Bluetooth helmet communicators

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CountryCruzr
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Bluetooth helmet communicators

Postby CountryCruzr » Tue Mar 29, 2016 11:15 pm

What's everyone using? I was given a Blinc unit that works ok. Use it for navigation and music from my iPhone. Had a pair of them for two way intercom but the charging port/speaker port failed on one. For a cheap set it worked good for awhile before the failure. Now my riding partner has a 2014 Ultra with the fancy boombox. For some reason Harley D decided to go with wired connectors for CB and headset. Works ok that way for driver to passenger communication on the same bike but sucks if you have other riders you want to communicate with. From postings & reviews I have read Sena 20S are at the top of the chart for Bluetooth allowing up to 8 people w/BT plus the Ultra rider can pair it to the boom box as well for calls and would be able to intercom others via BT on helmet. Any and all input here is appreciated. This is gonna be a pricey investment so I'm interested in gleaning info from others. Thanks!
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VStar
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Re: Bluetooth helmet communicators

Postby VStar » Wed Mar 30, 2016 1:21 am

Cruzr, I'm old school, Hubby and I just yell at each other at traffic stops.
I've been there before. Can I get there, again?
Mamaw Suze
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Re: Bluetooth helmet communicators

Postby Mamaw Suze » Wed Mar 30, 2016 4:19 am

Old school here too if I ride with anyone else. That way I can stay in my own head and not be disturbed. Sometimes I wish I could just send a little beep to another rider so they know I want them to see something but that's about it
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CountryCruzr
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Re: Bluetooth helmet communicators

Postby CountryCruzr » Wed Mar 30, 2016 3:36 pm

I've done the yelling at stop lights and signs as well, :lol: :lol: My horn isn't much either. I've also done the bee sting wave trying to get attention, all I got was strange looks from people as they passed by. :)
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Dualsport Chic
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Re: Bluetooth helmet communicators

Postby Dualsport Chic » Thu Mar 31, 2016 9:25 am

I have a Sena 20S - still in the box - have set ups for both my helmets - but waiting for help to install them - will chime in once I get them hooked up - and mated with my Garmin Zumo 550.
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CountryCruzr
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Re: Bluetooth helmet communicators

Postby CountryCruzr » Thu Mar 31, 2016 5:14 pm

Anxiously awaiting your review Dualsport!!
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OldMare
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Re: Bluetooth helmet communicators

Postby OldMare » Fri Apr 01, 2016 6:23 pm

Interested too!
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BlueLghtning
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Re: Bluetooth helmet communicators

Postby BlueLghtning » Fri May 13, 2016 7:14 pm

Sarah and I have been using BT helmet communicators for 7+ years. We started with the early Scala Q2 models that only did intercom and phone. They totally changed the way we rode together and I think it would be hard pressed to ever find us without communicators again. My dad ended up getting the Scala G4 model, but in all honesty, that model had some growing pains and we struggled with cross compatibility issues. Eventually the 3 of us decided to sell our Scala's and move over to the Sena headsets with the Sena SMH10. Sena came in very strong and became a top competitor against the Cardo Scala line. Since then, both manufactures have come out with several more models and many more features. The communicators have certainly come a long way from then and it's actually amazing with some of the technology they have managed to put into the communicators.

Currently Sena's top of the line model is the Sena 20S and they have the newer 10S model that supersedes the older SMH10. The new 10S has almost as many features as the 20S including BT 4.0 support and support for a phone app, but most noticeably missing is the Audio Multitasking the 20S has that allows you to have music or GPS instruction in the background during an intercom conversation. The nice thing about the 10S units is they fit in the same mount as the SMH10's, so if you already had the older SMh10's, you can upgrade and not have to change out all your mounts. The 20S use a totally different mounting design.

As mentioned, Scala had some growing pains with the G4, but they seemed to get things together with the G9 & later G9x model. They also revamped their Q range headsets for more features while keeping the price down. Their latest flagship model is the Scala Pactalk and this one intrigues me a lot for it's ability to create a virtual bluetooth network where everyone connects together to one unit vs daisy chaining the units.

There are several other BT headsets out there, some better than others. IMOP, Scala & Sena are at the top of the list and you can't go wrong with either. If you have a group of people you ride with a lot that have one brand over the other, for simplicity sake, it's probably best to go with the brand that everyone else has. Although most headsets are allowing universal pairing to other brands, it generally isn't as smooth as the normal intercom and most times, you lack any of the extra features.

