It’s last day of the Kickstarter funding round for the BRCK wireless network dongle thingy, and the Kenyan team behind the project have managed to beat their $125,000 (R1.26m) goal so wil be putting BRCK into production. To celebrate, they’ve announced a surprise reward for those who pledged more than $300 for the device – a free leather case designed by Sandstorm.
BRCK is pitched as a ‘back-up generator for the internet’, and was designed by a team from Nairobi’s iHub. At heart, it’s a ruggedised mobile hotspot with a big ol’battery inside which can create a WiFi network using either 3G or WiFi for field workers in places like the African bush. It can run off of battery power for eight hours and connect up to 20 phones, laptops, tablets and other computers to the internet, and has a built-in 16GB hard drive for local cloud-type storage too.
The bag is made from leather and canvas and apparently evokes ‘a World War II radioman’s piece of kit’. Sandstorm is a Kenyan company that specialises in this kind of high end heavy duty gear. There’s a breakdown of the design process in the embedded video above. It’s quite fascinating.
If you fancy a BRCK, you’ve got until 22:14 (CAT) tonight to offer cash via Kickstarter.
