You know those Org Charts you see for companies? The ones with boxes with names and titles and arrows and lines connecting employees and managers?
I could draw one for Omata. It’d be pretty simple. Lots of boxes, lots of roles, but just two names, Julian and Cary.

One or each of us would be in every box.

That would be it. Two of us here, dedicated to making products that are focused on the spirit of being outdoors experiencing both humble and epic adventures.

It’d be true to say that besides the two of us, there’s a platoon of ready-to-roll folks just outside of the Org Chart who believe in that same mission. These are friends just down the street from me here in Venice Beach — as well as all around the world. People who have been helping us purely out of their passion for beautiful, well-designed, exquisitely engineered products.

You know who you are. You help us with testing, with software, with making our little brand films and photography. You share your photos on Instagram, which helps generate awareness. We ride and talk together. Perhaps more than anything else you help by encouraging us to continue on, even in these challenging, crazy, unspeakably tragic times.

That’s all a preamble to a long-awaited announcement that we have just released the much anticipated firmware update for the OMATA One to support ANT+/BLE sensor pairing. Finally.

I could bore you with the details as to why it has been such a long, challenging endeavor. But for the sake of keeping this already long email shorter than it would be, I’ll just say that it boils down to this slightly technical detail from our CTO, who is also me: ANT+/BLE sensor pairing is probably one of the worst standard “standards” I’ve ever come across. Ever. In 25+ years of running engineering programs. As a result, it took vastly more work than we initially budgeted and that meant delays and delays.

What this means is that blanket support for every sensor is simply not possible for an operation like ours — two people working out of their backyard garage studios.

To be honest, I even hesitated for a long time about releasing this firmware. I’m still not 100% comfortable doing so — not because it doesn’t work (I’ve been riding with it, testing, for a few months), but because I can’t guarantee that it will pair and record every sensor out there.

But Cary convinced me that our community is relatively small and understands the context under which we operate. So we’re moving ahead with a caveat: the possibility that we’ll become overwhelmed with support tickets is such that we can only release the firmware with the understanding that it may not work fully for everyone who expects the perfect, seamless operation you might get from a ever-so-slightly larger company. Apple, or Google, for example. I hear they’re pretty big. Definitely more than two people, I’d reckon.

This is why the updated release of the iOS App will include a simple notice that, well — it may not work perfectly and seamlessly! (And we appreciate your patience if you do send us a support ticket!)

Another caveat: we are unable to support sensor pairing on the Android platform — you can still do it on iOS. You only need to pair to sensors once, so you could borrow an iOS device to do the pairing. Once the pairing is established — you’re good to go. We simply do not have the resources at this time to develop the necessary functionality on Android. (See my note at the very end of this email. Android development has been entirely by volunteers, which is amazing! If you’d like to help, please contact me here at engineering at omata.com

So enough of that. Here are the instructions.

How To Update Firmware If You Use the iOS Omata Utility App

1. Update the App through the iOS App Store. It should be available now in your region.

2. Use the App to update the firmware. The App should alert you that there is a new version available. If it doesn’t, go to the Settings page — you should be prompted there in the Firmware section of the page. You should update both MCU firmware (to v. 2020.05.02 1) and the BLE firmware (to v. 0.0.22). (If you have trouble with this automatic update because your firmware is quite old — perhaps from 2018 — or you do not use a smart phone, there is also a manual procedure. Instructions are available here: [How can I manually update firmware?]

3. Once you’ve updated the firmware, the latest version of the iOS App will allow you to pair your HRM or Power Meter sensors. You will of course need to have your OMATA One connected to the App. The App communicates with the OMATA One and uses the OMATA One to detect sensors. The App alone cannot do the pairing. You must have your OMATA One with the latest firmware to be able to “talk” to ANT+/BLE sensors. Once you’ve paired, you don’t need the App as an intermediary any more. You can leave your iPhone at home if you want. It is only needed to establish the relationship between your OMATA One and your ANT+/BLE sensor.

4. As mentioned, not all sensors work. And we only support HRM and power meters. We do not support speed sensors at all. Here is a link to the latest table of sensors our Omata Test Team have tested with results.

It seems many of the more popular and modern sensors work, while older first generation devices do not. I’m sorry the list doesn’t reflect 100% coverage. I simply don’t have the resources at this moment — time and money — here to do that. Of course it is my goal to get to 100% just as soon as I am able to focus our attention on this task, operationally-speaking.

