Exhibitor Spotlight: ByoWave
This blog was provided by ByoWave
The journey to making games and tech more accessible
Co-Founders of ByoWave, Brandon (CEO) and Eibhlin (CMO) were best friends when they were kids and would spend hours playing video games. Their favourite game was Shrek 2 on the Playstation 2! As they grew older, they attended different schools and lost touch.
Brandon went on to study his undergrad in Biomedical Engineering and his masters in Electronic Engineering at University College Dublin. It was at university that Brandon’s passion for developing solutions to real-world problems began to flourish and began combining his skills in engineering with his entrepreneurial drive.
Brandon and Eibhlin reconnected at a game jam in 2020 where they built a game together. This is when Eibhlin told Brandon about her problem using generic video game controllers due to her disability.
Eibhlin has a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) and when she was 14, she injured her hand and developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), suddenly she was not able to play video games without experiencing a lot of pain. Eibhlin had spent a lot of time and money seeking a solution to her problem, but all she found, were millions of other disabled gamers who were also struggling to find a solution.
Brandon was the first person to make the step towards developing a solution to inaccessible video game controllers. Their journey to developing a solution began when they founded ByoWave in June 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to test their ideas, ByoWave 3D printed prototypes and spoke to hundreds of disabled gamers around the world via Zoom to see what the community thought of their idea. They found that everyone needed something slightly different and the solution needed to be fully modular in order to solve for the entire range of disabilities. Brandon had the idea to send testers modular cubes so that they could build the controller they liked and send it back to the duo in Ireland and they would see commonalities between the designs. This is when it clicked! What if we developed a kit made up of modular components that connect together in any configuration, therefore allowing everyone to build their own way to play! This immediately solved the problem of trying to design a mass-manufacturable controller that works for everyone.
Using universal design principles, ByoWave has developed the Proteus controller, a mass-manufacturable modular kit made up of 27 components that connect together allowing for over 100 million configurations. In the beta test round of 25 units, the Proteus controller solved for over 10 different disabilities and that list is growing. Because of the unique design, the controller works for everyone, even for non-disabled gamers. It can also be applied outside of gaming, for anyone who wants to build a customisable input device. Some of the use case examples that ByoWave users have tried outside of gaming include drones, robotics, stock trading and more!
Make sure you check out ByoWave’s booth to chat with Brandon and the team about the Proteus Controller and try and build your very own controller!
To learn more about ByoWave make sure you register to attend the Embedded Technology Convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center on June 8th & 9th.
