You’ve been hearing a lot about our recent trip to Uganda, and we’re not through yet! In addition to working with Hackers for Charity, connecting schools around Jinja, and wirelessly controlling underwater robots, we wanted to explore the IoT side of the BRCK, too.

A number of people we’re working with are keen on using BRCKs to remotely connect sensors and other objects to feed data back over the internet. Some of the uses we get most excited about are around conservation, ranging from tracking vultures to locate poaching kills to remote weather stations in the savannah.

Two projects we know of, Into the Okavango (http://intotheokavango.org) and the Mara Project (http://mara.yale.edu ; http://mamase.unesco-ihe.org), are deploying networks of sensors to monitor entire ecosystems. By tracking water quality throughout the Okavango Delta in Botswana and the Maasai Mara in Kenya, each hopes to improve our understanding of these fragile environments, and by publicly posting the data (as well as pictures of their own expeditions) on their websites, they hope to inspire further appreciation amongst those who may never get a chance to visit these amazing places in person.

When we first started talking about going to Uganda, home to the source of the White Nile flowing out of Lake Victoria, we knew we had to find a way to get out on the river and try our hand at collecting environmental data via the BRCK ourselves. It just so happens that Paul, one of the expedition team members, was a river guide for seven years in Colorado before coming to Kenya, and had found out about an expedition being planned by Pete Meredith down the Karuma to Murchison Falls stretch of the Nile.

This stretch is home to the largest concentrations of hippos and crocodiles anywhere on the Nile, and has been rafted less than 10 times in history, only once commercially. It’s home to some of the biggest, most terrifying whitewater in Uganda – a country known for big, terrifying whitewater. Uganda is also a country that is industrializing fast, with hydroelectric power stations playing a key role in meeting fast growing energy demand.

All these new dams mean that rivers in their natural flow are disappearing quickly. The Bujagali Dam near Jinja covered 388 hectares in reservoir, flooding several miles of pristine whitewater. A new dam under construction near Karuma threatens to seriously affect the wildlife that concentrate downstream, and the Murchison stretch may no longer be runnable after 2018. With almost 85% of Uganda’s population unable to access electricity, the case against building more dams is hardly clear cut, but it does mean the time to learn from, share, and experience some of the most unique ecosystems along the Nile is running out.

As a team of gadget-headed engineers, we figured a good first step would be to have an affordable, reliable platform for collecting and disseminating information about these ecosystems. While the BRCK itself runs on an Arduino compatible microprocessor, we included a blank AVR chip with direct access to the pins through a dedicated GPIO port on the back. In Jinja, our lead RF engineer Jackie quickly soldered up a pH and temperature sensor kit to a GPIO MRTR, and off we went.

After much debate, and despite being a generally adventuresome and outgoing bunch, the Murchison stretch proved to be a bit too much for some of our team, most of whom had never rafted before. (Mention the word “Murchison” around here and even the local guides have to suppress a shudder of anxiety. Pete is still planning an expedition for springtime, for those with a serious bug for adventure and not too tight an attachment to this world – http://www.nalubalerafting.com/expedition.html.)

Instead, we opted to run the 30 or so kilometers of the Nile north of Jinja with Nalubale Rafting. Our goal was to get far enough away from “civilization” to test both the BRCK’s connectivity and the GPIO setup. The first day on the water, we hit five major Class IV/V rapids, including a three-meter tall, nearly vertical drop.

Along the way, we plugged in our MRTR and dipped our sensors into the water. Not being hydrological engineers ourselves, we weren’t quite sure what to do with any data we might collect, but we did learn some valuable design lessons around using the BRCK with the GPIO port (such as the need for a tighter connection between the MRTR case and the BRCK’s body). Ultimately, the hardware worked great, but some work remains on the software side to view our data on the web. We’ll be working on these tweaks and incorporating them, along with a means to visualize data fed through the port, into future updates.

After a hard day of paddling (and no small amount of swimming, only some of which was involuntary) we found ourselves at our campsite overlooking the river. It’s hard to imagine what this place will be like in 10 years. There’s nothing quite like eating dinner around the campfire, away from the constantly connected buzz of the city to make you appreciate the stillness of the wild.

As an expedition tech company, believe me, we get the irony. We still believe sharing these places before they disappear is the best chance we have for preserving them. There are far too many people who will never get to raft the source of the Nile, but we hope we can build a platform through which many more can experience it, if only vicariously.

The BRCK team is back in Nairobi! We’ve just spent six days testing BRCKs in the wild and learning from those who use our products to solve problems they face everyday. We’ve been a bit remiss in providing regular updates as we go. It turns out Jinja, Uganda, is an exciting place, and we were running from sunup ‘til sundown to fit everything in, leaving little time for blogging. We’ve now got hours of footage and records of conversations to go through, and we’ll be filling you in over the next week or two.