5. Our resources are such that we will cannot now support sensor pairing under Android. You will be able to do the configuration to pair your sensors if you can borrow an iOS device from a friend. Once you’ve paired your sensors, you shouldn’t need to do anything else and you can go on your merry way never touching an iOS device again.)

By the way — if you are interested in helping out with Android development, please feel free to contact me here engineering at omata.com. I’ll note that the Android App was done entirely by a volunteer from Australia who just loves the OMATA One and put aside some time to help out. He didn’t have an Omata One — just loved the idea and the product. He said he’d do it in exchange for a device — which is an incredible arrangement!
That’s enough for now. If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to us.
Thanks for your ongoing support and especially your patience!

Julian

Update: OMATA One and ANT+/BLE Sensor Pairing was originally published in OMATA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re a tiny operation here at Omata.

But that doesn’t stop us from keeping true to the values and vision I’ve had for Omata since Day 0, December 31, 2014.

It takes a particular kind of persistence and grit and perserverance to continue doing what we do with only two people around.

The value in this kind of gritty operation is that we’ve built a remarkably rich connection to our fans and customers. We care about them deeply and we enjoy the connections we’re able to establish.

Unlike most technical product companies, when something goes wrong with our product it hurts my heart. I want to do anything I can to make it work again. That sometimes means doing surgery-like repairs, rather than throwing things away.

This is ambitious. Building great, meaningful, compelling products and brands start with ambition, and high hopes.

Living OMATA Brand Values was originally published in OMATA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Five years ago I started this company to reconsider what a bicycle computer could be.

It was as much a thought experiment as it was an idea for a product.

The design brief was roughly this: if there was a future in which digital devices were designed to be more consistent with the contexts in which they are used, and if you were to imagine that future of the bicycle computer, what would it become?

In other words, take cycling and make a cycling computer that looks like it was designed by a cycling enthusiast who loved the form, function and style of a beautiful, well-considered, well-built bicycle.

Rather than a digital display and lots of buttons and an operating manual, it would be something that just worked as simply and elegantly as a bicycle. There would be no question about how it operates. It would be analog and mechanical, like a bicycle. It would be elegantly simple, like a time piece. There would be no confusion about what was going on when it was on your bike and the speed hand moved consistent with your movement.

Etcetera.

That thought experiment got out of control in a beautiful way. It became a real thing — the OMATA One.

It’s will have been five years since December 31st 2014 when OMATA was officially, legally formed. In that time I could tell you a dizzying array of stories about the fun, the challenges, the character-building, the perserverance, the grit that had to be laid down in order to get here, to the beginning again — year six.

Amado Stachenfeld, a neighbor of mine here in Venice Beach, California where OMATA HQ is located, created this OMATA Anthem Film. It embraces the spirit of fun, adventure and positivity that has kept me going for the last 260 weeks. It was done with our local friends and fans who just want to share their joy of being creative, giving time and energy, and helping out for the simple reason that we love being in the world while sitting on two wheels. Thanks to everyone who came out to help, compose music, edit. I’m humbled by what you’ve given of yourself. Truly.

Enjoy.

OMATA Anthem — Los Angeles was originally published in OMATA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Gravel riding is deep in the DNA of Omata.

How’s that?

When I started riding bikes not too long ago — around 2014 — I was riding local dirt on a single-speed mountain bike trying to make my way. It was a humbling experience, and one through which I fell in love with riding bikes. I was mostly riding bikes on the exquisite back trails just off the choked city streets of my neighborhood in Venice Beach, CA.

It was on these trails — generally well-groomed fire roads and the occasional single track — that I found a sanctuary from the character-building exercise of building a product and a company and brand around that product. The Gravel Ride was genuinely a kind of meditation time. It was my church.

That’s why I was super excited to find the Gravel Ride Podcast.

The algorithm directed me to it on evening while I as in a hotel somewhere working with a client. The episode was on Gravel Mob — a wicked hard day on a bike up in Ojai, California that nearly had me tap out. The chit-chat took me right back to that day when angels on e-mountain bikes trundled down the last climb delivering ice cold popsicles from musette bags. I thought I had died and wound up in a kind of purgatory where you had to keep climbing an impossible climb taunted by the promise of a popsicle.

