Totem Tuesday: September 17th, 2024
Hey fam—
We've got a bunch to catch you up on this week!
Let's go ahead and get into it, shall we? 😘
Welcome, one & all, to the 42nd edition of...
🎉 TOTEM TUESDAY 🎉
(a global party for the inbox)
Alright Tribe—let’s Vibe.
Two quick updates before we get started:
1) ⬇️ Timeline Update ⬇️
Our manufacturer has officially begun full-scale production of the Gen1 Totem Compass! 🙌
We still expect shipping to begin sometime in October. In the next couple of weeks, we'll get more specific about when in October it will begin... so stay tuned.
You can find details on the latest production news below in Item #1.
(Hint: it may or may not involve Assembly) 😉
Thank you so much for your patience.
The wait will be worth it.
2) 🫶 We're Hiring 🫶
Did you hear? The Totem team is growing once again.
Totem is looking for a Marketing Manager who loves this brand, this product, and the festival community at-large.
You can check the Job Post and apply at the link above.
Next week, we are also opening up a Product Manager position—so be sure to keep your eyes peeled! 😘
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OK! That's enough housekeeping.
Let’s do this thing.
This is our weekly progress report to all our favorite people.
Welcome to Totem Tuesday.
Here are the 3 most important updates this week.
Let’s go, Tribe!
3 things we accomplished
1) Assembly Beginning Soon
Here's a big one to kick things off...
Our manufacturer is officially beginning Assembly later this week! 🤩
This week, they expect to finish production of the final hardware, the final housings, and all the other little pieces needed for our first batch. And then, it's time to start assembling those beauties and doing QC!
Manufacturing, assembly, and quality control are being professionally handled by our contract manufacturer. Once they give us the greenlight, the first shipment of Totems will be on its way. Our logistics partners (both domestic and international) are ready-to-go the second that shipment arrives!
We will keep you in the loop with the latest updates from our manufacturer over the next few weeks. 😘
2) Hide & Seek in a Solar Storm
The GNSS performance of the Totems has seen massive improvements over the last 2 months.📈
Remember last month, when we went to Hard Summer for some product testing?
There was an intense G3 level Solar Storm that weekend. The satellite interference from that Solar Storm prevented the Totems from being able to navigate reliably for the weekend. (We talked all about that testing, and solar storms, on Totem Tuesday here).
Since then, we've been working hard on improving the GNSS performance. We finally had a great opportunity to measure our progress during another G3-level Solar Storm last week!
The difference was dramatic. 😱
6 weeks ago, a G3 Solar Storm meant: the Totems' navigation abilities were nearly non-existent. 😞
Last week, a G3 Solar Storm meant: the Totems' navigation abilities were nearly perfect. 😎
Their accuracy only began to struggle a bit once you got around 6-7 meters from your peer. Not bad!
Not only did the Totems work well during the Solar Storm, but we actually played Hide & Seek in an urban environment with the Totems during that Solar Storm—and they worked great.
They compassed perfectly around buildings, down alleyways, and through bus stations... all without cell service. How cool is that?
Here's a video from that "Urban Hide & Seek" during a Solar Storm on our IG. ⬅️
3) Global Declination Auto-Calibration
The Totem Compass uses the Earth's magnetic fields to determine where North is—just like a normal compass. After all, the Totem can only know where something relative is (like your friend) is if it knows where something objective (like North) is!
But did you know that the Earth's magnetic field changes in different places? In some places, "magnetic north" can actually deviate from "true north" by up to 30°! That deviation is called declination. 👨🔬
Normal compasses overcome this by allowing a manual declination adjustment. Basically, they have a knob you can turn to manually override what it recognizes as "North". 🧭
But our mission at Totem is to make things simple. So, we've been working on an automated solution that won't require you to manually adjust your compass—and it's ready to go!
This week, we're implementing an auto-calibration improvement that pulls data directly from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) database to ensure Totems always have the proper declination no matter where in the world they are.
They will automatically cross-reference their GNSS location with the NOAA database to apply the correct declination for that area.
What that means to you, in layman's terms: your Totem will be accurate all around the world. 🫶
Expect the Unexpected
Hey there 😊👋
If you read last week's Totem Tuesday, you know that we were AMPED UP for our trip to Nocturnal Wonderland last weekend.
We had a bunch of exciting plans: an official product trial with the Insomniac team, some cool future-tech testing, and a team of content creators ready to help us capture some awesome footage from the weekend.
But, life is full of surprises.
How does the saying go?
We make plans, and the universe laughs
When you're building a startup, you make a lot of plans.
And that, inevitably, means that you hear plenty of cosmic laughter.
There are surprises. There are setbacks.
Nothing happens exactly like you expect it to.
And you know what—that's ok!
What matters is how you respond to the setbacks.
Do you choose tears? Frustration? Failure?
Or do you choose growth?
The choice is yours.
Totem Team, out.
✌️
