Since we last updated you a month ago, a lot of great things have been happening.

Reg and Erik are on their way to Austin, speaking at SXSW on Friday. If you’re in town, do come by and talk to us. We’ll have some BRCKs with us and will show you how it’s going. You can also ask any questions and geek out with us on what you can do from the software and hardware sides to extend the BRCK core functionality.

Though Austin is always a fun place to be for SXSW, this isn’t the only reason we’re there. While the BRCK is designed and engineered in Kenya, the final assembly and manufacturing is done in the US – in Austin, TX. We’ve started our production orders, production boards are being flashed, and we’re doing regulatory testing now as well, trying to get that all accomplished quickly so we can get your BRCKs to you as fast as possible.

Some other goodies:

The BRCK Eclipse Expedition A couple months ago you might remember that the BRCK team was chasing a rare hybrid eclipse in Northern Kenya, to the shores of Lake Turkana. If you missed out on following our adventure, you can read about it on Erik’s Blog. Here’s the video of that trip:

BRCK Eclipse Expedition to Lake Turkana from BRCK on Vimeo.

Boxes and Dashboard Sneak Peek

Jeff Maina joined the team in February and we’re excited to have someone of his design skills on the team. Here’s a sneak peek of the box and the dashboard.

Jeff holding the BRCK packaging (note: the final will be cardboard colored, not white).

Both Jeff and Emmanuel have been crunching out a bunch of pixels and code, so that everything from the initial setup process to the dashboard work. It’s all completely responsive design, so that you can access it via your browser on a phone, tablet or computer.

The Sandstorm (@SandstormKenya) team in Kenya is making the special pouches for the BRCK backers who came in at over $300. The original design was cool, but they just came back to us this week with an even more amazing and rugged case made of canvas, leather and brass. It feels like we moved from a Landrover to a Range Rover with it!

But, when does the BRCK ship!?

This is the date we’ve been hunting as much as you. It’s been a longer road than we though, due mostly to component manufacturing issues and having to redesign things at the last minute. While we could have pushed out a basic BRCK earlier, it would not have been something that you (nor we) would have been happy with. Assuming all of the final issues lined up around components, assembly and regulatory issues, the BRCK should ship in April. We’re bending all of our time, energy, sweat and tears towards making that happen. Thank you for your patience!

Erik Hersman, for the BRCK team

The BRCK is designed and developed here in Nairobi, Kenya. As you might expect, this is a very different experience than doing it in China, US or EU. While creating physical products is always hard. Doing it in Africa is harder. This is due to the difficulties around rapid prototyping, shipping costs and accessibility of components. However, it’s also the best way to understand the real problems and challenges that the BRCK is here to solve.

Reg Orton, BRCK CTO, is on this short video explaining some of what this means:

BRCK: Designed in Kenya from BRCK on Vimeo.

Some key thoughts on this from our end:

• We are not an off the shelf solution and rebranding
• We are pushing the limits of what is possible to do without
• Retail price point dictates smart design and challenging design
• We want our engineers close to the problem to really understand the requirements. This makes things harder than if we were designing in China
• We are developing a far better product by doing custom design
• Our volumes are lower in this market segment than if we were designing an ordinary router device.
• We are developing a company here, not a fly by night product. We want our v2 and v3 products to be heads above everyone else.
• Doing this allows us to rethink a lot of the assumptions that existing products use.

(Note: I’ll do another post later on the challenges, constraints and opportunities of designing in Africa, but here’s a real case study for why it’s important.)

Reg and Philip spent a day last week at Amboseli working with a group of conservationist called Lion Guardians, who have a permanent camp about 10km from the edge of the Amboseli National Park. They went at their request to see if BRCK could solve their current connectivity challenges before they invested in satellite equipment.