I wrote to Craig Dalton, the guy behind the microphone, and congratulated him on the episode. We stayed in touch and Craig promised to drop a note the next time he was in LA. He did. We went for a ride up in the Santa Monica Mountains, followed up by this fun interview.

http://thegravelride.libsyn.com/website/omata

Omata and The Gravel Ride Podcast was originally published in OMATA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s a great day when a few of your passions collide. For me, its cycling, cinema and making things. Who would’ve thought there would be a day when there would be a book that could legit go on the studio bookshelf called “Cycling and Cinema” would be quickly followed by one that could also legit go up on the bookshelf — a detailed “behind the scenes” process manual to “A Sunday In Hell”

It’s happened. Just last month. What follows is a short note on the books, hopefully enough to encourage you to dig deeper into these two remarkable works.

Bruce Bennett from Lancaster University’s ‘Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts’ authored this quite thorough and academic book analyzing the appearance of the bicycle in film, nothing that the two appear as cultural phenomenon nearly simultaneously and, as such, are somewhat cousins at the dawn of modernity. In ways that a cultural critic and analyst like Bennett would appreciate, they both are harbingers of the future in their emergence, not always positively.

I’ll start by saying that this book is for film analysis and film history nerds.
If you’re hoping for a book that’s heavy on production photography and stills of your favorite cycling films, skip down a bit for a behind-the-scenes book about the making of “Sunday in Hell“.

The Bennett is for those of you like me who get excited by references to Jonathan Crary’s analysis of the technics of the visual apparatus, nods to Gilles Deleuze, sections titled “Bicycles, Cameras and Cyborgs”, or passages like, “The historical coincidence of the film camera and the safety bicycle is explained partly by their status as precision-engineered machines that are dependent upon developments in industrial production.”

If this is you, just do what you’re going to do anyway and add it to your cart or hustle down to your local bookseller.

Aside from the analysis that Bennett offers are all the films you’ve never heard of that feature bicycles in some fashion. In a round about way the book (which lacks a filmography! eck!) is a well-spring of new things to dig into and watch, from independent features to shorter projects like “The History of the Wheel”, done by enthusiasts with no production team, no Craft Services nor 20-somethings helping out with clipboards and walkie-talkies.

As Instagram or YouTube suggest, there are a lot of enthusiasts out there for both cycling and cinema, and Bennett doesn’t shy away from embracing and discussing the “new” technologies of visual story telling, from GoPros to VR.
While this book is heavy on the film analysis and light on the production photography and still frames, its heart is in the right place. As mentioned previously, one notable absence from the book is a comprehensive filmography, something that would help make a Watch List would have been nice. (I’ve emailed Bennett to see if he has one on a scratchpad somewhere that he could share.)

I’ve got a rule that runs in my head whereby anytime there is a “Behind the Scenes” genre of book for a film I have even a passing fascination with, I’m allowed to add it to the library.

Why this rule?

As a “process” nerd, I’m fascinated by how things get made. Seeing the ways an idea or vision or screenplay gets translated into a material thing through the persistence and grit of a collective of humans and tools is fascinating to read and see, as well as learn about and learn from.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when, nearly coincident with the Bennett drop, a “Behind the Scenes” book on “A Sunday In Hell” came out.
I’m talking of course about William Fotheringham’s [Sunday in Hell: Behind the Lens of the Greatest Cycling Film of All Time

This is a proper “behind the scenes” book about what many argue to be the finest cycling documentary ever done. I haven’t seen a lot of cycling documentaries, but this in my opinion is cinematically one of the more exquisite visual stories. (I’ve written about the director in the recent past, if you’re experiencing a moment of déjà vu.)

Perhaps it is because it was done in a time and era when the burden of filming on the go was such it required an extraordinary level of commitment and dedication to the subject — as well as actually filming on the run with bulky burdensome equipment and film. Jørgen Leth, who directed A Sunday in Hell, clearly has the grit, vision and passion for the subject. The opportunity to make a film about his favorite sport with his heroes in an epic, brutal race keeps him on the path of a daunting technical and squirrelly financial endeavor.

For film and process nerds you’ll be gratified to find that barely is a detail left undescribed (nor flight of whimsy avoided as indicated by the fun little ‘flip book’ characters racing around in the bottom margin of the book.)
The intimate details we are provided are a credit to the remarkable excavation undertaken by Fotheringham to bring us to the moment of the film’s production, as well as the particulars of the racing culture and rules at the time.

Watching mechanics riding on the top of team cars during the race to make for fast wheel changes is whacky enough, but then we also learn about the somewhat brutal and sharp elbows amongst the teams and racers was largely the reason for this:

“It seems self-evident that the need to swap the wheel rapidly was due to the fact that the rider had to get moving as soon as possible. However, that is only part of the story. What actually mattered more was to keep the car positioned high up the convoy of team vehicles so that the leader could receive a wheel or a bike rapidly if needed. ‘On those roads, when the team car stopped to do a proper change for a rider, it would drop back to twentieth in the convoy — and as you came back up the line sometimes there would be rivals who would play it clever and bloc you — so you wouldn’t want to stop’, said Godefroot [directeur sportif].”

