark plug, or finding a place for us to camp in the next couple hours when things got a bit dicey. Having the ability to communicate and people who anchor the expedition team were amazing luxuries to have.

We used a couple channels for public updates, including the BRCK Twitter and Instagram accounts, Open Explorer as our geographic diary of sorts, and of course the BRCK blog. However, on the trip north we also had a cool gift from the Inmarsat team of a satellite tracker for the vehicle.

The route back north to Kenya

A Few of the Best and Worst Experiences:

[BEST] Makuzi Beach Malawi – a beautiful, unexpected, and much welcomed oasis. We did amazingly well on our 500km that morning, so were there by lunch and had a whole afternoon to rest, fix things and have some fun before continuing.

Paul drives the underwater OpenROV

Matt catches this amazing sunrise in Lake Malawi

[BEST] Hospitality of Tech Communities in Africa – It was amazing to roll into Lusaka, Zambia and be welcomed by the BongoHive and find the same in Harare, Zimbabwe from HyperCube and the tech community there. Finding like-minded individuals who were wonderful hosts was just what we needed.

At HyperCube in Harare, Zimbabwe

[BEST] BRCK Working Everywhere – Having someone in the vehicle working to get the BRCK going with a new SIM in a new country, as it was attached to an amp and vehicular mounted antenna, meant that we could stay connected (almost always). Rolling up on the vehicle and watching my phone sync up with messages and updates was cool, even in traffic. Mostly, it was gratifying to see the tech we had built withstand the harshness of travel and terrain, and just work.

Kurt readies a BRCK with the Wilson signal booster

[WORST] Border Crossings – It’s a toss-up whether the Tunduma Border crossing from Tanzania into Zambia is worse than the Beit Bridge border crossing from South Africa into Zimbabwe. The first is a chaotic mess, and the second is a process nightmare. (Note: Crack-of-dawn is the best time to do both crossings)

Beit Bridge border process into Zimbabwe

[WORST] Speed bumps and Police in Tanzania – The speedbumps in every town slow you down, plus the number of police waiting to stop any vehicle. The worst are the ones with radar guns, as their only mission is revenue generation. It seems that all Tanzanian police are unsubtly looking for bribes all of the time.

A police officer in Tanzania not asking for a bribe

[WORST] SIM card frustrations in new countries – Kurt wrote about this in a past post, so won’t belabor it, but it was extremely annoying to have to figure out the obscure and opaque mysteries of getting a SIM card connecting to the internet in each country. One of my personal goals is to make this easier for other travelers in the future.