RIC for Tympan Earpieces

#1

Hi all,

I recently purchased the Tympan Earpieces without realizing that they do not come with the RIC. Can anyone make a recommendation for a RIC that I can purchase and attach to the earpieces? Ideally somewhere like Amazon or online marketplace, but direct from manufacturer or audiologist would work too, assuming reasonable shipping time.

Also, how to the RIC attach to the earpieces? Will the RICs simply plug into the pins of the earpiece or is there some soldering involved?

Thank you for the advice and guidance!

Kindly,
Jon

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#2

Any updates on the RIC for the Tympan earpieces from the Tympan team?

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#3

Hi, I have recently bought the earpiece too, and they didnā€™t have the RIC included. However, the opposite is mentioned on the website. I suggest you do not buy any RIC and wait for someone at Tympan to realize they forgot to pack the RIC with the earpieces.

#4

Hi @Clareto74. It seems the ā€˜buyā€™ page for the earpieces disclaims that the earpiece does not come with the RIC at the bottom of the description, despite the picture showing RICs for the product.

I donā€™t know if Tympan will be shipping RICs to all Earpiece customers once they figure out a suitable plug-and-play RIC for the earpieces or if they will make it a separate purchase. Itā€™s also unclear as to whether or not this will be an in-house developed solution or a link to a 3rd party part that will work.

Itā€™s my understanding that the CS-44 connector is not traditionally used as an RIC connector but rather to program hearing aids with cables. I havenā€™t been able to find an RIC that claims it has a CS-44 connection port; most brands have ā€˜proprietaryā€™ connections based on 2 or 3 pins, not 4.

Iā€™m in the process of trying to figure out workarounds, either by hacking an existing RIC to match the relevant pins of the CS-44 or figuring out if a CS-44 can be used with an RIC as a native connection.

If I make any headway, Iā€™ll keep you updated.

#5

Hi,
The Tympan Earpiece has a CS44 connector for the RIC. Any RIC with that connector would fit.
Sonion has a small inventory of RIC, but the ones in stock donā€™t have the right connector.
Manufacturing RIC requires specialized labor, tools, and technique.
This makes for high minimum orders. Funds are not currently available for bulk purchase of RIC, though they may become available.
Also, the modules come with different gain, size, and other attributes. A selected module for bulk purchase might not fit every use case. What would be your desired specifications for the module?

I did have some contact with a sales rep at Sonion who was very friendly and did have a small number of RIC assemblies with CS44. You may find when you contact your regional rep that they have some, but thereā€™s know telling what the module attributes are. These would be maybe overage from a previous production run?
The RIC is a component of the Earpiece that is ā€˜consumableā€™ in that it will wear and break and need to be replaced, while the rest will not. I believe the regular route for replacement is via an audiologist? If so, there may be an avenue there for small quantities that fit the connector.

I canā€™t post a pdf here, so I will link on the product page with an example of CS-44 that matches what we use. The part number has many variations, so when you shop for RIC to mate with it give them a tripple-check. Beware, traps for young players.

#6

Hello @biomurph if I do understand correctly, you do not have the CS44 RIC in stock right now ? You suggest we should buy this part directly through Sonion sales rep ? I thought that this was included in the purchase of an earpiece, as it is mentioned in the spec and written in the BOM. image
Are you planning on sending RIC to earpiece customer, or should we just start looking at this part by ourselves ?

#7

@Clareto74
We do not have the RIC units in stock. We suggest that you purchase from Sonion or another supplier that has compatible units that connect to the CS44 socket that we use.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

#8

Update!

I found these: RVA-90080-N13 - Knowles Stock available. The distributor Micro-Semiconductor.com offer the best price with new original products.

They should work.

I contacted Sonion sales but didnā€™t hear back from them yet.

I am having a meeting next week, Iā€™ll let you know if there are any RICs with the cs44 connector left from them. Sonion has sinced moved on to the newer CS8X socket w/ 8 terminals. They say this is ā€œfuture proofā€ā€¦ I havenā€™t seen a cs44 socket to cs8x socket adapter either.

For future iterations, we could work on replacing the cs44 socket on the earpieces with the newer CS8X socket , that way the cs8X RICs that Sonion advertises will work and it leaves more pins for more sensors to be integrated like PPG or temperature.

This will almost certainly require some rewriting of the firmware as it doesnā€™t look like it would solder as easily as the cs44 shown in the assembly guide. I donā€™t know if replacing the CS44 with CS8X is possible with the current PCB-to-socket connection though, we may need an updated version that supports cs8x.

Exciting RICs/speakers coming from Sonion though, check this out: Sonion ā€¢ Improving people's quality of life

So cool! This would be fun to play with.

Hope this helps.

ā€“Jon

#9

@Clareto74 @biomurph

Tagging you FYI