The level of description is pleasantly detailed, including timecode in the margins to help orient you to a specific scene as he describes this or that detail. This is something that most film books — whether film theoretical or of this “behind the scenes” genre, will not go through the trouble to do. This is truly for those who are deeply gratified by reading something written by someone else who appreciates the both the film and the endeavor to create it.

[Sunday in Hell: Behind the Lens of the Greatest Cycling Film of All Time] by William Fotheringham
[Cycling and Cinema] by Bruce Bennett

Cycling is Cinematic was originally published in OMATA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For all the folks who would immerse themselves in the lovely, nerdy arcane aspects and debates around bicycle frame building, what’s the perfect kind of bike, or what bike to add to their quiver (and why..), I present to you a discussion amongst five discerning frame builders.

On January 25 2019, Aaron Stinner (Stinner Frameworks), John Caletti (Caletti Cycles), Tom Ritchey (Ritchey Logic), Sam Pickman (Allied Cycle Works) and Hern Montenegro (Montenegro Mfg) gathered at our local RCC Los Angeles Clubhouse to talk about design, frame building and the future of cycling. Moderated by Annalisa Fish from @wegotohangout.

Settle in and watch. I hope you enjoy.

https://youtu.be/8L7v58E9VAA

Five Frame Builders Talking Frame Building was originally published in OMATA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Enjoy Your Ride. It’s Sacred.

Some rides are quick and breathless. Some rides are languid and laughful. Take your pick of one. Or make your mix of both.

We’re not picky. We’re not particular. We take our serious fun seriously. And we don’t expect you to ride one way or the other.

What we do expect — and this one is easy —is that however you ride, you remember, if even for a moment, the feeling you had when you first zipped down a hill and a buffet of a breeze blew your eyes dry.

Remember the first time the training wheels came off and you were free.

Remember rolling around in a parking lot trying to pop a wheelie.

Remember your first race — with the neighborhood rat pack — to the stop sign at the end of the block.

Remember the giddy excitement and feeling of rolling around on two wheels.

Remember why we ride in the first place.

On your next ride, pause your thoughts for a moment and imagine that you weren’t able to roll around like that. That you weren’t able to enjoy the vistas, the views, the switchbacks, the laughs, the friends, the sublime exhaustion.

Remember that riding is sacred. Never take it for granted.

Have some seriously good fun on your bike this weekend. Share with us your stories, your photos, your recollections. We’d love to hear from you.

DM us @omata

Hurry Up Can Sometime Wait was originally published in OMATA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nothing at all against sitting around watching the Strade Bianche, but I wanted to ride around some dirt and see if I could find the seasonal bloom of wildflowers that take over the hills and plains of California after good rains. Visual rumors on Instagram were teasing me — it might be going on while we were gathered around the dodgy VPN feed watching other people ride bikes. I was anxious to film and shoot something. More anxious to do that then watch the tube, to be honest.

Intel on where the blooms may be is sketchy at best. For some reason, I gravitated towards Carrizo Plain just west of Bakersfield. I guess having had been there once before was all the reason I needed.

It’s not at all a short drive from Venice Beach, but the jaunt felt full of purpose and anticipation that the bloom might be there and if I let go of that sense of determination I’d miss it all together. It felt like a hunt. A reconnoiter. Vernor was pinging, seeking intel for a possible future trip — in two days? Or two weeks? What was going on, where? Anyone have a guy with a satellite downlink view of the Great State of California? Highway 5 taunted with patches of yellow just leading into the turn eastward into the Carrizo. It just might be there..

The viridian rolling hills that take you up over and down into the plain were like the bloom stretching and cracking its knuckles before a prize fight. The plain itself was rich and saturated with a lively lush green that felt like life coming back. Cars were stopped and small squads of flower hunters were fanning out, pointing iPhones. We were a distributed information system, sharing intel as we pulled up next to each other and rolled down windows, pointing in different directions, squinting into the distance. Assessing the veracity of each other’s statements. Updating each other based on new intel. Cross-checking and contradicting each other. ‘..Yeah, no..it’s not over there. Oh. You mean over there. Possibly..possibly..’