A Problem of Too Many GSM Towers

The situation is that Lion Guardians can get decent signal from one operator (Airtel) but very slow data connections. They can also receive signal from another mobile operator (Safaricom) in certain physical locations within the camp but it requires standing in one spot and holding their phone in a certain way. One of the workers is able to send/receive data by holding his laptop in one of these spots to get a decent data connection.

Reg and Philip spent a couple of hours surveying the signals with a combination of the OpenSignal Android phone app and the Wilson boost equipment. They found a very strong Airtel signal but it only provided edge data. They found more than one Safaricom signals, one of them provided no data – even with strong signal – and another provided reasonable edge performance. However, when locating in the exact spot identified, they were able to get 3G signal and faster data.

After attempting to secure a reliable signal from the identified 3G tower (they were tracking tower IDs) they stumbled upon a hypothesis for this type of situation, which isn’t an uncommon issue.

The hypothesis is that the 3G tower is the tower that is furthest from camp and therefore has the weakest signal. From most locations in camp, one of the stronger signals from the other towers is given preference and no/poor data connections are the result. However, when standing in a location that blocks the stronger towers (due to a building and a tree), the weaker signal take precedent and a solid 3G connection is possible. As we understand it, the device will usually “hear” several towers and then has to make a decision about which one it’s actually going to talk to. Signal strength, not quality, tends to be the easiest metric to engineer for.

A BRCK GSM Lock-on Solution

The opportunity is to create a means of forcing the selection of a specific tower ID even if other towers have stronger signals. In order to achieve this improved result we are going to need to address two principal issues:

• The first is that we have to develop a means of indicating to the BRCK which tower IDs are acceptable and which should be rejected.
• The second is to develop a means of doing effective site surveys that will allow anyone to identify the best carrier/tower combination for a given location.

If we can do this then we should be able to offer a very competitive performance improvement in locations with mixed/limited coverage. You can imagine being out with your BRCK in a new environment and getting a list of possible connections, and choosing the best one – not the strongest one, in the future.

This observation further reinforces our “engineered in Africa” position since we would likely not encounter this scenario in the West. The fact that Safaricom has multiple towers but only some of them have good data connections is a very unique problem for the emerging markets.

With respect to Lion Guardians, they have been told that a new Safaricom tower is coming that will be close to camp. This will likely provide them with the performance they are looking for. However, they will still need a BRCK since they want to have a single, reliable, self-powered connection that is shared using an outdoor Ubiquity WiFi AP.

With Christmas just days away, and with some of us just getting to our holiday shopping, we at team BRCK wanted to help you find that perfect last minute gift for the hardware hacker or adventurer in your life. Most of these items are things we’ve used and depend on, the rest are just cool!

This is an easy one for the makers on your list. I can’t think of a more useful or fun stocking stuffer than Sugru.

Sugru is a strong, colorful, moldable plastic that sticks to almost anything in it’s origional. After it air-cures it’s a firm, lightweight plastic with a foamy feel. All you have to do is open up the foil pouch, roll the putty around a little to get the chemistry going, and then start making. It sets up in about 20 minutes and cures in 24 hours.

We joke (kind of) that the first BRCK protypes were held together almost entirely by Sugru, Kapton Tape, and Love (we didn’t have budget for much else!). We’ve used it for loads repairs on and off the field, and early on we actually used Sugru to make quick and dirty button covers and rubber feet.

Great for someone who’d like to get into hardware hacking but doesn’t know a lot about it yet.

Sparkfun’s Proto-Snap is an intro to Arduino class on a single PCB. Basically it’s an Arduino Pro Mini 328, a USB Programer, buzzer, RGB LED, Push Button, and a little bit of Proto-board all pre-wired onto one PCB about the size of a credit card. This means your budding engineer can focus on learning the Arduino Scripting language with out the frustrations that come with trouble shooting code AND hardware at the same time. Once they feel comfortable with the language, the PCB is perforated, so they can start breaking off the extra components until they have a good, simple AT-MEGA 328 prototyping board with extras for going forward.

