Bluetooth Music/Phone/GPS

Does anyone use Bluetooth devices setup to work in their helmet? I just bought a "Blinc M1" setup mainly for some music but ended up sending it back because it had a very high level of basline hiss and interference.

Setup, however was easy enough, my helmet even had speaker pockets in the ear area of the helmet. I had to customze it a little but the fix was as easy as placing some nylon batting behind the ear pockets to place the speakers a little closer to my ears.

When the replacement comes I'm interested to see how that works with ear plugs in place as well - I decided that ear plugs were mandatory for me either because I have a noisey helmet or because of the wind in this area.

Does anyone else have a Blinc M1 or M2 setup in their helmet?

Daryl

I often wear the Motorola S305 headset and it fits rather nicely under my warm-weather helmet. Not so much for the full-face helmet, however. If nothing else, at least I know when a call comes in wearing it but there is no way I will answer while riding.

The 305 is a double-eared headset with power, volume, ff, rw, play/pause and on/off-hook buttons. I often use it to listen to Pandora down the road. The earphones cover the ear and are relatively thin. The battery typically lasts on the order of about 10 hours - far longer than my Droid. I got mine at my local Verizon store.

KB

I actually bought an M1 on amazon last week and returned it this week. I have few good things to say about it for the price I paid aside from the Jog Dial which works great to jump songs on my phone and through Pandora. The mounting solution was dumb, the little key to reset was dumb, and the way the cable stuck out and down below the unit was really dumb, aside from the fact it wasn't loud enough at highway speeds.

I previously had the BT interphone (boxy one) that i bought on Ebay for $50 until I lost it about a month ago. It was cheap and loud (but poor audio quality) and generally worked (although it occasionally had the digital buzzy noise when i started it up but that went away after a few seconds.) The mounting solution was also ridiculous (expected it to fall off any second) and it took 3 weeks to arrive from China.

A few months ago I saw a good deal on a Scala Rider bluetooth and jumped on it. However i didn't realize it wasn't A2DP (bluetooth audio) and needed to connect via audio cable, and also wasn't loud enough and numerous other issues and I returned that too. I did like the mounting solution though, but in general not willing to pay $300+ for the top of the line Scala product with A2DP.

There is a brand called Sena which looks pretty good, but not willing to pay $160 for one unit right now. I am going to check out other chinese ones on Ebay, and right now I am using a hard-wired headphone (just speakers) with a Fiio E5 amplifier and that works well enough in the mean time.

toolboxjesse wrote:

I actually bought an M1 on amazon last week and returned it this week. I have few good things to say about it for the price I paid aside from the Jog Dial which works great to jump songs on my phone and through Pandora. The mounting solution was dumb, the little key to reset was dumb, and the way the cable stuck out and down below the unit was really dumb, aside from the fact it wasn't loud enough at highway speeds.

The M1 seemed good except, as you noted the mounting is crappy. Streaming is about all I'm really interested in though I suppose being able to make a call when stopped without removing the helmet is a plus.

My helmet has a flange at the bottom which made the "removeable" mount impossible to fit so I had to use the sticky-pad solution, however because of my helmet's design features it sits at about 8 o'clock on my helmet (when looking down from above). Also as you note the wire connection is not so well placed, significantly though the left earpiece needs about 2" more cable to fit well in my helmet.

I can't really tell about it being loud enough as I didn't have ear plugs on my ride this weekend and as the wind noise was so loud I didn't dare to compete with it with the headset. At least the ebay company I bought it from acknowledged that their last shipment had had lots of complaints about the interference and so it's on the way for a replacement now.

I feel like I've tried everything from headphones to amplifiers with helmet mounted headphone/speaker type things. They almost worked if I used some foam so they pressed up against my ears.

I eventually just bit the bullet and got adjusted to the in-ear sound isolation type earphones. I hate them because they were very uncomfortable at first and it took forever to get used to them.

I couldn't get anything that didn't go in my ears to work consistently.

Scooter Girl and I have Starcom1 and Bluetooth BM-02 on our SWings and love them.We talk to each other,cell phone and listen to music.Works great.

We have the scala rider G4 helmet communication system and love it. It's nice to be able to talk to my girlfriend while we ride 2 up. I blue tooth it with my phone and have taken a lot of phone calls while riding with it. I've used the music player on the phone through the blue tooth and it works well too. It has the ability to hook up with other people who have the G4 on the fly, but I have never tried this feature as it's hard to find someone else with the same setup. LOL

My wife and I have the Scala Teamset 2. It is bluetoothed to my phone and will bluetooth to mp3 devices and some GPS, just not the one I have (bummer). Conversations with my wife adds to our riding experience. Communication between other bikes is not available for this model.