This is the point in the story where either the music swells, or we hear a sad trombone noise. I’ll give you neither. Adventures like these in epic terrain like this find their own reason for being worth the effort. And sometimes you don’t find that reasons until the next day when you look at the film and remember how you decided to turn the Seven Mile Road into a Fourteen Mile out-and-back, riding up completely overgrown roads marked only by a surprisingly new looking street sign. And that’s all that mattered. Not a KOM. Not breaking land-speed records. Not feeling diminished by pedaling “only” 14 miles, stopping regularly to admire a view, talk with a fellow cyclist or learn about the botany of the the Carrizo Plain from a guy with a big camera wearing a vest with a dozen pockets.

Ride More.

14 Miles For The WildCloudFlowers was originally published in OMATA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Measuring Joy.

The true pleasure of cycling is not something you need a gadget to measure.

The wind tells you how fast you’re going. Your heartbeat tells you many feet you’re climbing. Your legs tell you how many miles you’re riding.

Most importantly, your grin tells you how much fun you’re having.

But there are good reasons to tally these things more quantitatively. And for us, placing a plastic-clad digital command center on our handlebars just wasn’t right.

So we created something different. A precision sports instrument that not only provides all the data you need (or at least think you need) with greater simplicity and less distraction, but more profoundly delivers something totally unexpected: a deepened connection to your ride that feels as visceral and kinetic as the connection of your foot to your pedal to your crank to your chain to your wheel. It’s a sensation that’s hard to explain. But we’re pretty sure you’ll feel it too.

At $550, we don’t expect that the California-designed, Finnish-made, detail-obsessed Omata One will make heaps of sense to the most rational of cyclists. But when you think about our sport — the unreasonably early mornings, long miles, challenging elements, painful climbs, and harrowing descents that we not only endure, but look forward to — you’ll probably agree that there are a lot of things about cycling that don’t make sense.

And that’s why we love the ride so much. Any way you count it.

Measuring Joy was originally published in OMATA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By know you may have heard tell about the Superbowl Ad that featured Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor. Sponsored by Hennessy (err..a bit weird, but I’ll leave that one..), the ad features Taylor, with voice over proclaiming that, by 1901, he was considered the world’s greatest athlete. Track racing was a big draw. The bicycle was a new fangled thing, and watching humans push themselves and their beautifully simple machines to speeds only rivaled at the time by a race horse, steam-powered vehicles and fuel burning contrivances called automobiles must’ve been positively jaw-dropping. A human. Going sustaining speeds like that of a four-legged horse!? Crazy talk.

I first came across Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor completely by accident. I don’t know that much about cycling’s racing history and I was doing a bit of excavation. I had been watching documentaries, reading about the usual crop of cycling ‘legends’ when I came across someone called Major Taylor. When I found out just the bare contours of his story — an African-American guy who raced bikes in the middle of America shortly after the Restoration Era — I had to know more. So I got the biography with the most stars and the most didactic title: Major Taylor: The Inspiring Story of a Black Cyclist and the Men Who Helped Him Achieve Worldwide Fame

I thoroughly enjoyed the biography. It’s not the kind of biography that can rely on first-hand, first-person recollections through-and-through, but that’s to be forgiven. There’s lots of Taylor’s life that would be left to speculation based on the cultural and political moment, which makes writing a post-humous biography a bit tricky. But, the book did a decent job of trying to bring his story to life.

Hennessy also produced a short film called “The Six Day Race: The Story of Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor”

To top of Black Cyclist History Month, the New York Times published a posthumous Major Taylor Obituary — which completely surprised me:

More than 100 years ago, one of the most popular spectator sports in the world was bicycle racing, and one of the most popular racers was a squat, strapping man with bulging thighs named Major Taylor.

Major Taylor was the “Black Cyclone,” at once the LeBron James and Jackie Robinson of his time. He blew past racial barriers in an overwhelmingly white field bent on stopping him, sometimes violently.

He was the first African-American world champion in cycling and the second black athlete to win a world championship in any sport.

So consider this: He died penniless in 1932, at age 53, and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

Why do I write about this?

I’m drawn to stories of people going up against the odds, who endure the unceasing animosity and nay-saying that can come with wanting to do something but being hemmed in because of your background, your sex, your age, your political persuasion, your missing body part or your whacky, unconventional vision of a different kind of world — anything of that sort. Being a mixed race guy myself, I was also happy to have a hero who didn’t quite fit the mold, beyond his sheer athleticism, of what counts as a competitive cyclist.

The Six Day Race was originally published in OMATA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.