We haven’t used this yet, but like Sugru, it seems like one of those things that could become indispensable once you figure out exactly what it can and can’t do. Because it’s a paint the first thing most people will think about is fabric, but i’m really curious about painting circuits onto wood with it. It might also work well as solder-less field repair solution, but we’ll have to test it to find out.

Gold Plated Teensy3.0 with some extra upgrades. That’s really all you need to know.

Teensy3s are like any other animal in the Arduino compatible menagerie with one big exception: they’re powered by a 32bit ARM M4 processor. Comparing a Teensy 3.1 to an 8bit wonder like the Arduino Uno is like comparing a ’98 Geo Metro to the new Ford Fieta ST: yes they’re both useful and tinny, but only one of them goes very, very fast.

Beyond the gold plating, other upgrades to the 3.1 from the original are 4X memory (64K vs 16K), *TRUE analog output*, two A/D Converters, and 5v tolerance on the digital pins (though it still needs 3.3v for everything else) which is super handy if some of your accessories run at 5v. If you know someone who’s been using an Arduino board for a while, this will be a welcome upgrade. The Teensy 3.1 is one of those tools that will never be the bottle neck of your ambition.

We’ve found that many small solar panels quickly show their age in the face of real adventure.

But, not Voltaic Panels.

Voltaic designs their products with aggressive outdoor use and environmental responsibility in mind (less breaks == E Waist!) and as such, their panels are simple to use, light, strong and weather resistant. It also means they can offer a two year warranty. Also they pack more punch than almost anything else in their size class.

Your tech-head adventurer will love Voltaic’s 6 Watt Kit. It’s got a enough juice to charge most portable electronics but isn’t massive or messy (it’s 2013, why have a folding panel kit?). The kit comes with Voltaic’s V15 Battery Pack which is SUPER useful on it’s own for evening charging or even in town as a portable power station for your phone when wall sockets are scarce. I get two full chargers on my iPhone out of the V15 before it’s dead. The construction on the V15 is good as well.

If your out in the bush and you REALLY need to solder something, there’s a chance the thing you need to repair is also your primary source of electricity, which means your iron will have a hard time heating up.

Enter butane soldering irons.

Think of them as cordless soldering irons powered by old fashioned fire instead of electricity. Butain irons are nice for travel because they take up very little space compared soldering stations. Most butane irons also have the added ability to double up as crude heat guns for reflow and heat shrink, or direct flame soldering torches for soft metal work. I like the Weller PyroPen Jr because it fits a sweet-spot between performance and price and all things being equal, Weller tips tend to last longer.

BRCK’s been lucky enough to get some exciting press attention in the last month, here are the highlights.

Der Spiegel has a great article about mobile changing Africa and gives a great context for BRCK.

The Conversation featured BRCK as well

OH, we also made it into Wired UK back in November!!!!

We started out early from Kurungu towards Baragoi, we didn’t have any issues with bandits as there was an increased police presence in the area. It had rained the night before, so the ground for our whole trip was a bit damp, perfect for fast riding. It also created some very waterlogged areas, where we had to get completely soaked up to our waists in the water as we rode through.

Taylor Martyn riding through a deep puddle, north of Maralal, Kenya from WhiteAfrican on Vimeo.

Until we got to the rocks near Maralal, it was a fairly easy ride, then things began to toughen up. One puncture on Taylor’s bike, a quick change, and then off on our way again put us into a rainy Maralal by lunchtime.

We went through some massive puddles along the way, so our boots were completely soaked and we were then able to empty the water from them as we enjoyed some hot chai, chapatis and stew at a local hoteli.

Back into our wet socks and waterlogged boots, and we were off for some rocky, wet and slippery riding down towards Rumuruti – where the tarmac roads begin.

From there it was a quick run down to Gilgil, which we reached by 6:30pm and started for Nairobi, only 1:30 ours away (or so we thought…).

Now, due to the number of spills the bike that I was riding had endured, none of the lights worked, except for the headlight and the right blinker. We put Taylor’s fully functioning bike in front, me in the middle, and the Land Rover behind. The car alternator had gone out the night before, so we didn’t run the car with much electronics all day and the battery seemed to be holding up well.

20 minutes later, just past Naivasha, my headlight went out.

Now, the only place more dangerous than driving on a road in Kenya at night, is the side of the road. But, there we merrily sat, Philip and Reg testing out the electronics and finally realizing that the bulb itself was burnt out. I wondered what a flashlight would look like inside the headlight casing. It turned out to be surprisingly bright, so Fady donated his super expensive and very bright bicycling flashlight to the cause, which turned out to fit perfectly.

As we duct taped that jua kali light into place, the Land Rover’s batter gave out it’s final death call and the lights went out.

No problem, we put it in reverse and pushed it back down the hill to jump start it. Fortunately, we had a 12,000 mAh Brunton Solo 15 solar charged battery on hand (similar to their new Impel), and we hooked that up to the vehicles lights.

Off we rode into the night, now the truck in front, me on my raggedy old cludged together light bike in the middle, and Taylor riding anchor. It was now very cold, as it gets in the Kenyan highlands during the rains. Then, as we got up towards the top of the escarpment, at the 8,000 feet high level, it started to seriously rain. Now, it’s already hard to see at night on a bike with a headlight pointing up and blinding pilots, with people’s brights deflecting off of the droplets on your visor it becomes even harder. Pop up the visor and you can see again, but the cold and stinging rain now hits you in the face. Better to live with a little pain than die in a collision, so up it went.

We had just passed the Kijabe turnoff when the Land Rover’s second battery died. Fortunately, we were in my territory, as my alma mater RVA was 15 minutes down in Kijabe. We pulled over at a petrol station, called up my old dorm parent Mark Kinzer, and he found a friend who was willing to donate us a fully charged 12v battery for the remainder of the trip. 20 minutes later we had a battery and were moving down the road again.

16 hours after leaving Kurungu, wet, cold and utterly fatigued, we arrived home and well in Nairobi.

Thank god for old friends, good (enough) roads, no bandits and safety through the night drive. A bunch of creative problem solving was needed to get through, as well as stamina and perseverance in the face of the friction that is thrown at you on a trip like this. I can’t tell you how happy I was to get some warm food at home, a warm shower to thaw out my body, and a warm bed to crash collapse into as I went comatose for the night.

Would I do this trip again? Absolutely. In fact, “BRCK Expeditions” are a new thing for us that we’ll continue to do as a company and that we’ll look forward to hearing about from our BRCK users around the world.

I wrote up another blog post on my personal blog today about some of the things I learned about our team. They are:

1. Work together, help each other selflessly.
2. Think creatively and push harder to get through the friction.
3. Always get back up, persevere.

There and Back from BRCK on Vimeo.

A quick sneak peak at our adventures up country thus far.

Well, we had a great trek up to northern Kenya, to the shores of Lake Turkana to catch this rare hybrid eclipse (see past posts). However, we had a massive dust and rain storm hit 45 minutes before the event. Unfortunately, those clouds hit the sun just the few minutes before the eclipse.

All of us in Sibiloi saw the light dim out, but didn’t get to see the moon cross over the sun.

An airplane just landed, that we think got the eclipse from above the clouds. Wish we had one of those!

We’re now catching a partial bit of the eclipse as the clouds break open. Image shortly if we can capture it.

6am rolled around and we all jumped up, hungry, but rested. Sunrise was amazing. A beautiful color that shed some light on where we actually were. As I type this, there is a warthog about 20m away to my left, while both greater and lesser flamingos, along with some kind of wild goose, feed 20m away in front in Lake Turkana.

Sibiloi is distant and harsh. It’s a forgotten mixture of austere beauty, heat, wind and silence – that though it isn’t welcoming, is still a joy to be at.

