The internet, to me is the most amazing invention of all time. It takes interaction and sharing of ideas to a whole new level breaking every barrier previously known to man.

In appreciation of this every year Mozilla gathers makers, designers, builders, coders and creative folks to come into one innovation garage. This allows individuals to share ideas and make them a reality.

Like many other firms, BRCK exists only because the web exists. It is important to us to share our knowledge and ideas with the community and to build on some of those ideas together.  A couple of months back we decided to follow through on working with the Raspberry Pi.

We have used it on projects such as our education project.
In February of this year Erik asked me to load some applications that we can use for offline use on our BRCK+Pi add-on for the BRCK device.  This takes a normal BRCK and then adds a Raspberry Pi compute module to it to provide computing and more storage to the already existing connectivity on the device.  In essence we get a rugged micro-server.

A few hours later I had Ushahidi and Etherpad-lite on it. The next step was to try and figure out what can we do to take this to the next step. This is where the idea of CrisisStack came into play.

We thought it would be nice to have a clean interface where users can easily choose what applications they want to install, launch and delete as they wish. It would act as a form of the offline internet. A user would be able to interact with this and they should feel like they are on the open Web. If they then get a connection to the internet the applications on the device can then sync the data.

We are proud to release a Beta Version of CrisisStack to the community via crisisstack.com

Some screen shots below.

It was therefore my mission to share what I have done so far with open technology with the greater network of people at Mozfest. The event was scheduled to run from Saturday through to Sunday.

For those of you who have attended Mozfest before, I am sure you would agree that we need to invent a way of being in two places at once. There was a lot happening from the open garage to different training and discussion sessions. So much to do, but impossible to do it all.

I started off by showing off my BRCK to a few folks and a standard raspberry PI explaining how things work. I then took it a step ahead and decided to expound on how the device would work when off the grid.  I then took out the BRCK+Pi from my bag. I highlighted what we had done differently and how one can achieve it .

We started of seating around showing them the application and how it works. We then sat down and started chatting about how we could improve the system.  Some of the things we talked about were:

Having a central system where we could pull all our application(s) from. This would act more like an application store. This would allow us to have one central place where:

1. Developers could upload their applications
2. We could all collaborate on what it would take on building a standard for web applications to truly run offline
3. How to build Operating system independent web applications. That is one that runs on phones, tablets, desktops and the raspberry PI.  
4. Extending firefox OS for the raspberry PI
5. Building add-ons that make it easier for the whole community to add anything they needed to an OS.
6. Providing a priority on application using the data

Because pictures are worth 1000 words

 

All in all it was amazing. We talked a lot about Linux, possibilities with these offline web applications, packaging and distributing them even beyond Raspbian(Linux distribution for raspberry PI).  We left with some improvements that we are looking to implement. Later this week we plan to have an LDLN release for BRCK+PI.  We also looked into a “lighter”(less resource heavy) language that would then  result a faster and smoother experience. Remember on these small devices we have to be selfish when it comes to how we use our resources because of many other factors such as power(which would most likely be from the battery).

I am going to start working on this in the coming weeks in a different fork of the same repository. I think it is safe to say this was some good fun and I look forward to Mozfest next year.

Watch this space to see what we shall have for you in the next few months.

To keep up with CrisisStack please visit us here

 

It has been approximately 5 months since I joined the BRCK team, and among some of the things I enjoy most is getting a chance to travel. I get to see what others think of our products and interact with them, listening to what features people would want among, see what works and what doesn’t in their world.

About three weeks ago, I got a call from the team that works at World Vision. They were looking for a solution to give internet connectivity to communities which would allow them to get connected to the rest of the world. With internet connectivity, the community will be able to access government services, access educational content and sell some of beautiful art work abroad.

At first I thought it would be pretty simple, get into a car and drive down. Now if you have been to Africa on safari, you know that you are going quite far if you are taking off in a land cruiser with two 90 Litre tanks.  This did not discourage me as I love seeing what the country has to offer.

So on Thursday March 12, we set off in the morning. Our first site visit was off to Kisapuk near Namanga. By “near” please note I mean that it is approx 40 KM from the Total petrol (gas) station in Namanga.

Kisapuk is a very beautiful place. I assure you pictures would not do it any justice. The community runs a school, greenhouse and a small market to sell their produce. Besides being a beautiful location, the people in the community are warm and welcoming, and they showed us a great deal of hospitality in our short time there.

After pushing the car to the wall on the all weather road, I quickly set up and got to work. The area is in a valley with a cell tower that is a repeater about 30 KM away.

If you grew up here, you have probably have heard stories from your parents or grandparents about walking long distances to get to school. I always thought these were amazing fables to make them look like super heroes. I must admit that reality dawned on me when there. School is a couple of kilometres from home, exams are done under the trees if you are lucky to get one. Worst of all you are detached from what is happening all over the world.

In Kenya, we have come to realise that most places with sparse population have either repeaters or cell towers that only offer EDGE. So I knew what to expect. For those of you who do not know, a repeater mostly carries voice technology. In some regions you would get some that carry data. Sadly in this region you would mostly get those carrying EDGE.

Luckily we understand our environment very well and I had carried just the right set of tools for the job. In this region only one cell carrier worked on this and after sometime I was able to get connectivity. There is nothing in this world that can relate to getting connectivity when out there. The ability to see something inspiring, share an idea with others, and get research material as and when you need it is mind blowing.

However, to serve a whole community on such a connection is close to insanity. Simply put I think this is not good enough. Time was now running out, we had to go to Mtito Andei and it was now 5 in the evening. I however left promising to get something a much better for them.

Back to our geography basics. Mtito is about 270 KM from where we are. At this point, the question was how would we make it there in good time. The only thing on my mind was a decent meal and a shower because we would be off to an early start the next morning.

If you know anything about our team, one fact is clear, we will always try new things. So I had been told there is a route that goes through the bush with basically trees or communities to mark where we were and thus where to turn.

Off we go into the bush

We somehow manage to make it through a whole tank of fuel in the bush. We made it to the town of Sultan Hamud. Which was impressive as we only got lost twice, taking tracks in the dusk, but somehow still finding our way to town.  We then proceeded to Mtito Andei .

Upon arrival, we called it a night.

Day two was easier on us. The school we were going to was only about 10 KM from the road. It was much easier getting a signal here. You’ll remember we are still talking about EDGE (2g connectivity) so it’s not very fast, but it does allow for a trickle of internet content.  If you are going to have a classroom of about 30 to 40 students connected to the internet, this is not the best option.

“Students in class working hard in class. I think the young fellow is being punished.”

 

If there is one thing that is clear, we can not take a sit back and wait for the mobile operators to realise that they need to provide country-wide 3G if we hope to get the rest of the country truly connected to the internet. We will need to come up with a solution that can work for us here and now. There are some ideas we have been working on in the office and I think it would be nice to get them into the last stage of testing and release them into the field. I can say at the most basic level, content caching is involved. The cost of fetching content from the cloud every time is too high especially timewise.

The sad reality is there is a whole generation not being exposed to what is happening all over the world in terms of content. My biggest concern is educational content. This is not fair in terms of having a level playing field.

It would be a dream come true to see them at the same competitive level with at least the rest of the country.

Thank you to the World Vision team!