A Message From Our CTO on Battery Life and Performance
From the beginning, our goal with the Totem Compass has been to build a device you can rely on to stay connected during the most incredible moments of your life. A huge part of that reliability is battery life. We’ve been on a significant journey with our power management system, and today I'll be sharing a transparent look at our initial promise, the challenges we faced, the solutions we’ve implemented, and our commitment to you moving forward.
Our Original Battery Life Promise
When we launched, we published battery life targets based on extensive real-world testing. These were the standards we set for ourselves and the performance you rightly expected:
- Day Vibe: up to 10 hours
- Night Vibe: up to 14 hours
- Eco Mode: up to 24 hours
The Discovery: Why We Weren't Meeting That Promise
During intensive testing on site at Bonnaroo, we discovered a critical firmware bug. Our power-saving features, designed to extend battery life by briefly turning off communications during a sleep cycle, were causing the device's processor to freeze for up to 3 seconds at a time. This flaw was among the key factors behind the performance issues encountered at EDC Las Vegas in the spring.
The impact was twofold: not only did it fail to save power as intended, but the periodic freezing also crippled performance, resulting in missed location updates and unreliable connections, especially in areas with lots of Totem Compasses around.
The Solution: Our Work to Restore Performance
Upon identifying the bug, our engineering team made it our top priority to fix it. Our journey back to our original performance targets was methodical and happened across several key firmware updates:
- The Calculated Tradeoff (Release 3.10): For immediate stability, we disabled the faulty power-saving feature. This stopped the freezing but meant that Vibe modes had a battery life of only ~5 hours. It was a necessary short-term trade-off. Eco Mode was unchanged.
- The Critical Breakthrough (Release 3.14): We completely re-engineered our sleep logic, allowing the processor to rest while communications remained active. This was a major step forward, extending battery life in Day Vibe to ~6 hours and Night Vibe to ~7 hours. We discovered that Eco Mode had significant performance issues, so we adjusted it to ensure reliable comms which resulted in 15 hour battery life.
- The Comprehensive Overhaul (Release 3.15): We combined the new sleep logic with a corrected battery voltage calculation (derived from testing with high-precision equipment) and further software optimizations. This release restores reliable power saving without compromising performance in all modes.
As a result of this dedicated work, our current empirically-confirmed battery life is now remarkably close to our original goal:
- Day Vibe: up to 8 hours
- Night Vibe: up to 10 hours
- Eco Mode: up to 22 hours
Our Plan Moving Forward
Our work is not finished. We are continuing to optimize our firmware with the explicit goal of meeting and then exceeding our original battery life claims for this device. Beyond that, the lessons learned through this process have been invaluable. They are directly informing the development of our next-generation product, which will feature significant hardware upgrades to deliver a new level of performance and endurance.
Thank you for your patience and feedback throughout this journey. Your real-world use is what pushes us to build better, more resilient technology.
Gratefully,
Chase Lemonds
Chief Technology Officer, Co-Founder, and Inventor of the Totem Compass