One of the things to know about BT headsets is speaker and mic placement is critical in the helmet. If you don't get the speakers right next to your ears, you will not have a good experience. Also a speaker that actually touches your ear makes for a very sore ear very quickly. You want them close, but not touching or pressing on your ear. Mic placement is also very critical. While just about all the headsets do a great job an noise reduction, naked bikes or a noisy helmet will still come over the headset. A lot of the headsets are packing so many features into them, it becomes really hard to remember what each button does or how long you hold this button or that button. If you know you get easily frustrated with too many features or too complicated, then keep yourself on a more simple headset that is easier to operate.

One of the most frequently asked questions about BT communicators is how far can they reach. All the manufactures will try to convince you theirs are the best, but in the end, all manufactures are limited on the power output of class 1 BT (100mW), so the only way they can increase their range is by adding an antenna, or coming up with algorithms in their code that help the BT stay connected longer. In their testing and advertising their range, the conditions would be considered ideal, so again take their distance claims with a grain of salt. The best distance you will get will be on an open flat road with no trees or obstacles, or electrical interference. Most of us enjoy riding in the mountains, over hills, around trees, or find our selves in large cities with building and electrical interference all around us, which all impact the range. The general rule of thumb is if you can see your riding partner, you can talk to them, Even sometimes getting out of sight, you can still talk to them, but the range fades fast after that.

Another factor that comes into play is how many devices can your headset connect to. (Phone, GPS, Music, etc). First I need to explain about the most common BT profiles you encounter on devices. This is greatly simplified, but remember that BT is always one to one. Your headset can have several profiles, but unless it has more than one of a certain profile, only one device can connect to that profile at any given time. Some devices like phones support multiple profiles for different task at the same time. It gets complicated quick, but I'll try to keep it simple.

- HFP is the most common BT profile and stands for Hands Free Protocol and is the primary connection your phone uses to connect to any BT headset. This is the profile your phone calls would go over when connected to a headset. Keep in mind HFP is always mono. Most GPS's would also use the HFP connection for nav instructions.

-Next up is A2DP and stands for Advanced Audio Distribution Profile. This is a stereo music BT profile and allows you to listen to your music over stereo connection so it sounds better than the mono connection used for your voice. Now on most BT headsets, the HFP & A2DP profiles connect simultaneously when you pair them and your phone is connected for talking and media. There's a couple other profiles that connect that allow you to answer your phone remotely or control your music from the remote device, but I won't go into those. They are secondary profiles and they only connect as long as the primary one they support connects too. Some headsets started including a 2nd HFP connection which allowed you to also connect maybe a GPS or 2nd phone. The problem though was there was still only one A2DP profile and that meant you had to be careful if both devices were trying to connect to the same profile, one would get bumped off. For the most part, this worked great until Garmin released the Zumo 660/665. This GPS decided to break the mold and had an A2DP profile for music. Normally this wouldn't be an issue if you were just fine listening to music from the GPS and didn't have your phone connected directly to the headset, but for some reason Garmin made this GPS greedy and it was not happy unless it had both the HFP & A2DP connections. So even if you wanted to only listen to the nav instructions that came over HFP, it still tried to connect the A2DP and would bump your phone out that was on the other HFP connection or if you tried to connect the GPS via HPF only, it would laugh at you and disconnect until you gave in and gave it it's A2DP connection back. So many people blamed the BT headsets for this very irritating issue, but the root cause was a greedy Garmin GPS that broke the BT protocol rules that should have allowed it to only connect the HFP connection if the A2DP wasn't needed. I'm still not sure Garmin has fixed this issue to date so beware of the Zumo 660/665 GPS if you wan to use it with a headset. It has some caveats.

So finally the BT manufactures gave in and added a 2nd A2DP connection. So now you can connect both a phone for HFP/A2DP and a GPS or 2nd music device on the 2nd HFP/A2DP connections. The Sena 10S & 20S have this. I'm not up to date on the Scala's but I think they are a little late to this one.

The next factor that comes into play on BT headsets is if you frequently ride in large groups of people, how many people can you connect at once or save in your headset. Almost all of the manufactures got to 3-4 people connected at one time pretty quickly, but then the race was on to connect more. The Sena 10S/20S remember up to 9 riders using the phone app. The Scala G9/G9x also remember up to 9 using the phone app. Most of these units though only do 2-3 people without the use of the phone app.

So on to connecting multiple people together in an intercom conversation. The way they accomplish multiple people connecting is by having two separate intercom channels on a single headset that can bridge two other riders to the one headset. Now you have 3 people connected with one person being the bridge. You can continue this by bridging in more people. This is known as the "daisy chain" method. While even the older Sena SMH10's only officially said 4 people could be connected, we've successfully connected 8+ people before. However, it's definitely a trial in patience and virtue once you start getting over 5-6 people. It's best to connect people in the order they are riding as each bridge extends the range of the two people connected to it. So each additional bridge adds more range and more people. However, if anyone in the middle of the daisy chain drops out, or gets too far away, you break it in the middle and to get everyone connected again means connecting in again.

