Actual Pivot — Badge-Only, No Tags

What is this note about?

On 2026-10-31 Actual dropped the badge + BLE equipment tag design, along with GPS and cellular upload. The path forward is a single self-contained badge plus a dock at the customer’s shop. Earlier notes describe the old design and are kept as a record of how the idea evolved.

Why

  • The BLE tag infrastructure was very fragile. Tags epoxied to vibrating tools fall off or break. Beacon batteries die silently. Every tag is another device to install, register, and keep track of across a customer’s fleet.
  • GPS and cellular added cost, power draw, data plans, and coverage gaps, and they were the most expensive parts of the badge.
  • Tags only ever proved a worker was near a tool, not that they were using it.

What replaces it

  • One badge per worker. IMU, barometer, and kinetic/acoustic edge AI record movement and labor signatures all shift, fully offline. No screen, no buttons. Audio is never stored.
  • A dock at the shop. Taking the badge out starts the shift; docking it ends the shift, charges it, and uploads the log.
  • Cloud reconstruction. Every shift starts and ends at the shop, a known point. That closed loop lets bi-directional inertial smoothing plus road-and-elevation map matching rebuild the route, find every stop, map the walking path on each property, and break labor down by type (driving, idle, power equipment, hand labor).

What changed as a result

  • No equipment tags, equipment surveys, or tag registry
  • Tool use is inferred from vibration and sound, not proximity
  • Results arrive at end of day, not in real time
  • The hard problem moved from hardware to algorithms. The core technical risk is now whether reconstruction finds job sites reliably without GPS, especially on flat grid streets.
  • New core role: sensor fusion / navigation / ML co-builder
  • Partners: co-builders (engineers with a stake) first; field partners give design input at no cost. The paid charter pilot is gone.
  • First-fit customers are crews that start and end at a shop every day

Open questions

  • Reconstruction accuracy in flat terrain; value of schedule and history priors
  • Badge-to-worker identity with zero interaction
  • Raw IMU vs. on-device fusion (storage and power)
  • Whether the microphone is needed, or vibration alone is enough
  • Mounting position (chest, hip, wrist)
  • Crews that take trucks home (no closed loop)

References

  • docs/technical/ (rewritten for the badge-only architecture)
  • pages/product.md
  • docs/roles/11-sensor-fusion-ml-engineer.md