What is Project Beyondex?
Many of us upgrading from the Valve Index to the Bigscreen Beyond love the size and comfort, but find ourselves missing the incredible off-ear soundscape from the Index.
That got us thinking. What if we could have both?
Project Beyondex is a mod we have designed for the Valve Index audio strap which makes its integrated audio compatible with the Bigscreen Beyond.
The mod involves removing the audio strap from the Index and flipping it "upside down", which allows the portion of the strap which cradled the back of the head to instead provide top-support for enhanced comfort. This kit is SUPER comfortable and packs both great sound and great visuals thanks to the micro-OLED screens and pancake optics of the Beyond. It's our favorite way to experience PCVR that we have experienced so far in our careers as VR devs.
The wires required to carry the audio signal from a custom DAC housed in an enclosure that clips on to the back of the strap are discretely tucked behind the audio strap's padding and pass the signal through pogo pins embedded in 3D printed adapters, which sturdily fix the headset to the strap.
Installation of the mod is fairly easy. The adapters are installed on the audio strap with a single M6 screw on each side and the enclosure which houses the electronics is clipped onto the back of the headset in a sleek package. A short USB type-c cable connects the electronics to the Beyond's accessory port. The only tricky part is tucking the thin cables.
The electronics in the Beyondex employs a custom digital to analog converter + amplifier and an uninterruptible power supply circuit to drive the Valve Index's off-ear speakers for an incredible audio experience. The DAC is based on Sctanf's Picoamp open source hardware and firmware project and the current power supply is based on the INJOINIC IP5310 and a small 3.7V Li-ion battery.
Why did we have to put a power module and battery in this thing? That's a great question! The reason is that driving the Index speakers requires more current at times than the USB 2.0 accessory port on the Beyond can handle. The powers supply module charges the battery in quiet moments when the speakers aren't pulling a lot of power, and then supplies extra current when the amplifier needs it to play louder sounds.
Acknowledgements go to Matt from MMI Modular, who first made me aware of this issue and gave me tons of tips and advice for this project. They have some really cool similar/related projects that they have been sharing in the Beyond Discord and they also sell their own version of the Picoamp chip, although it doesn't have the integrated power booster that ours does. However, if you want to make your own Index speaker powered headphones, it's perfect for that.
If you're curious, here's a picture of our janky (but functional) first prototype!
If you own both an Index and a Beyond and want to put together your own Beyondex, we are making "mod kits" that contain all the components you need to do the mod yourself. You can preorder one today on the Fluid VR Headset Mod Shop, which we expect to start shipping out within a month or two depending on how our early testing of the "production" prototypes we just got in hand goes.
We also will be making a very limited number of pre-assembled units that include a refurbished Index audio strap. If we can get a better supply of straps, we will add more inventory. So far we only have 5 up for grabs.
We have tried our best to keep the cost of the mod kits as accessible as possible, but because we're ordering components in small quantities and hand-assembling everything ourselves, these prices were the lowest we could manage given the small number of orders we expect. To try to make at least one option a bit cheaper, we're offering a "print your own" kit, which will include most of the components except the 3D printed stuff, which you can print on your own printer or a friend's printer if you don't have one. This has the added bonus of allowing you to make your own Beyondex with color accents in whatever colors/materials you like.
For those of you who are eager to take on the challenge of building a Beyondex from scratch, we have good news for you too! We're still getting early user feedback and finalizing the designs, but once that is done we'll be making 3D print files and schematics available via an open-source license so that modders can adapt and remix the Beyondex mod for their own use cases. We'll also make PCBs of the combined DAC+UPS module available.
For now we are only opening up mod kit orders to the US, UK, Canada, and Japan, but if we hear from enough folks in other parts of the world who want to order them, we'll figure out how to make and ship these to your part of the world too. Please reach out to me at john @ fluid.so, and I'll see what we can do!
I love all of you. Let's spread great VR experiences together.
- John from Fluid
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