Our last update concerned a school on Lingira island in Lake Victoria. Despite having only a small village on the island, the school’s 12 teachers serve over 250 students from neighboring islands, too.

One of the head teachers, Frederick, showed us around – his passion for chemistry was apparent in the way he described the school’s water filtration system (using electrolytic chlorination to disinfect the water) and the solar power system that runs it. He was extremely gracious in sharing his hopes for delivering more practical, hands-on content from the web (he has his physics students building rheostats from scratch, determined to help them build an understanding of technology, even if it’s not readily available locally).

We tested a number of different types of antennas on Lingira and got the school connected. With the help of Hackers for Charity, over the next few weeks the “Living Hope” Secondary School will be building new content from the web into their curriculum, and inspiring their students to ever greater heights of achievement.

Context is Everything

We’ve been working with educators and content providers here in Kenya over the last six months to understand how technology can make their lives easier instead of harder. Why would we need to go all the way to Uganda to do the same, some might ask? Despite being only a 15-hour drive apart, (give or take a couple hours at the border) Jinja and Nairobi offer very different contexts for deploying edtech solutions.

Much of Kenya is very dry, with dust and heat being a major concern for electronics, both things the BRCK is designed to handle. In Uganda, with an average annual rainfall of over 150cm in the highlands (compared to Kenya’s average of 100cm, mostly concentrated near the border), water and humidity are greater concerns. The BRCK performed admirably in these conditions, with no noticeable moisture buildup in the case despite 30°C heat, 96% humidity, boat spray, and even being dropped in the floor of the raft.

(Note – the BRCK is NOT waterproof. Do NOT submerge your BRCK, leave it out in the rain, or expose it to overly wet conditions for long periods of time.)

In addition to different environmental conditions, the teachers we met in Uganda have unique goals and face different constraints. Not being educators ourselves, we built the BRCK as a platform for delivering any kind of content. While our partners at eLimu are working to deliver a custom package that conforms to the Kenyan curriculum via tablets, and Sugata Mitra’s “School in the Cloud” TED prize wish is seeking to provide access to the entirety of the web, Johnny at Hackers for Charity introduced us to Luom and David from Karamoja.org, working in northern Uganda near the border with South Sudan. Because even a 3G connection is difficult to achieve where they work, they are interested in blending online and offline content through the RACHEL platform that delivers offline versions of Wikipedia, Khan Academy, and other content packages.

We didn’t originally think of the BRCK as an offline solution, but the Karamoja.org team are excited enough about the ability to store content on the BRCK and periodically sync it with updates via WiFi from a drone or regular visits from staff to areas with a stronger signal, they made the 10-hour journey from Karamoja to Jinja to tell us what they want the BRCK to do. It was deeply humbling to see their dedication to bringing the same opportunities for learning to the children of rural Uganda that much of the rest of the world take for granted, and it’s these sorts of innovative ideas – that come from locals with years of experience working in their own communities – that drive us to design in Africa, for Africa, and to get the engineering and design team out of the office as much as possible.

Teachers Just Want to Teach

One of the primary reasons Johnny Long founded Hackers for Charity was the realization that technology offered boundless opportunities for learning, but only if teachers know how to use it. The schools in Uganda tend not to have IT departments, so he rallied the hacker community to provide their skill sets to help teachers focus on teaching, and leave the tech to the geeks. He now has a global volunteer network of programmers and hackers working to make technology simpler and easier to use.

One of the educators he introduced us to, Lisa Coggin – who helps run a number of schools north of Jinja – emphasized the need for a push-button solution to online content delivery. Teachers don’t have the time to sort out IP addresses and subnet masks, and even terms such as “dashboard” are not automatically intuitive to those working outside the tech sector. We’ve been pushing hard at BRCK to redesign the way people connect to the internet, and Lisa’s feedback on her experience with the BRCK was invaluable in steering us towards ways to further simplify our interface.

Partners in Connectivity

Ultimately, our trip to Jinja was a resounding success. Our hosts at Hackers for Charity were phenomenally generous, and we can’t thank those who took the time to share their experiences, thoughts, and hopes with us enough. We also took some time to have fun testing a couple other uses of the BRCK involving sensors and remotely operated vehicles, which we’ll get into in our next posts, but more than anything, we’re thrilled to see how excited everyone we met is about the BRCK, and to see the promise of BRCK+ED making a real difference in the future of learning in Africa.

It’s that time of year in Kenya again – the “short rains” are coming, there’s a slight chill in the air, and every now and then, the sky opens up for a brief deluge of water. It’s hard to avoid getting wet during the rainy season here, something we’ve designed the BRCK to handle (in small doses, at least).