The Scala G4/G9/G9X & Sena SMH10/10S/20S all support this daisy chain method of connecting. Some units like the 10S & 20S make it easier by using a phone app that allows you outline who you want in the group and allowing the headsets to connect automatically to each other. I still haven't got to play around with this much since we still have a lot of SMH10's in our group and they don't support this. I think Scala's have a similar phone app, but I'm not as familiar with that.

So the latest technological advance in this area is the Scala Pactalk that introduces a new feature they call DMC which stands for (Dynamic Meshwork Communication). In the most simplest terms think of it as sort of similar to a wifi hotspot. One headset becomes the main unit which all the other units connect to. The only difference is, each unit has the ability to talk to each other unit and connect through them so if they get too far from the main unit, they just send their audio through the other headsets that are closer in the path. It's all dynamically controlled by the software so from anyone from 3-15 riders can be connected and even if riders change places in the group or fall out completely, the network is able to self heal and route audio automatically. Now I'll admit I really like the sound of this and I think this is the future of all BT headsets. I would imagine Sena will have something similar soon enough. I haven't had a chance to actually try this out, but if it works as good as it does in practice as it sounds, it really could change the BT communication for large groups of riders. The downside to this is for this to work, everyone must have the Scala Pactalk headset. The DMC technology is not backwards compatible with older Scala headsets and in fact you have to put the Pactalk's into a special mode to even use the DMC technology. It's either one technology or the other. You can't mix & match when connecting to older headsets. Since all of my group is on Sena's, I certainly couldn't convince everyone to drop what they have invested in Sena headsets and go by the Scala pactalk.

So as mentioned. If your friends have one brand of headsets like Sena or Scala, probably best to stick with them and go that route. If you have a group that you ride with and none of you have headsets and you want to try the latest technology, the Scala PacTalks really seem like the best technology out there right now, but that's only by how it looks on paper. I have no real experience working with it. The Sena 10S would be the best middle of the road Communicator that is simple, yet still has quite a bit of features and should continue to be supported by Sena for a good while. The 20S has a little more features, but also a bit more complicated.

Just some observations between the two companies of Sena & Scala. Both companies I think lead the way in BT communication and you can't go wrong with either. Occasionally you'll get a 3rd party to jump in there, but for the most part, these guys have been leading the way. You can find plenty of horror stories on both and a lot of times, you can figure user error was at least part of the issue. Both companies have gone through growing pains. For Scala, it was the G4, for Sena, it was the early 20S, but both have done a good job of responding and catching up. Both companies have been around a long time and both seem to be leading the way. IMOP, I think Sena does a better job of feature updates to older hardware so if you don't tend to upgrade as often, but want to stick with hardware that will continue to get updates, I think you'd be better off sticking with Sena. The SMH10 was supported for a long time and continued to get new features. Scala on the other hand seems to be the type of company that just keeps trying to get the latest version out there and quickly abandons their older models with no more updates or features. So if you like buying the latest and greatest and don't mind spending money to upgrade every so often, you might enjoy Scala's route on that.
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Re: Bluetooth helmet communicators

Postby BlueLghtning » Fri May 13, 2016 7:26 pm

Sarah and I have been using the Sena SMH10's for 5+ years now and they still work great. They still sell the SMH10's new and they are a great value, but I wouldn't expect to see any new feature updates on them as they are stuck on the older BT 3.0 technology. All the new headsets have moved on to BT4.0. We've killed a couple of SMH10's, but I would buy spares when I would see a cheap one out there, so we keep moving along. I think this year we are going to update to either the 10S or 20S just because I want some of the new features they add, most noticeably, the smart phone app. I would like the 20S, but the 10s has the advantage of using the same mounts we already have and we have like 10+ helmets between us that all have mounts, so that is very strongly pushing me towards the 10S models.
BlueLghtning - http://www.bluelghtning.smugmug.com
Mine: KTM 650 ADV (Katuki), 05 BMW R1200GS, 09 DL650, 08 WR250R
Hers: 08 Versys 650, 13 CRF250L, 07 Ninja 650R (dirty ninja middle weight adventure bike)
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VStar
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Re: Bluetooth helmet communicators

Postby VStar » Sat May 14, 2016 5:33 pm

Thanks BL, our techie is in residence.
I've been there before. Can I get there, again?

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