Tundra Labs

Tundra Labs
Information
Type	Private
Industry	Virtual reality hardware, semiconductors
Founded	2018
Founder	Luke Beno
Headquarters	Green Bay, Wisconsin, United States
Products	SteamVR tracking trackers, modules, and development kits
Website	https://tundra-labs.com

Tundra Labs is an American virtual reality hardware and semiconductor company based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, that designs SteamVR tracking silicon, modules, development kits, and finished trackers. The company was founded in 2018 by electrical engineer Luke Beno, who had worked on SteamVR tracking technology since 2015 following engineering roles at GE Healthcare, Plexus, and Triad Semiconductor. Tundra Labs is best known to consumers for the Tundra Tracker, a compact SteamVR tracker that raised more than one million US dollars on Kickstarter in 2021 as a smaller, lighter alternative to the Vive Tracker.

The company is based in the TitletownTech building in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and also maintains an operations base in the Qianhai cooperation zone in Shenzhen, China. Beyond its finished tracker, Tundra Labs operates as a SteamVR tracking component supplier, selling its tracking module and reference hardware to other developers who want to build their own tracked controllers and peripherals; it has worked with companies including Valve, Logitech, JVC, and Varjo.

History

Tundra Labs grew out of founder Luke Beno's work with SteamVR tracking, the optical tracking system that Valve developed for room-scale virtual reality and later opened to third-party hardware makers. Beno, an electrical engineer with a degree from Michigan Technological University, had earlier worked at Triad Semiconductor, where he helped develop the photodiode sensors used in SteamVR tracking, ran the company's Arctic VR Lab, and designed an early tracking development kit. He founded Tundra Labs in 2018 to help customers adopt SteamVR (Lighthouse) tracking and to develop future generations of the technology, building the business around tracking electronics rather than a single finished product.

In February 2020 the company opened pre-orders for a general-purpose SteamVR tracking hardware development kit, the TL448K6D-GP-HDK, priced at 130 US dollars. The kit was aimed at engineers building VR controllers and peripherals, and it undercut an earlier Triad Semiconductor development kit that had sold for around 350 US dollars. Tundra Labs sold the underlying tracking module on its own for companies that needed the part for mass production, and offered custom design services.

At the end of 2020 the company turned to the consumer market. On December 29, 2020 it revealed the Tundra Tracker, a self-contained SteamVR tracker built around its own module, and said it would launch a crowdfunding campaign in early 2021. The Kickstarter campaign opened on March 29, 2021 with a goal of 250,000 US dollars; it raised more than double that, over 610,000 US dollars from upward of 1,600 backers, within the first 24 hours. By late April 2021 the campaign had passed 1.1 million US dollars, and across its run it raised well over one million US dollars.

After component shortages slowed delivery, Tundra Labs began general sales of the Tundra Tracker on March 10, 2022 in the United States, Canada, Asia, and Australia, with European orders following on March 15, 2022. Citing parts costs, the company raised prices for the general release: a three-tracker bundle that had been 300 US dollars on Kickstarter went on sale at 360 US dollars. By that point the company said it had shipped more than 11,000 units to its Kickstarter backers.

Technology

Tundra Labs centers its products on a SteamVR tracking module it calls the Watchman, sold under the part number TL448K6D-VR. The module is an ultra-compact system-in-package, measuring about 16 by 10 millimeters, that contains the firmware and electronics needed to turn a device into a tracked SteamVR object. It is built around a Nordic Semiconductor nRF52832 wafer-level chip-scale processor with an Arm Cortex-M4 core, pairs the processor with a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for the tracking math, and integrates a 6-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) inertial measurement unit (see Inertial Measurement Unit). The module accepts the optical sensors that detect the swept infrared beams from Lighthouse base stations, which is how a SteamVR device works out its position and orientation.

Because SteamVR tracking is an inside-in optical system, Tundra Labs' hardware does not work on its own. Its trackers and modules must be used with external SteamVR base stations (see Base Stations), and they are compatible with the broader SteamVR ecosystem that also drives headsets such as the Valve Index. The company also developed a multi-tracker wireless dongle, sold in variants that pair up to three, five, or seven trackers to a single receiver, so that full-body setups do not consume a separate USB port for every tracker.

Products

Tundra Labs' catalog spans tracking silicon and reference hardware for developers as well as finished consumer trackers and accessories.

Product	Year	Type	Notes
TL448K6D-VR ("Watchman")	2020	SteamVR tracking module	System-in-package, about 16 x 10 mm; nRF52832 with Arm Cortex-M4, FPGA, and 6DoF IMU; sold as a component for mass production
TL448K6D-GP-HDK	2020	Development kit	General-purpose SteamVR tracking hardware development kit; pre-orders opened February 11, 2020 at 130 US dollars; aimed at developers of VR controllers and peripherals
Tundra Tracker	2021 (announced 2020)	SteamVR tracker	Compact tracker built on the Watchman module; about 50 grams with an 805 mAh battery and roughly seven hours of life; marketed as 60% smaller, 50% lighter, 50% less power, and twice the battery life of the Vive Tracker; funded on Kickstarter; general sale began March 2022
Super Wireless Dongle (SW3 / SW5 / SW7)	2021	Wireless receiver	Connects multiple trackers to one USB receiver; variants pair up to three, five, or seven trackers

Market position

Tundra Labs occupies a niche between Valve's SteamVR tracking licensing program and the consumer accessory market. By selling the Watchman module and its development kit at well below the cost of earlier reference hardware, the company positioned itself as a lower-cost route for other firms to build SteamVR tracked devices. With the Tundra Tracker it then competed directly against HTC's Vive Tracker, the dominant puck used for full-body tracking and prop tracking in SteamVR, by offering a smaller and lighter device at a comparable price. The strong Kickstarter response, more than one million US dollars and well over 11,000 units shipped, established the Tundra Tracker as one of the more prominent third-party SteamVR trackers.