Another Intercom Question

Spitfire

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Afternoon all.

I've had a good read of this forum but electronics tend to evolve at a rate so its worth asking again.

I’m looking for a wireless (Bluetooth) intercom system between myself and my lady who will be pillion. Its only for one trip to France so don’t want to spend a fortune.

The Sena SMH5 seems to get good ratings but the cheapest I’ve seen is around £170 for a dual system.

Has anyone tried one of the cheaper offerings such as this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Veetop-Res...om-21&linkId=f62d6a68a18e51f62b4be042f112e0d7

Appreciated :beerjug:
 
Had Sena (SMH10) - Great
Have Cardo Scala c/w Pactalk - jury still out

Amazon jobbies have 13% 1-star rating - would prob avoid

SMH5 (or is there a 3 now?) - should be great for your intended use
 
Before we went all upmarket and bought a Sena 20S for £300-odd, we had a system from Ebay that cost a grand total of £37. It was called a BT Interphone or something like that. As a pure intercom, it worked absolutely fine. Bike to bike range wasn't very good, but if it's just for using rider-pillion that shouldn't be an issue. Getting anything else to connect was very unreliable (hence we upgraded to get sat nav, music, phone etc). But for a one-off trip I wouldn't be spending hundreds.

If you want a posher one, maybe look for second hand?
 
Had the BT interphone for about 4 years using for pillion and bike to bike. Twin pack was about £45. One of the units has just packed up but still using the other on dirt bike helmet to talk to mate, listen to music etc. Battery lasted about 7 hours most days round Europe where we had comms on 90% of the day. Range was about 400m but lost connection when out of sight round bends etc. Now have a sena which is better on volume, range and functions but not massively. These are the ones :

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/800M-Interphone-BT-Bluetooth-Motorcycle-Helmet-Intercom-Motorbike-FM-Headset-2PC/323404961642?epid=23022843628&hash=item4b4c70176a:g:NmMAAOSwp6lbejhG
 
I used a BT intercom for bike to bike and rider to pillion for two years without any issues, for a one off trip I would have no hesitation in using one.
 
I use in-ear monitors, and was guided to a unit featuring a 3.5 mm jack socket.
 
Afternoon all.

I've had a good read of this forum but electronics tend to evolve at a rate so its worth asking again.

I’m looking for a wireless (Bluetooth) intercom system between myself and my lady who will be pillion. Its only for one trip to France so don’t want to spend a fortune.

The Sena SMH5 seems to get good ratings but the cheapest I’ve seen is around £170 for a dual system.

Has anyone tried one of the cheaper offerings such as this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Veetop-Res...om-21&linkId=f62d6a68a18e51f62b4be042f112e0d7

Appreciated :beerjug:

I used to have Sena SMH5s. They were fine, but the issue I had was that they didn't share TomTom or Nav V GPS instructions over the intercom so that my wife could hear them, but just muted the intercom, which wasn't what I wanted. Things got worse when I started using a phone based GPS (MyRoute Navigation) as that would not interrupt the intercom due to phones using a different Bluetooth profile (A2DP) to dedicated GPS devices (HFP), and the Senas wouldn't prioritise the phone based GPS over the intercom in same way they would for a dedicated satnav using HFP. This meant that if I turned on the intercom function I couldn't hear the navigation instructions. To get around this I bought and installed a wired Autocom system which worked perfectly, and the wires to the headests were not as much of a nuisance as I had feared.

Now you don't say whether as well as being able to talk to your good lady you also want to listen to GPS instructions, and if so what type of satnav you would be using, so it is difficult to make a recommendation, however I recently decided to try Bluetooth again and bought a pair of headsets called M1-S which go by various names like Fodsports but are actually made by a Chinese company called Dimton and you can get these for under £90 a pair.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2PCS-M1-...016933?hash=item2610f17565:g:5IIAAOSwf0hcQWuT

http://www.dimton.com/eng/products/bsh/m1s/index.html


These work perfectly well as a rider to pillion intercom and are actually better than the Senas in the respect that instructions from a conventional satnav connected via the Bluetooth HFP profile are automatically shared with the pillion when the intercom is active. Of course my phone based GPS had the same problems with these headsets as with the Senas in that you can either have the intercom or the GPS instructions but not both due to the phone using the A2DP profile.

I had some discussions with the manufacturers about this, and I found them very responsive and helpful to the extent that they actually produced a new beta version of firmware for the headsets to try to fix this problem. The first attempt did at least mean that the rider could hear GPS instructions from the phone while the intercom was active, which wasn't the case with the standard firmware, but the transmission of GPS over the intercom to the pillion was a bit intermittent and distorted. They are still looking to improve this further.

In the meantime I have found an app for my Android phone which converts its output to use HFP, so it now appears more like a conventional satnav and anything played on the phone, be it music or satnav instructions, is overlaid on the intercom audio so is heard by both rider and pillion while the intercom is active. The app is called Dynamic Media BT Mono Router and can be found on the play store here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.philipp_koch.dynamicmediabtrouter&hl=en_GB

While this works fine for me, it is not guaranteed to work with every phone, and the limitation of HFP (hands free profile) is that it is designed for two way communication, so for example it is used by the phone when making phone calls, so it receives audio from the microphone in the headset, but is limited to sending out audio to the headset in mono and in lower quality than the A2DP profile which is intended for transmission of high quality stereo music sources.

A lot of these ramblings may not be relevant to you, but I thought I might as well mention in case it is useful to others, but the bottom line is that as far as my experience goes, the M1-S headsets seem a good product and work well, and the manufacturers seem quite supportive, as were the eBay sellers I bought them from.

