We are now on the third version of silicone enclosure mold design and the results are quite promising. Alongside improvements in the venting and alignment features of the mold, a lot of effort has gone into the sealing, mixing, degassing, curing and de-molding process.
In the above photo you can see the three molds produced so far. Molds 2 and 3 have just been opened after curing and the finished enclosures have not yet been removed from the mold core.
Here is an example of a finished enclosure: (please ignore the bubble...)
While the electronics and the sensors are evolving, we need to evolve the mechanical design and define a perfect footprint that could house everything. therefore, After some research into the literature, it seemed like a shape that would retain the device in the hard palate and towards the front of the upper jaw seemed like the best choice. this would reduce choking and gaging. soft palate sometimes induce gagging and moving the tounge towards the soft palate would do that too.. Therefore, as a first revision, a shape like this seemed like a good choice.
the wiring+ battery right now would go outside of the mouth, preferably as a collar or a earpiece.. the printed result is as follows
Its not the best print, but just to test it out, this would suffice. I kept this in the mouth for about 30min to 45 mins, with ease. you obviously have to get past the roughness of the print, but the size and placement seemed good. the notch where i'm holding the dummy is where the teeth would lock it in place, and a firm "byte" would be a click. the curved shape sits well in the roof of the mouth, and with the silicone cover, added, it would be even better,
The Nav button would be the center extrusion. the tounge rests below this and a small motion would touch the button and an effortless motion would be required to navigate on the nav button. Another revision would be made to so that the nav button would be a bit tilted towards the tounge to make the motion even effortless.
We are currently testing out a joystick configuration with a hall effect sensor array, therefore, a balljoint which can hold a magnet was 3D printed.
just a simple concept of how the nav button would work, the printed ball joint seemed to work well, and for the space a silicone pad of 1mm would be used to act as a dampener for the nav button.
As for the Mold, a new mold with some small modifications were done, to make it easier to assemble, disassemble and inject.
added venting, moved the injection points to top, which can now be used to inject or pour. added chamfers to easier demolding. the overall end result should look like below. which ideally would only occupy 5ml of silicone
Rather than using an off the shelf silicone enclosure, the new version will feature custom silicone over-molding. The idea is to better seal the sensors and to adapt the shape so it is better suited for the functionality.
The mold was 3D printed and filled with a food grade clear silicone material. Below is the first test curing.
Here is the finished part straight out of the mold:
Other than some bubbles due to inadequate degassing it turned out really well. A new degassing chamber just arrived and will be used for subsequent tests.
As you may know the first version of The Byte had inside some FSR sensors, those sensors were designed on FreeCad this caused a difficult path to manufacture as PCBs.
Now the first sensor pack is available to be modified on KiCad directly so now we can also generate gerbers, and manufacture this PCBs wherever we want.
Also we are working in different approaches to get a better performance about reading the movement on the tongue with different sensors inside what we call "Sensor Pack".
As for the mechanical work, we are currently trying out silicone casting with a custom mold design to cast the outer casing with food grade + medical grade silicone to accommodate the user in terms of comfortability, safety.
Below is just a initial, simple mold, which will be 3D printed. material will be injected into the mold with the top two holes
Among the upgrades under consideration for the BYTE V2 is the addition of capacitive force sensing. Here is a diagram from a research paper showing the proposed construction: Here is a link to the paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7028121
Direct links relating to the required contest criteria:
Concept- Is the project creative, original, functional, and pushing boundaries?
- To my knowledge there are no similar devices currently available Does the project effectively address the selected challenge? - The UCPLA challenge seeks "new designs for adaptive tools... like trackballs or joysticks" The BYTE definitely fits the bill.
Communication- How thoroughly have the Final Round requirements been completed?
-Hopefully this summary addresses this point How well documented is the project?
Full design package available on Github How “open” is the design? - Firmware license: GNU General Public License v3.0 - Hardware license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Once the design is finalized the hardware will receive a more permissive license. And of course UCPLA is permitted to use the design.
Additional Final Round Requirements:
Working prototype ✓ Video: - between two (2) minutes and five (5) minutes in length ✓ - shows a working prototype ✓ - describe the challenge it addresses and demonstrate how it facilitates the solution ✓ High-resolution photos of the project inside and out ✓ At least ten (10) Project Log updates
✓ Components list that is complete with a bill of materials for one unit
✓ Complete Bill of Materials Complete schematics ✓ Full System Schematics XIAO Controller Schematics Documented input and output requirements and specifications ✓ Just in case it is not clear, The only IO requirement is a standard USB C cable
oneohm
Here is a link to the paper: 
Also available in the Github repository here: