How about topic to share plans for the BRCK? Latest ship date estimate from Erik and team is May 15th.

[Ed Resor]

RACHEL Team,

Don't hold your breath for May 15th, but there is a lot we can do now pooling the knowledge and plans that we already have and figuring out what we need to ask the BRCK team to tell us and possibly do for us in their own lab.  These updates implies they are already working on some of these challenges and opportunites.

I am hoping some of you guys are way ahead of me, as usual.  Consider me a willing guinea pig, or alpha tester if you want to make me feel better.  I am particularly counting on folks who have already been working with OpenWRT routers.

The KA-Lite team might also have some experience with OpenWRT routers as a platform for KA-Lite.  If we can do KA-Lite, I believe the rest of RACHEL is very efficient and straightforward.

I am hoping to host RACHEL on a BRCK with a USB Flash Drive for expanding the BRCK's storage and the BRCK's CPU running Apache and MySQL with Django.  I think this would be great for South Sudan and possibly Karamoja, Uganda and Soy, Kenya.  (I say I out of humility, because I do not want to speak for my friends who are on the front lines and in the classroom and also keeping things running.)

I am so enthusiastic about KA-Lite, that I would add a Raspberry Pi if needed to implement KA-Lite, instead of just the KA videos.  We can convince people to be patient, so CPU speed is not the problem, but reliability, easy troubleshooting, and easy repair may be worth the trouble and cost of adding a Raspberry Pi.

I am concerned that the BRCK appears to have only one jack for Wired Ethernet, but maybe another could be added with a USB to Ethernet dongle so a RACHEL Pi could be connected with wired Ethernet.  Alternatively, it may be possible with other internal connections to add another jack.  I would prefer to avoid a second router.  A switch might not work if one Ethernet jack is needed for WAN access and another for the LAN.

I expect the BRCK team will have lots of ideas to help us once they get version 1.0 out the door.

The BRCK's cloud connection capabilities would be fantastic for KA-Lite and other uplinking.  Even if one has to take it by bus and/or bicycle to the nearest working cell tower.

All for now, Ed

Project Update #26: A Quick BRCK Update Posted by Ushahidi ♥ Like

Hi Everyone, As always, a lot is going on at the BRCK HQ, but the only thing that really matters to us is when are we shipping these devices out to you. We're very close to getting your BRCK in your hands, and all of us have that as our singular focus. The original plan: We had planned to have the first shipment of BRCKs go out on May 1st. However, we had two components slow us down. Without getting into the messy details, suffice it to say that one manufacturer sent the wrong part, the other didn't get it done in time. The new plan: Due to these issues, we've had to reset our planned shipping to mid-may, and we're estimating May 15th. My apologies on the delay, and I do appreciate how patient you have been. I’ll keep you updated if anything changes. Other Updates FCC & CE Certification - A couple weeks ago we got our FCC and CE clearance for the BRCK. This means we’re now legal in the US and Europe, and a host of other countries on top of that. Very exciting and a major milestone! We intend to see BRCK coupled with tablets and Raspberry Pi solutions in Africa’s classrooms What we’ve been writing: Using BRCKs in Schools in Kenya WiFi Bridging - Why and How (also a sneak peak at some cool BRCK Cloud UI) Why power connectivity is directly related to internet connectivity Also, you can always keep track of things by following@BRCKnet on Twitter Hardware hacking - A unique feature of the BRCK is that it can be modded and extended with other hardware through it's GPIO port (on the bottom of the device). Simply put, this allows you to connect any type of sensor, machine or device to the BRCK. We've built this to be as open and usable as possible, so it's built to be Arduino compatible and we're publishing all of the information on it. Read up on the BRCK GPIO Datasheet here. A BRCK Excursion Finally, after a long week of being bent over computers, we made an excuse for a day out with the BRCK. This time we took a couple motorcycles out to the top of Mt. Suswa and went into the lava caves on top. Here’s a (very) short video of us having fun with a drone. https://vimeo.com/93878817 For this picture, we’re standing in the “Baboon Parliament”, a huge entrance to a cave, with it’s own skylight. The baboons live above, and they congregate, play and have meetings in the area where we are standing. It smells horribly, as all of the beautiful colors on the rock are from baboon urine, and all of the dirt below is baboon crap. If you go further inside, there’s a bat colony. The BRCK in the "Baboon Parliament" cave on Mt. Suswa Cheers, Erik, for the rest of the BRCK team.