I can think of no reason why 200-300 people would come here, except for the rare hybrid eclipse that we’re about to see tonight.

We swore we had driven through trees, but there were none around, not within 10 miles. This should be an object lesson in the illusions that one sees when riding and driving after so many hours on the road at night. It also became apparent that we’d have to lose any sense of privacy when it came time to find a restroom. It’s a good thing that this is not a mixed group. 🙂

All morning we’ve been working on getting a couple things tested:

1. Internet, we’ve got a BGAN terminal for satellite data connectivity provided to us by Indigo Telecom in Nairobi. They rent them out to people everywhere in the region, and have been great to work with. That’s working nicely, and hopefully we’ll get the eclipse livestreamed at brk.com/eclipse.

2. Mobile phone signal, Wilson has provided us with some long range amplification antennas. We tested them in Kurungu, where we turned a weak Edge signal from Safaricom that couldn’t transmit any data into a very strong Edge connection that was usable. They gave us a couple to test out, and we’ll do so again on the road back to Loiyangalane, from the a hill about 20-30km away. We don’t have a good line of sight from where we are to the tower in Loiyangalane from Sibiloi, so can’t get a signal here.

3. Camera setup for the Eclipse. What we’ll be streaming with is a Frankenstein-like beast, that’s cobbled together from a web cam, toilet paper roll and a Schneider large format lens, all held together by gaffer tape. It’s really amazing, the fact that the team has such a mix of camera and digital know-how to pull this off by Jon and Philip, was great to watch.

4. Power for the computers and BGAN. There’s a lot of “hack it together” knowledge on the team, and between Reg and Philip they were able to jimmy rig some solar to car battery to inverter to hacked together power plug. some people will tell you that this is “real field constructed power distribution” – we all know it’s a jua kali rig job.

While all that is being set up, it’s great to see the BRCKs humming along quite nicely. The BRCK flag now waves above the Land Rover at Camp Jawbone (named after the zebra jawbone we found when setting up camp last night).

Now we’re waiting for 5pm to get the livestream rolling. Crossing our fingers now for a cloudless sky tonight.

Update: It’s 5 minutes to the eclipse, we just had a massive sand storm and rain storm pass through. barely getting connection and a lot of clouds. Probably can’t stream, so will try to upload images.

Well, yesterday was exhausting. 14-hours of driving and riding later and we pulled into Kurungu.

We roared off at 6:30am from Nanyuki, only to have a puncture an hour later, that cost us almost 1.5 hours due to complications. This had a ripple effect that meant getting to Laisamis at 1pm. Rain hit us in Laisamis, and softened up the soil on our way to Ngurunit. That slowed us down a great deal.

We had about an hour left of daylight by the time we hit Ngurunit, some of the most amazing scenery you’ll see in Kenya, but we couldn’t stop for pictures as we had to use all the daylight possible for driving.

Night driving is hard anywhere, but it’s harder when you’re in mud, deep talcum-powder sand and rocks. We had all of that and we did it for 3 hours in the dark. There were a couple layovers, but thankfully we were going at a slow enough speed that no one was injured – and no bikes were put in too bad of a condition.

There were times where we got so fatigued, and then were staring at that single beam of light on a bumpy dirt road, so that the hard angles all looked like a gully or hole. Made for slow, stressful and hard riding.

Here’s where I get to say thank God that I grew up here in Kenya since I was a little boy, with the Swanepoel family (originally from South Africa). Father and son live up north here, and they welcomed us late at night with a warm meal and a roof and beds.

This morning we woke up to hot coffee, 800mg of Ibuprofen, bruises and soar arms/shoulders. Yesterday was hard. Today is harder. We’ve got a fairly easy go of it to the lake, then it gets hot and hard as we ride alongside the lake to Loiyangalane. After that, it’s even worse, so we here, with boulders. We’re about 30 minutes behind schedule, but I think we’ll make it okay, and hopefully in the daylight.