It just so happens that one of our key partners, Hackers for Charity – who help schools and nonprofits solve technology related problems so they can get on with their jobs – has some interesting problems they are trying to solve in their work with schools around Jinja, Uganda, at the source of the White Nile and on the shores of the largest body of water in Africa, Lake Victoria. Time for a water-bound expedition, methinks.

Going into the wild to test our products in some of the most remote and challenging environments we can find is a core principle behind how we design in Africa, for Africa; to eat our own dog food, so to speak. Last year we took a trip to the barren shores of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya to live stream one of the best views in the world of a hybrid solar eclipse. Despite having that view blocked by a massive dust storm, the BRCK performed admirably, and we learned a lot about how to design for reliability in extreme weather. You can watch the video here:

This year, we’re taking a slightly different tack. When we started making the BRCK, we found some of the greatest need for affordable, reliable connectivity is in schools. We’ve been pushing hard for solutions in the edtech scene ever since, working with partners such as eLimu, Mozilla, and Sugata Mitra’s “School in the Cloud” TED prize wish to develop projects around innovative caching solutions to cut down the costs for data, a Raspberry Pi MRTR to turn your BRCK into a remote server, and testing connectivity solutions in schools from India to Ghana.

When Johnny Long, the founder of Hackers for Charity, first contacted BRCK back in June, he showed us his own attempts to build a rugged and reliable remote connectivity device. It looked remarkably like some early BRCK prototypes. It was clear we were trying to solve the same problems, and that by working together we could make a dent in the challenges facing students in rural Uganda. We set Johnny up with a BRCK and gave him free reign to hack it however he needed to build the solutions that worked for the schools he and Hackers for Charity supports.

At last, we have the chance to work with him directly. On Sunday, six of us will load up the Land Rover and make the 12-hour journey from Nairobi to Jinja. Johnny has graciously offered to host us at the bed and breakfast he and his wife run while we set about training up the Hackers for Charity staff on the technical aspects of the BRCK, testing antennas and signal amplifiers, and ultimately working to get several local schools online.

One of these schools is on an island in Lake Victoria, an hour and a half journey from Jinja by boat. Seeing an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, we decided to bring an OpenROV with us. We’re hoping we can work out a way to control the ROV through the Ethernet port on a BRCK, meaning we could “wirelessly” pilot the ROV through the waters of Lake Victoria. Since Ushahidi, our parent company, partnered with OpenROV to create OpenExplorer.com, a platform for sharing the fruits of grassroots exploration with the world, you’ll be able to follow the progress of the entire expedition at:

https://openexplorer.com/expedition/brckexpedition2014

As if this wasn’t enough, Jinja also happens to be at the headwaters of the White Nile, with some of the best high-volume whitewater in the world. A BRCK expedition can’t be all bed and breakfasts, so we looked up Pete Meredith, one of the leading explorers of the Nile (he’s ran it from the furthest source in Rwanda all the way to the Mediterranean), and Nalubale Rafting to help us spend a couple days exploring the river.

In addition to the edtech sphere, some of the primary use cases that are emerging for BRCK’s technology are around conservation. We’ve been talking to people who are monitoring the effects of hippo feces and wildebeest carcasses on water quality in the Maasai Mara and streaming live data on animal sightings and pH levels (and much more) in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. You can read all about the Mara Project and Into the Okavango here and here:

http://mara.yale.edu ; http://mamase.unesco-ihe.org

http://intotheokavango.org

Both of these projects have very kindly shared info about their open-source sensor package designs with us. We’ve put together our own package to test pH and water temperature, and will attempt to stream data from the river as we go. This will be a fantastic learning experience as we further develop IoT use cases for the BRCK, and we hope will prove a valuable source of insights for how we can better enable our conservation partners to inform the wider public about the amazing work they’re doing, and the importance of these fragile ecosystems.

So, with a very full docket, our soldering irons packed, and our heads and hearts full of excitement, the BRCK team is once again setting out into the wild blue yonder. Get ready to follow along – BRCK Expedition 2014 begins tomorrow!

So, you want to hack your BRCK, eh? Good for you! There are all sorts of goodies inside that you can use to do everything from monitor remote sensors to boil water (with a couple infinite loops thrown in your code, of course).

If you want to take your BRCK apart, just be aware of two things:

1. You WILL void your warranty. We strongly encourage innovative uses of our hardware, but we can’t be blamed for what happens. This is fun stuff, but if you break your BRCK, we won’t replace it.
2. Be very careful removing the modem. The flex cable underneath it can break if you work too quickly.

Happy hacking!

BRCK How To: Tear Down from BRCK on Vimeo.

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!

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.

“Shipping BRCKs”, if you say that title out loud, and quickly enough, you’ll know how we feel just about now… 🙂

First shipments: July 17th

That date above is the most important thing that everyone wants to know. Next week we’ll test the BRCK production line, and ship out the first batch of devices. Finally.