Latest updates on the BRCK via KickStarter this morning

[Johnny Long]

Super quick note: I'll be in Nairobi to see our kids ( it's our daughter's 18 th birthday! ) and I'll be stopping by brick hq to jam with the team, and likely pick up BRCKs as well. I really want a RACHEL/GCF solution immediately posted, followed quickly by a Ka-Lite solution as well. 

I'll keep you posted!

Johnny

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[Ed Resor]

Johnny,

That's great.  I agree with your priorities, and I think you are the person to make this happen with support from Sam and others.

You have be so much help already to Karamoja and South Sudan that I did not want to put too much of the work on you, but it seems we are both going in the same direction.  Erik is also talking about this, but I don't think he understands yet how helpful this work will be in Kenya, especially if the government follows through with a 1.3 million Classmate laptops for government primary schools.  (The Kenyans out in the counties are already working on better ways to use these machines in their schools than dedicating one for each entering primary school student.)  Erik might be able to recommend a good coder to work on this as he and his team will be very busy.  Maybe an intern or a volunteer.  If heavy coding is required, say for KA-Lite, this would be a great Google Summer of Code project.

I have paid for 3 BRCKs.  If you cannot get a free developer's unit or two, I am ready to let you take one of my three as the BRCK by itself has only limited value in South Sudan.

If you have time, ask about buying a good Yagi or other high gain external antenna.  I think most rural base stations use 900 MHz. for GSM outside of the Americas.  I am ready to fund one antenna for you to test as well.  Kampala might have better antennas than Nairobi because of MTN's early implementation of "time slot robbing" in their GSM network software for links over 30 km and their later work with the Grameen Foundation on village phones (based on work I helped with in Bangladesh with Iqbal Quadir about 20 years ago).

I assume you are in touch with other members of the RACHEL team who have already worked on running RACHEL off a USB Flash Drive in an OpenWRT router, I think I read that the folks in Namibia are working on this.

BRCK should be able to tell you where they have forked off OpenWRT and even give you a Git Hub link to download their router software.

Finally, my daughter is arriving tonight, Tues. May 6.  You might want to get a copy of the  GBytes of Practical Answers.  (Unless you have been running BTSync at night and have it already.)

She is bringing two 1 Terabyte USB portable hard drives, 2 RACHEL Pis with 64 GB SD Cards, two 12 VDC power supplies and other goodies.  1 USB portable drive is for Soy Kenya.  Most of the other stuff will go up to South Sudan Thursday May 8th with Br. Emmanuel. He will be well stocked until he finds good implementers, so let me know if you to borrow anything.

Finally, finally, if you let me know your approximate schedule for Nairobi and if you will be returning by road, possibly through Kijabe, I might be able to arrange for you to have coffee with Zack Matere who can get to Nairobi as soon as this Thursday or Friday to pick up his hard drive.  If your are interested in contacting him directly, his number is +254 728 500-558 and he pretty reachable on WhatsApp and off course with text messages.  I think Soy could be a good demonstration of the effect of saturating a rural area with RACHEL because Zack is eager to make a difference and has like minded people, there is a good existing population of computers in schools, and Zack reports electricity outages average less than 10 hours of outages per week.

Keep up the good work and let us know where we can help,  Ed

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Edmund Resor
Development Adviser, Catholic Diocese of Torit, South Sudan
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