A Kenyan team that developed the BRCK internet device is venturing to the country’s far-flung Lake Turkana in a bid to test the gadget and video stream a rare hybrid solar eclipse on Sunday.

A spin-off of Nairobi-based non-profit crowdsourcing company Ushahidi, BRCK is an internet device that keeps people connected online even when the lights go out or 3G signals drop.

It is also dubbed the “backup generator of the internet”, and its features include wired or wireless ethernet connections, the ability to connect up to 20 devices and an eight-hour battery life.

A team of six are heading into northern Kenya on a two day journey to test BRCK “in some of the most demanding environments on the planet.”

The ultimate goal of the trip is to stream the hybrid solar eclipse live on November 3 using the BRCK device.

A hybrid solar eclipse is where the moon is seen to visibly move across parts of the sun, seen only from certain areas across the world. Also, some parts of the world will see a partial eclipse while others are set to view a total eclipse.

The BRCK team, therefore, is documenting its journey to Lake Turkana in a series of blog posts.

On Friday, the team posted a blog post and photo (pictured) of how their vehicle has broken down.

“We expect a few issues like this, but none in as beautiful of a background as Mt Kenya rising clearly behind our backs. Thank god for tire slime and air compressors,” says the BRCK team in a blog post.

In another blog post on Friday, the team says, “A rather inauspicious start happened about 30 kilometers into the trip when the Land Rover decided it was going to have some cooling problems."

Despite the setbacks, the team is optimistic that it will arrive in time to screen the eclipse.

"We’ll still arrive the day before the eclipse, but in the evening instead of the morning, " reads another post.

In October, ITWeb Africa also reported that BRCK had experienced production delays after it received just over $172,000 in funding on website Kickstarter to help manufacture the device.

The plan was that Ushahidi would manufacture 2,000 BRCK units in Shenzhen, China, while pricing the devices at about $200 each.

The project has, however, experienced challenges in obtaining certain key parts and the BRCK team decided to delay the production release of the device until January.

Image source BRCK blog