It’s been all quiet on the BRCK front since May as we buckled down on two things; first, making sure the quality of the cases was up to par, and second, using this time to keep improving the software. I can tell you that we’re finally there on both items!

We’re all extremely grateful for your patience, and we’re excited to finally get the BRCK into everyone’s hands.

Nairobi Launch

If you’re in Nairobi, we’re having a launch on Wednesday, July 9th at the Sarit Centre. Our partners, Sandstorm, have been kind enough to let us do a “takeover” of their store, and we’ll have BRCKs on display, showing how they can be used for business, personal use, and for connecting to the Internet of Things (IoT).

You’ll have a chance to use BRCKs, a few will walk away with free devices, and you can ask the team any questions you might have.

Come by and see us.

Building BRCK – Assembly from BRCK on Vimeo.

[Some shots from the factory, building BRCK, this week.]

I know that we weren’t naïve in the early days of BRCK thinking that it would be easy to build an amazing hardware device in Kenya. We couldn’t have been. We aren’t rookies. This isn’t our first rodeo – as the expression goes – and yet we still find ourselves months behind on getting our product shipped. Did we miss something obvious in our planning? Were we unrealistic about our capabilities and capacities? Did we simply have some incredible misfortune?

Honestly, the answer to all of these – at least on some level – is yes.

Sure, Reg and I have experience in bringing hardware products to market. We know the pitfalls of having injection-molded plastics made in China not looking correct. We’ve made small mistakes on board layouts that required last minute hand fixes and reworks. We’ve had suppliers completely drop the ball in meeting their delivery commitments. These things are absolutely normal and expected in designing hardware products – particularly if your entire company sits in the same room as the soldering irons and oscilloscopes.

On the software side, Emmanuel, Wesley, Erik, and I have all brought software systems and products to market. We have sat in the meetings were we suddenly realized that a critical feature/function had been completely overlooked. Participated in the user testing sessions where the look of bewilderment on the face of the tester causes your heart to sink into your stomach. Pushed ourselves through “highly productive” 3 am coding sessions that take hours the next morning to unravel in the clearer light of day. This is the reality of startup software engineering in the age of Android and Flappy Birds – actually I think it has always been this way.

We know these realities. They aren’t foreign or unexpected to us. And yet with every delay or misfortunate turn of events we still all stare at each other in shock and disbelief. We expect things to be different at BRCK. We see ourselves as a rugged and tenacious group of creatures that have our skin thickened by the hot African sun and our eyes steeled to navigating the rocky road ahead. It’s who we are. When we adventured out on BRCK Expedition Turkana we should have seen that this was a harbinger of things to come: trucks breaking down, satellite receivers mysteriously running out of credit, routes getting flooded, and the unlimited supply of things-not-going-as-planned. Sure we got frustrated. At each other. At the circumstances. It’s a natural human reaction. But we never gave up. We didn’t even entertain it in conversation. We all dug deep into the beautiful resource called human spirit and plowed ahead until we reached our goal. Sure we’ll do some things differently on the next expedition, we are fools to not learn from our experiences, but we know that the only thing that really matters in setting off is our collective resolve to persevere and push on towards the mark.

Which brings me back to BRCK. Earlier this week we finally received our delayed set of production plastics from China. They were awful. They looked nothing like the first articles that had previously been sent through or the amazing cast cases that were molded from 3D prints. As we sat and stared at the disfigured hunks of plastic that were meant to hold the product of months of hard work our hearts – once again – sank and we stared at each other in disbelief. Although we briefly entertained proceeding with production using the “ugly” cases, we know that we are flag bearers for engineering and designing products the right way in Africa. While we live in a culture where the standard of craftsmanship is often “good enough” we must be an example for something much higher.

So we are sadly forced to delay our production one more time and ask for patience. Patience from our customers who are eager to get their hands on a BRCK. Patience from our team as we continue the sprint to get BRCK to market. Patience from our backers who have shown so much faith in our vision and the potential for BRCK to be a game changer in the market. It’s a big ask on our part and we don’t make it lightly. We won’t sit back during this time and simply wait. There are many things that we know we can do better on the software and usability side of BRCK. We will continue pushing ahead on making the user experience more intuitive and useful. We will take our handful of ugly BRCKs and put them to the test in as many challenging situations as we can find. We will do everything within our abilities to use this misfortune as an opportunity for making BRCKs better. As painful as it is for us to be in this situation today, I know that at the end of this journey we will look back and be grateful for the additional opportunity to ensure that BRCK really lives up to its full potential as a world-class hardware device from Kenya.

We’re working with our case manufacturer to get a new timeline for delivery, which we’re expecting to be no more than a few weeks.

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)