Fred

PS: The M1-S units use Bluetooth V4.1 which is more likely to work with the TFT than the headsets using older versions, in case this is of interest. I don't yet have any experience with this, but get my new TFT equipped bike next week and will give them a try.
 
I look forward to finding out whether the M1-S unit works ok with the TFT. I am mainly interested in Garmin Sat nav instructions to the rider intercom. I probably prefer my pillion(female) not to hear the nav. instructions! :blagblah
 
Fred said lots of really useful stuff

Thanks Fred. This brilliant thanks.

To be honest I would just be happy with the intercom. At a push she might want to listen to music on her headset and she also might want to receive calls.

At a push I could take a call.

I definitely don’t want to hear my sat nav.

Question?
So these devices support A2DP and HFP but the way I read it the actually headset to headset communication is HFP?
 
I look forward to finding out whether the M1-S unit works ok with the TFT. I am mainly interested in Garmin Sat nav instructions to the rider intercom. I probably prefer my pillion(female) not to hear the nav. instructions! :blagblah

I found that the Sena headsets prioritised satnav sound over the intercom so just muted the intercom when there was a navigation instruction. This meant my wife could be talking, unaware that I was no longer hearing her, which could be annoying, and to be fair I sometimes wanted her input on satnav instructions,such as when they were a bit ambiguous, or if I was distracted by traffic. I was able to arrange this with the Autocom, and the M1-S units are supposedly able to do this with dedicated satnavs, though I no longer have one to test that out, but definitely do it as long as the phone based GPS input is via HFP, which I've now been able to arrange with the app on my phone.

I will try out the M1-S units with the TFT but it may not be a fully representative test compared with the complicated situations some users apparently encounter with this, where there is also a NAV V/VI or similar dedicated satnav in the mix. I have no desire to pair my phone with the TFT to give me telephony and music playing via the TFT while riding, but will try it just to see if it works. However I suspect the TFT will behave much like a phone with regard to pairing with headsets, and will use the A2DP profile for music playback because that supports high bit rate stereo audio, but will switch to HFP for phone calls because this needs a duplex link, that is two way communication for mic and speakers, but does not need to be high quality.

I'm not sure if the simple navigation feature on the TFT (supported by the BMW app on a paired phone) has audio turn instructions or if it is simply visual with turn arrows on the display. If there is audio, then I guess how the headsets react will depend on what profile this is transmitted on.
 
Thanks Fred. This brilliant thanks.

To be honest I would just be happy with the intercom. At a push she might want to listen to music on her headset and she also might want to receive calls.

At a push I could take a call.

I definitely don’t want to hear my sat nav.

Question?
So these devices support A2DP and HFP but the way I read it the actually headset to headset communication is HFP?

I think the headset to headset comms must be at least similar to HFP as it requires duplex communication, but it could use a proprietary non-standard protocol when communicating with headsets of the same make - I'm pretty sure I have read that that is what Sena do, and which then allows them to do music sharing from one headset to the other, though I never got that to work reliably on my Sena SMH5s. I guess the issue is that it is difficult if not impossible to support both a high quality stereo audio stream as well as the duplex intercom, either at the same time, or to switch between them whenever mic input is detected, with the limited processing power in these headsets.

The M1-S units seem to work well with sharing audio so long as it is input in HFP form which is low quality mono. As I mentioned, the developers have produced a beta version of the headset firmware which makes it possible to receive stereo music via A2DP on the rider's headset, while also keeping the intercom active, but then sharing the A2DP input with the pillion headset seems to be asking too much of the intercom link, as it breaks up and is distorted for the pillion.

In your case you may find that with the M1-S units running their standard firmware, then you could have the intercom open, but that if you wife had her phone paired to her headset and started playing music then that would kill the intercom link, and she would have to pause music playback to resume the intercom link, which is probably what you want if you don't want to hear her music while riding!

I have found that if you take a phone call on a phone paired to one of the M1-S headsets, then the phone will switch to HFP and the call audio will be shared across the intercom link, which may not be what you would want. When I asked the developers about this they said that yes this was the case if you answered the phone on the phone screen, but that if you answer it with the appropriate headset button, then it knows to mute the intercom so as not to share the call. I haven't tested this yet, but as I don't take calls while riding it doesn't really matter to me.

If you don't want to hear the satnav, then you just don't pair it to the headset, though I have to say I find audio instructions rather easier to take in in stressful situations, for example like trying to find a hotel in heavy traffic in a foreign city, compared with trying to keep looking at the map on the satnav screen.
 
sena

I've been using Sena SMH5 for the last 12 months, excellent simple intercom.
I use a Tom Tom V5. and intercom to the wife pillion. it's loud, and when the GPS talks to me it doesn't cut her off. I had a Scala rider Q teamset before, fekin rubbish.
quiet, would cut out regularly, would have to stop and switch it on/off.
If I pressed the button to keep the intercom open it would switch off after a few minutes.
then you have to shout into it to make it open again. which my wife could never master.
So I would recommend the Sena smh5 to anyone who wants a simple to use intercom.
 
I've been using Sena SMH5 for the last 12 months, excellent simple intercom.
I use a Tom Tom V5. and intercom to the wife pillion. it's loud, and when the GPS talks to me it doesn't cut her off. I had a Scala rider Q teamset before, fekin rubbish.
quiet, would cut out regularly, would have to stop and switch it on/off.
If I pressed the button to keep the intercom open it would switch off after a few minutes.
then you have to shout into it to make it open again. which my wife could never master.
So I would recommend the Sena smh5 to anyone who wants a simple to use intercom.

Thanks Colin, thats what i want to hear. Yeh i thought the same of the cardo flippen nightmare at times. Fine when working but took a lot of faffing around to get to work.
 


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