Factsheet
Company Name
ByoWave
Founder & CEO
Brandon Blacoe
First Product Name
Proteus Controller ™
Founded
July 2020
Location
Galway, Ireland
Current Development Phase
Beta Testing
Expected Release Date
End of 2023 (subject to change)
Expected Price
Unconfirmed
Website
byowave.com
ByoWave’s Mission & Vision Statements
ByoWave’s Vision
ByoWave’s Mission
Company Overview
ByoWave was founded by Brandon Blacoe in July 2020.
ByoWave’s first product is the Proteus Controller. The Proteus Controller is a modular video game controller kit made up of parts that easily connect together. It is a controller that adapts to the way you play, not the other way around.
With our technology, you can can use a single kit to build over 100M controller combinations.
After 3 long years of development, we have just manufactured our first Beta units and are really excited to start Beta testing soon.
ByoWave’s team has since grown to 10+ full time team members located in Ireland, the UK and China who are all dedicated to ByoWave’s mission.
Our Story
ByoWave was founded by Brandon Blacoe in July 2020.
Brandon had always wanted to be an engineer and had been fascinated by all things electromechanical and was amazed by the world of video games. When Brandon was young he would sneak into his family game room after hours to play crash bandicoot, and when he was a teenager he would take apart consoles to see where this magic came from.
This early fascination drove him to study physics and engineering at University in UCD so that he could try to recreate that positive experience in interesting new ways for himself and others.
Toward the end of his degree, he reconnected with his childhood friend, Eibhlin O’Riordan, when they met by chance at the Global Game Jam in 2020.
The pair met at play school, a time when they would go over to each other’s houses and play Shrek 2 on their PlayStations together (which is a great game by the way).
It had been 15 years since Brandon had last met Eibhlin, and while reminiscing about their love for gaming, she told Brandon something that changed his perspective.
Eibhlin told Brandon about her disability, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), and that she couldn’t use standard video game controllers for longer than 30 minutes without experiencing pain. Eibhlin also explained that there were thousands of people online that she had encountered who were also struggling to play games due to the lack of accessible hardware.
This had a major impact on Brandon because of how important the experience of gaming had been to him throughout his life. It immediately opened his eyes to the fact that there are so many people out there whose experience of gaming is limited by existing hardware and it sparked his natural curiosity to understand why.
Brandon knew this was all he wanted to focus on, so he founded ByoWave in July 2020 and got a team on board, starting with Eibhlin. Together they took their first steps on ByoWave’s journey to making gaming more accessible.
PROTEUS CONTROLLER
Feature Highlights
Compatibility
Confirmed Compatibility: PC
What’s included
Each kit comes with everything a standard controller would have, plus extra buttons and features.
Body Modules
Peripherals
Others
Product Overview
The Proteus Controller is a modular video game controller kit made up of parts that easily connect together. The Proteus Controller was designed primarily for disabled gamers to allow the community to build their own bespoke solution, however, early on in the design process, the team implemented Universal Design Principles to ensure that the controller worked for as many people as possible, meaning that it can also be used by non-disabled gamers who are looking for a more customisable way to play.
The Proteus Controller can be built and rebuilt and with just one kit there are over 100 million different configuration combinations. You can build different configurations which work better for different games or switch it up depending on your play style. If you get fatigued from using the same configuration for a long period of time you can make minor adjustments to your configuration to reduce strain, or just switch it up completely.
With our companion software, you will be able to remap your controller and save and share your configurations with the community. We are making our connection mechanism available to the community to allow them to 3D print custom parts for their controller. Our analog sticks are also removable so you can switch them out for 3D printed versions.
Join our community Discord server to start sharing your ideas with other users and with the ByoWave team. ByoWave has made sure that the disabled gaming community has been involved in every aspect of the Proteus Controller design and we are always looking for feedback and new ideas to help making your gaming experience better your needs.