V1 - Genesis activated Sea you soon 🌊❤️

WHAT'S INSIDE / 01 Leak sensor The whole robot lives inside a sealed hull. Everything that makes it think, move and come back is in there. Water gets in, it stops answering. This board has one job: see the water coming in. Smallest thing on the robot. The one that decides if we get it back... Off to the fab.

36 seconds of airtime per hour. Per robot. Stigmergy, waggle dance, response thresholds, quorum. Evolution shipped first... medium.com/@robotSmallThing/…

After a quiet month, we’re back. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been fully focused on developing the final version of our robot, which is expected to be ready around September/October. From now on, we’ll be sharing updates on the robot’s technological progress every 7-10 days as we move closer to final launch. We’ve also opened a Discord server for our community, feel free to join and ask us any questions there: discord.gg/2rb36wx5rH

Thanks to @virtuals_io for creating a model that actually allows teams to raise capital and keep building in good conditions. We know we’ve been a bit quiet lately, but that’s simply how we want to run Small Thing. We’d rather communicate around real progress and tech updates than force constant hype. A lot has been happening behind the scenes over the past weeks, and June is shaping up to be a very important month for us. Excited to finally start sharing more of what we’ve been working on. ♥️🌊

Hardware timelines don't fit most token launches. ACF was the one mechanism that did. Zero equity surrendered. Zero team sells on the chart. Big updates coming. The build doesn't stop. 🌊

Somebody's gotta do the dirty work.

W1: a mechanical contradiction in silicone. Microplastics are hydrophobic. So are our tentacles. That's not an accident, it's one of three collection methods we're building into ST-001. Two hydrophobic surfaces meeting in open water. Chemistry does the work. No energy, no filter, no net. The tentacles trail under the hull in a semi-sealed compartment, open to water, exposed to the ocean. That's the whole point. The problem hits when you want to clean them mid-ocean without going back to base. You pull them through a slot in the hull, a fixed blade scrapes the microplastics off into a sealed collection chamber. Nothing lost, nothing back in the water. Except the stiffness that makes the scraping work is exactly what blocks redeployment. Too stiff to pass back through = great scraper. Too loose = deploys fine, collects nothing.😅 Same material. Same slot. Opposite requirements. You can't have both. Until you change the geometry. Sometimes it takes 3 weeks of iterations to find the best possible compromise. Open water doesn't forgive like dry land does, sailor. Rotating drum? Conveyor? Dual slots? Stay close. See you next week to show how we broke the contradiction. 🧵 Side exploded view representing the contradiction⬇️

The ocean doesn't care about your roadmap. We don't either.

Small Thing is ACP ready. 🤖 Fleet status. Mission data. Plastic collection metrics. Ocean coordinates. All queryable. All composable. Agent wants ocean cleanup intel ? We got you. 🌊 @the_small_thing x @virtuals_io

Our team has finalized the electronic integration architecture for our autonomous marine robots, a key milestone in ensuring reliability under real-world conditions. The selected solution is built around a high-performance sealed enclosure combined with secondary circuit protection, delivering both maximum robustness at sea and ease of maintenance. This approach, validated through a strict industrial testing protocol, is designed to be directly industrializable and to support the continuous evolution of our systems. Recent achievements : - The engineering team defined and validated the waterproofing architecture for our marine robots, adopting a “Dry Pod” approach: all electronic components are enclosed within a certified IP68 hermetic casing (fully resistant to immersion). - A dual-protection strategy has been implemented: the sealed enclosure acts as the primary barrier, complemented by a protective conformal coating on the printed circuit boards, ensuring that a micro-leak does not immediately result in system failure. - The architecture integrates active condensation management (a natural phenomenon caused by temperature variations in marine environments) through specialized breathable membranes and internal humidity sensors. - All materials in contact with the marine environment were selected for corrosion resistance: tinned copper wiring, marine-grade stainless steel fasteners, and sea-certified connectors. - A rigorous testing protocol has been established, including vacuum testing, 30-minute immersion tests, thermal cycling, and bubble leak tests, ensuring reliability before any field deployment. - The design prioritizes maintainability and scalability: unlike electronics encapsulated in resin (which are non-repairable), our architecture allows for servicing, updates, and module replacement. - The battery is housed in a separate sealed compartment, reducing risk and simplifying field maintenance operations.

We’re proud to welcome Christophe Castaner as Advisor to Small Thing. Former French Minister of the Interior and current President of the Grand Port Maritime de Marseille, he brings unmatched experience in governance and large-scale infrastructure. Institutional depth meets ocean robotics.

The engineering team finalized today the technical backbone of our marine fleet management platform. The robots can now transmit their environmental data in real time to our infrastructure, which organizes it by type, location, and collection session. At the same time, the collaborative mission system paves the way for structured partnerships with NGOs, enabling coordinated collection operations across defined geographic zones. Recent achievements : - The core API for managing the marine robot fleet is now fully operational, with around thirty available features. - A three-tier security system has been implemented: separate authentication for human operators, robots, and our fleet coordination agent. - Robots can transmit up to 1,000 sensor data points in a single request (temperature, sonar, salinity, GPS position, etc.). - A collaborative mission system allows NGOs and partners to define collection zones, with task assignments distributed to participating robots. - The API’s technical documentation is automatically generated and includes a visual interface to test each feature. - The infrastructure is built for reliability: data is never lost during server restarts, and every sensitive action is logged in an audit trail. - First successful end-to-end test completed: temperature and sonar data collected from coordinates in the Mediterranean Sea.

Over the last few months, we've been working intensely behind the scenes. The focus wasn't on communication. It was on structure. We onboarded several new contributors across engineering, operations and strategy. The team is stronger, clearer in its execution, and aligned on short-term delivery. Over these past months, I've met all kinds of people around this project. Curious minds, deep tech enthusiasts, complete beginners, strategists, and like any project, the moment you start talking about what you're building, you always meet the ones who already know everything about everything (it's a universal law at this point 😅). But here's what I noticed: The people who stick around aren't here because the project sounds interesting. They're here because it gives them something they weren't expecting... purpose. Marketers, advisors, engineers, people with zero technical background, nobody was asked to just do a job. They were asked to care. And when people work with heart instead of obligation, everything hits different. From now on, communication will be much more frequent and consistent. I'm entering full founder mode, meaning regular updates, transparent progress, and direct insight into what's being built. On the product side: V1 is ready. This is not a concept iteration anymore. The first operational version has been finalized and tested internally. We'll keep iterating, v2, v10, as many as it takes; but the foundation is solid, validated, and built for what comes next. Regarding deployment: The City of Marseille continues to support our initiative for local deployment. Discussions and coordination are ongoing to ensure regulatory and operational alignment. This remains a key milestone for us. On the token side: $ST utilities will be presented soon. Clear mechanics. Clear purpose. Built around real-world activity, not speculation. Thank you for your patience over the past weeks. We're not here to move fast and disappear. We're here to build something that operates in the real world. Sea you soon ❤️🌊