Bob and I have the Scala G4. We both like these alot. We are still working through the different issues of how they work. But they have really made riding together alot more convenient to communicate with one another.

On long days we have charged them for about and hour on the bikes while riding when we knew we had a long stretch of not needing to communicate directions, etc. They can last about 10 hours without being charged. It all depends though.

MY wife and I use the Scala Rider G4 Powerset. It connects, through Bluetooth and works great for bike to bike, cell phone,music and gps. We highly recommend this setup.

I'm running the Chatterbox XBi-2H since it was made to go right in to the HJC helmet.
It works well. My only complaint is it only seems to go about four hours of constant use.

Solution 1 Bluetooth Stereo Handsfree Headset ($16) (knockoff of SD9 HD Bluetooth headset)
http://www.everbuying.com/Designer-s-Bluetooth-Stereo-Handsfree-Headset-p-24619.html
Good for wireless (Bluetooth) connection to mp3 player or iPhone for music. Fits nicely under full helmet and blocks out noise well if you use the big spherical ear pieces. Easy to slide helmet on and off over headset. Will also answer telephone, but controls are on side of earphone, so I can’t get to them to press the answer button with the helmet on.

Solution 2 Nokia BH-214 Bluetooth Stereo Headset with Detachable Headphones ($59)
http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-Bluetooth-Headset-Detachable-Headphones/dp/B002NEMH6G
This is a wireless Bluetooth receiver with a plug for a normal set of plug in stereo headphones. I use my iphone to listen to music and answer the telephone.
The benefit is that the controls are on the receiver (small button on edges of square), not the earplugs, so you can mount it completely inside your helmet. If you put it where you can use your hands, you can answer the phone and control the music (volume/selection). I mounted it inside my helmet by my mouth using Velcro (see picture), so I can reach the controls easily with my fingers and the microphone is right by my mouth so I can speak into the phone without a lot of wind noise. Downside is that you must use regular wired headset plugged into the receiver. I made a custom fitted pair using a cheap pair of earplugs and polyvinylsiloxane (which is a fast curing soft polymer that flows easily to fit the ear shape; same stuff your dentist uses to make impressions, see pix). Benefit is that it is a perfect comfortable fit to my ear and is great for blocking out noise, which allows excellent music.

sorry, can't seem to add more than 2 pics, so won't be able to see helmet mounting and custom fit ear plugs

The Scala sets have adjustment buttons on outside of helmet that allow the volume to be adjusted very easily. You can push a button to voice dial a call (if your phone has voice dial). To answer a call I only have to say "Hello" or any other word and begin speaking. The main feature my wife and I utilize is the driver to rider voice. I can see how the bike to bike is an additional feature that would be great if riding with another rider with same setup. Voice is activated hands free. Just begin talking and enjoy.

I just bought the Parrot SK4000 on Amazon and expect to receive it next week- it doesn't have the intercom but it does have a handlebar-mounted remote control that I'm very excited about and several other cool features (like text to speech dialing from the phone address book). I see in the pics that the mounting solution also sits very low which is problematic to keep the helmet in the underseat storage, and the module itself looks huge in the pics (like a hockey puck). It was only $60 and I got $30 off by applying for a amazon card.

I received the parrot SK4000 last week. I haven't been able to test it on the road yet (due to a 40-50% chance of rain for the past 3 days i don't risk getting caught in a thunderstorm again, although in actuality it hasn't rained a drop) but I am impressed with the features. One annoyance- the power chord they sent has the European tip and there is no adapter, although my old Motorola phone charger works fine in its place while I am waiting for the new charger.

I went with sound isolating ear buds, they were worth every penny!

http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er4.html

-35 to -42 db reduction is better than the Hearos plugs I was using

Acquit wrote:

http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er4.html

-35 to -42 db reduction is better than the Hearos plugs I was using

Can you still heard the cars and horns??

honda_silver wrote:

Acquit wrote:

http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er4.html

-35 to -42 db reduction is better than the Hearos plugs I was using

Can you still heard the cars and horns??

Yes, if you don't turn the music up. I'm thinking abut the Etymotic custom molds for comfort.

Acquit wrote:

I'm thinking abut the Etymotic custom molds for comfort.

Let me know how it goes and sounds. This was the direction I was thinking too.

I own a Camo BTS-300 and 4 Sena SMH10 units (one for each member of my family). The Camo works well for single device connected via Bluetooth. The Sena SMH10 is great as a bluetooth device for music and mobile phone. In addition you can intercom up to 4 units (1 at a time).